What Could Be Causing Your Phone’s Photos To Look Bad In Low Light?

You can’t help but be amazed at the picture quality of today’s smartphone cameras. Photos taken during the day rival those taken by some decent digital cameras.

However, when it comes to taking pictures at night or low light conditions, it’s quite a disappointing image.

Have you been battling with poor quality images, especially at night? Do the pictures come out too dark, or too blurry? Is there too much grain in the photo that it doesn’t look appealing at all?

In this article, we’ll look at some possible causes for poor quality photos, and how you can deal with those issues.

The camera (sensor)

The quality of pictures that your phone can produce is hugely dependent on the image sensor. It's one of those things that contribute largely to what makes a phone photo look good.

If your smartphone camera has a very small sensor, super tiny pixel size, and a low megapixel resolution, then unfortunately for you, your photos are doomed from the get-go.

Let me break it down just a bit, so it makes more sense to those who don’t get it.

The camera’s image sensor is a device that captures the light that comes through the lens onto photosites that convert the light into an image.

The bigger the sensor is, the more light it can potentially receive. The more light the sensor receives, the better quality pictures it can produce, especially in low light.

The photosites on the sensor relate to pixels- the tiny squares that make up a digital image. A million pixels make one megapixels.

The more pixels you sensor has, i.e, high number of megapixels, the more resolution and detail your image will have. The bigger the pixels, the more light they can capture.

There’s more to a camera that affects picture quality than just megapixels. So, it’s important to know and understand all the specs of a smartphone camera so as not to be disappointed at its performance.

I recommend you read my detailed explanation of all phone camera specs to get a better understand how everything plays a role in affecting picture quality.

If you'd like to know which smartphones have cameras with the most megapixels, check these phones out.

Quality of the optics

By ‘optics’, I’m talking about the lens or lenses of the camera. The material with which the lens is made plays a huge factor in the quality of the camera’s images.

All flagship and most, if not all, mid-range phone cameras have glass lenses, which gives you far better pictures than what you get from cheaper phones with plastic lenses.

You can often spot images from low quality optics by their lack of sharpness and definition. This is because it affects how the phone’s camera focuses.

The pictures often look blurry or somewhat out of focus, especially at night or in dark environments. Glass lenses often give you sharper images.

That’s not to say all glass lenses are of the same quality. The quality of images that come from glass lenses differs depending on craftsmanship.

As a result, it is not uncommon to find smartphone manufacturers partnering with well-known lens manufacturers and attaching their name to their product.

Examples are Nokia’s historic partnership with Carl Zeiss lenses and Huawei’s deal with Leica.

If your camera has poor optics, then, unfortunately, there’s no way of improving your photos beyond what your camera can already give you.

Issue with the lens (or lens cover)

Smartphone cameras are always exposed. And although the lens itself does not come into direct contact with anything, the lens cover goes through a lot.

In fact, sometimes photos don’t come out looking that great because the lens is dirty due to how many things it comes into contact with. Nothing a quick clean with a soft cloth can’t fix, though.

Other issues with the lens, on the other hand, can be quite serious. If you put your phone in your pocket along with coins and keys, or in your handbag with other loose and sharp items, you’re bound to scratch the lens at some point. It goes without saying that that is not good at all.

Consider also that there could be something obscuring the lens. There could be dirt or particles of some sort stuck between the protective lens cover and the lens itself. Build up of moisture in that area can also affect the quality of your photos.

If you’ve dropped your phone and it’s got cracks all over, including your camera, then no doubt that could be the reason why there may be some build up of sorts inside the lens.

The best solution, if you’re phone is scratched, cracked, or has something stuck inside, is to get your phone fixed by a professional.

Narrow aperture

Aperture refers to the opening where light enters the camera. How big this opening is determines how dark or bright the image will be. The wider the opening and, the more light reaches the sensor. The narrower the aperture, the less light comes through.

Aperture is expressed in f-numbers. The lower the f-number, the wider the aperture. A traditional camera can adjust it’s aperture from f/1.5 (very wide, allows a lot of light through) to f/16 (very narrow, little light comes through), for example.

And unlike with traditional cameras, the vast majority of smartphone cameras have fixed aperture. This means that if a smartphone is said to have an f/2.2 aperture, then that is that. You cannot change that to allow more or less light using aperture.

If your phone has an aperture of, say, f/2.6, then it will not perform as well in low light as one that has an aperture with a lower f-number. The only way to work around this is to rely on more lighting to improve the quality of your photos.

If you’re a serious smartphone photographer or just starting out, you cannot ignore aperture. It may be fixed on smartphones but it still plays a role in the Exposure Triangle. You can read more about smartphone aperture here.

