Google Night Sight

With many smartphone manufacturers, now focusing their attention on night photography. Many have gone to software improvements and algorithms to allow smartphone photography to excel at night. After the update, Google Pixel 2 and 3 phones now are able to use the Night Sight mode to capture better night photography.

How Does It Work?

Google’s Night Sight reduces noise and increases detail in night shots. The software takes a few shots at once depending on the lighting conditions and in between shots, exposure is increased brighten the darker areas. Once the exposures have been captured AI, computer learning and algorithms will align the shots together to form one perfectly exposed image. The AI will correct the white balance and exposure levels in the background. Computer learning will allow the function to improve and get the balance right and produce better nighttime shots. There are a few caveats when using this function, you and the subject must be stationary and still, otherwise, the image may become blurry.

To take advantage of the Night Sight mode, open up the camera app and tap more. You will see the Night Sight option; the Pixel will also suggest Night Sight when it thinks that the lighting conditions are too dark for the normal mode/function.

As you can see from above the Night Sight mode has exposed the reflection of glow a lot more with the colours of the flower brightened up a little to compensate with the exposure of the dark areas in the water.

With a slightly wider shot, you can tell that the Night Sight mode has greatly exposed the background a lot more when compared to the before shot. You can greatly define the background visuals a lot with the Night Sight shot.

In this one if you can see a black outline around the flowers due to the Night Sight trying to merge the different exposed frames into one leaving this black outline around the flowers which you can see greatly in the sky area of the subject. The Night Sight mode however has done well in the lower half of the image, with the dark greens and browns being almost perfect match to the colours on the night.

In the final sample, you can see its a fairly lit area with lights from the surrounding features however in the before shot you can see the face and coat is still in darkness. In the after shot you can see the face and coat are more exposed and you can see the subject. Parts of the face and coat are more exposed and detail on the coat can be seen in the buttons and zip. Even the rocks in the water are more detailed and sharp in the Night Sight shot. However in the Night Sight shot the lights from the flowers are heavily overexposed making them too bright.

Summary

The Google Night Sight feature is great for those night time shots that you can't get with the normal mode especially with shots taken in dark environments such as in clubs or in the outside environment where light is scarce. The results from the Night Sight mode are really good in making those dark areas more exposed. Its great with portraits and group photography to remember those special nights out. With the use of AI and computer learning, the function can only improve with more Night Sight shots you take and Google and use them to understand and improve the software to produce even better results. Luckily to improve the function, all that is needed is a software update.