Night mode is a feature built into your iPhone 13 that helps you take better nightly photos. It does this by taking multiple exposures, then blending them, so there’s less noise in your photos. This means you can take a properly exposed photo of the sky without worrying about bright lights causing overexposure or loss of detail in darker areas (like shadows).
Open the Camera app on your iPhone 13 Pro Max or iPhone 13 Pro.
First, open the Camera app on your iPhone 13 Pro Max or iPhone 13 Pro. You can do this by swiping left from the home screen, tapping the camera icon, and tapping the moon icon to open it up.
After you’ve opened the Camera app and selected a photo mode for your shot (such as Portrait or Slo-Mo), tap Manual Mode at the bottom of your screen, from here, you’ll see several icons for things like Shutter Speed, Aperture Value and White Balance Value — all which are important in determining how your image will appear once it’s taken.
Press the Manual mode button to open it.
Your first step will be to open the camera app. If you have an iPhone 13 and are using the default camera app, this is as simple as tapping on the screen. If you’re using a different third-party app like ProCamera or Manual, however, things may be a bit trickier: consult its documentation for instructions on how to open it.
Once the app has opened up and displayed its camera interface, you should see two icons at the bottom of the screen; one with a shutter and one without (or perhaps more than once if multiple features are available). To enter manual mode on most iPhones 13s—and some older models—you’ll need to tap once on this icon with no shutter (or whatever equivalent exists for your particular phone). On newer iPhones 13s like mine, though? Those nice little sliders in place instead allow me access immediately through swiping left or right! Once you have it, you will see that the manuals are listed next to the automatics.”
Use the shutter icon to toggle shutter speed up or down.
Using the shutter icon, you can increase or decrease the shutter speed.
During a photo session, the shutter speed describes how long the shutter remains open. Shutter speeds are measured in seconds and fractions thereof, with longer shutter speeds leading to more light getting into the camera and shorter shutter speeds leading to less light getting into the camera. A longer exposure time increases your likelihood of capturing motion blur from cars moving through your shot or people walking through it (unless you’re trying to achieve an effect like this). On most phones, there’s no way to set exposure manually—you have to rely on automatic settings, which work well enough most of the time but won’t always give exactly what you’re looking for
Use the aperture icon to toggle the aperture up or down.
Your screen will have an aperture icon in the upper left corner. Tap it to adjust the aperture. You’ll see a bar controlling how much light is let into your camera’s lens-based on size. Your iPhone’s camera sensor can capture more light if it has a large opening (or aperture). Conversely, when you reduce the amount of light entering through this opening, you make it smaller (or “f-stops”).
If you want to take a photo with a large depth of field (meaning everything is in focus), keep your lens wide open so it allows as much light through as possible, and then increase its shutter speed until enough hits your sensor to create an image with all elements looking sharp.*
Use the white balance icon to choose between Auto, Custom, and Kelvin temperatures.
White balance is the adjustment of color to ensure that whites appear white and colors all look natural. If you have ever taken photos in fluorescent light, you know what a difference white balance can make. If you don’t set it correctly, the colors will look too red or greenish.
There are three ways to change the white balance: on your camera using manual controls (e.g., Kelvin temperature), with an app on your iPhone 13’s screen, or with an app in Control Center while viewing the photo gallery.
Tap the EV icon to adjust exposure compensation up or down by 0.5 increments.
Tap the EV icon to adjust exposure compensation up or down by 0.5 increments.
The EV (Exposure Value) setting is the amount of light allowed into your iPhone camera and recorded as a photo. You can think of it as an f-stop in photography, but instead of having to deal with different numbers and fractions, you tap on -0.5 to make things darker or +0.5 if they’re too bright.
Tap the ISO icon to adjust ISO.
ISO is the camera’s sensitivity to light. It’s a digital camera setting that controls how sensitive the camera is to light, and it’s measured in numbers like 100, 200, 400, and so on. When you have low ISO settings like 100 or 200, your photos will have a lower noise (grainy) quality than if you had higher ISO settings like 400 or 800.
For example, ISO 1600 is the best setting when shooting at night or in low light.
This will help illuminate your subject by making their faces brighter without overexposing them (making them look white).
You can take manual control of all aspects of your photo using a built-in feature called Night mode.
Night mode is a built-in feature on the iPhone 13 Pro, which lets you take control of all aspects of your photo. You can adjust shutter speed, aperture, white balance, and EV (exposure value). In this case, we used an ISO setting of 100 with exposure compensation at zero.
Suppose you’re looking for something more advanced than night mode but don’t want to buy an expensive camera or lens attachment that won’t work with anything else besides your iPhone 13 Pro camera. In that case, there’s another option: manual controls. Apple has this feature built into its latest operating system called “Advanced Photo.”
Conclusion
Night mode is a great way to get creative with your iPhone 13 Pro. You can use it for any photography, including portraits (see our guide here), but there’s something about night shots that makes them extra fun. Give it a try!