Poor lighting

Just because you’re taking a photo in low light doesn’t mean you have to shoot in the dark. Cameras don’t do so well in the dark, and smartphones even more so.

Therefore, if you take a shot in the dark, you’ll either see nothing at all or the photo will come out super grainy.

To compensate for this, a lot of people switch the flash on and then take their shots. My advice? DO NOT USE FLASH!!!

The flash on smartphones is just horrible. It leaves you with flat images that have dark backgrounds, flash reflections, and demonic red eyes. It’s just terrible.

The best way to shoot in low light is to shoot where the light is and make sure it’s illuminating your subject. You can take pictures by the bar or under street lights. If you’re out in nature, you can take pictures around a fire or use a phone or flashlight as extra lighting.

Bad exposure

Closely related to the subject of lighting is the issue of exposure. This refers to the control of how dark or bright the image is by adjusting the ISO. ISO determines the sensor’s sensitivity to light.

In bright conditions, the ISO level is set low (eg. 50 ISO). In low light conditions, the sensor’s light sensitivity can be increased by bringing up the ISO. The result is a brighter picture. But, there’s a catch.

The more you bring up the ISO, the more digital noise starts becoming apparent. You’ll notice that the picture quality has deteriorated and looks grainy. That’s a sign that the sensor has been pushed to it’s limits and can longer give you a quality image without it looking grainy.

The best way to deal with this is to not rely solely on ISO to brighten your images, and thus crank it all the way up. Suppliment ISO with additional lighting and shutter speed adjustments.

Slow shutter speed and camera shake

In smartphone cameras, the shutter is electronic not mechanical, and refers to the sensor’s activation to receive light and produce a photo. After that, the sensor is deactivated. How long the sensor stays active is referred to as the shutter speed.

A slow shutter speed means the sensor is active for a longer period. The longer the sensor stays active, the more light it receives. So, a slow shutter speed means your picture will be brighter, but it comes with its own issues.

Camera shake becomes a huge problem when the shutter speed is slow. For images taken with a slow shutter speed to work well, the camera has to be perfectly still. The slightest movement or shake of the camera will cause blurry photos.

To deal with this issue, you need to bring the shutter speed up a bit. If you really need to use a slow shutter speed, you should definitely use a tripod. Also, don't forget to use a reliable, good-quality smartphone mount that will keep your phone secured tightly to your tripod.

And if you're about to invest in your first tripod, make sure you consider these important points first to ensure you get the right tripod that suits your phone and your needs.

The focus

Smartphones have mostly been notoriously bad at focusing in low light. When you look at how focus works on smartphones, they often use phase-detection auto-focus (PDAF) or contrast detection-auto-focus (CDAF). These two auto-focus technologies are heavily reliant on the lighting of the environment to work efficiently.

And because smartphone cameras don’t do see so well in the dark, they struggle and take longer to get the focus right. The result is more blurry low light photos than ones in focus.

Expensive flagship phones have improved low light auto-focus capabilities, but the average phone still struggles. An alternative to PDAF and CDAF is laser auto-focus, which works well in low light because it shoots out a laser beam to detect where to focus.

The easiest solution is to tap on your screen to select where in the frame you want the camera to focus and make sure the focus is set correctly before you take the picture. Another option is to is to use the manual focus slider and adjust the focus yourself.

The exposure, shutter speed and focus settings are commonly accessible when shooting in Manual mode along with others. If you're not familiar with this mode, I suggest you learn about it here and also check out some advantages of shooting manually.

The software or hardware

It’s not unheard of for software to cause issues with smartphone photos. The issue might be with the camera app or the operating system. Software malfunctions can bring up a multitude of problems like colour issues, inability to focus, blank screens, and so and so on.

If updating your app doesn’t help, then consider downloading a third-party app to use instead. If this also doesn’t help, then you might be experiencing a hardware problem.

A smartphone camera consists of a number of movable parts, so, it’s possible that the mechanics of this system can get stuck. If that’s the case, believe it or not, shaking the phone and giving it a gentle tap with your finger or against the palm of your hand can help.

If your phone has suffered too much trauma, though, I’m afraid only a professional can help. It's best to leave it to someone who knows what they're doing than to potentially make the problem worse.

Capturing quality images with your smartphone in low light is not impossible. You just need to know your smartphone camera well, and make the most of it.

If anything needs to be replaced, repaired, or upgraded, then do so. And with time and practice, you'll be taking stunning photos at night in no time. You might even be proud enough to print your smartphone photos and share them with friends and family or display them in your home.

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