How to take AMAZING Night Photos with iPhone!

Tips to Use Your iPhone for Nighttime Photography

Sometimes it feels like phones just can’t take great night photos, but you can take great night photos with iphone!

In this tutorial, Teemu shares their tips for choosing the best iPhone settings, lighting and editing for night photography!

How to Take amazing iPhone photos at night!

Teemu uses the iPhone 13 Pro Max. It can take high quality photos. You can also use an iPhone 12, or any 13 and above to get great photos at night. 

Tip #1: It’s not all about Camera Settings

Photography beginners might learn a lot about settings, camera settings and everything to do with gear. 

However taking great photos is more about the scene. Good lighting, and composition (how the elements are positioned) can make for an incredible photo no matter the gear or settings.

Camera settings on phone apps can be difficult to control and don’t usually offer much for adjustments, but if you can find the right light and scene your phone photos can turn out great.

Tip #2: How to find the best lighting to take Night photos with iPhone

You want to find good light for your photos in general, but especially for night photography. Flat photos with not a lot of light aren’t very visually appealing. 

But photos with a lot of contrast, difference between light and dark, highlights and shadows are interesting and eye-catching.

You don’t need an expensive low-light camera to get these photos either, just the right kind of light.

For example, taking street photography in the city, you can find lights to light the faces of your subjects or to highlight the subject. Lights such as street lights, neon store signs, or even buy a little LED attachment for your phone. 

Similarly, for night landscapes finding the light source and working with you angles and then the phone settings.

Tip #3: What Camera Settings To Use for Night Photos with iPhone

IPhone cameras cannot adjust settings such as shutter speed, aperture and ISO. The most important settings you can adjust on the iPhone is the exposure slider.

Exposure is the amount of light that reaches your camera’s sensor. It makes the overall photo brighter or darker depending on how it is set.

The main tip to use is to just expose for the highlights you have in the composition. IPhone cameras typically err on the side of overexposing the images, especially at night. 

So to adjust for that, you can underexpose and move the exposure down, making the light look good and the shadow contrast look nice.

Another setting to choose if you’re using the iPhone 12 or after, you can turn on ‘Pro Raw’ in the Camera settings for the type of image file being captured. This will allow your camera to capture more details in the photo for editing

If you’re using the Pro version of the phone, stick with using the main lens, even though there are three to choose from, as this is the best lens compared to the wide angle and telephoto. 

Always zoom with your feet, not the camera zoom!

Tip #4: How to Edit Phone Photography

You can do this on the phone as well! Most images straight out of the camera aren’t perfect, and almost always some amount of post production is required. 

A great app to use is Adobe Lightroom for iPhone, which gives you many options for editing. The best setting to adjust when editing is getting the exposure adjusted to the right level.

Use the temperature slider to modify the color for a cooler or warmer photo. You can also move up or down the highlights and shadows.

For more complex editing, you can adjust the contrast and exposure using the curve, and using a vignette to make the edges look slightly darker. 

For tips on editing, check out this Lightroom tutorial!

Now you can capture some amazing nighttime photos with your iPhone!

Want to improve your photography skills? Read this full photography guide!

Which of these tips will you use to upgrade your Night Photos with iPhone NOW?

Comment below!