NightCap - iPhone low light, night, photos

One thing my iPhone 4s won't do well is night photographs. There is just not enough shutter time available using the Camera app. Of course some clever guy decided to make an app that gives longer shutter times and better low-light shots.

One of those apps is NightCap, an app I use and like. It gives you manual control over shutter times up to 1 second among other things. Oh, forget handheld use. I use tripods or my DIY suction cup mount. I'll write about that one some other time, it works really well when I use my iPhone 4s as a dashcam.

Anyway, brace the iPhone 4s somehow and launch the native Camera app, and you'll get this:

Fuengirola by night - iPhone 4s, silly tripod, cable release

And then let's fire up NightCap, set the manual exposure for 1 second, wait while the display sloooowly updates (yes, forget quick snapshots), start the self-timer and you'll get this:

Fuengirola by night - iPhone 4s, silly tripod, NightCap, self-timer

The cable release won't work with NightCap, but there is a self-timer as a kind of workaround. Just be gentle when you tap it so you don't shake or shift the iPhone too much. A stylus can be a great help.

While the small sensor in the iPhone 4s just can't perform any better than a tiny sensor can, the difference is there when you use NightCap. No way you can compare this rig with say my Nikon D200 with the 50mm F1.8, but then you already knew that. What you can do is get perfectly usable photos instead of dark, grainy ones. Nobody who is half serious about photography would compare the iPhone 4s with a DSLR anyway.

If you want to shoot night photos with your iPhone, I recommend NightCap. It won't give you perfect night photos, but perfectly usable ones. And thats a lot better than no photos at all!