How to take Night Mode portraits with iPhone 12 Pro phones

by Jonny Evans · Published November 10, 2020 · Updated November 10, 2020

Apple really seems to have cracked it when it comes to shiny new toys

All Apple’s iPhones have outstanding cameras supplemented by powerful AI and software, but the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max also possess LiDAR scanners, which enable them to take amazing portraits even in low light conditions. Read on for how to make best use of this:

How to take Night Mode portraits with iPhone 12 Pro phones

When you take a photograph in low light your camera will usually default to using flash, unless you’ve already changed this.

That’s great if you want to use flash photography to capture your image, but if you want to use the (arguably more impressive) LiDAR sensors you need to ensure flash is turned off.

Open Camera app on your device.
Select Portrait from the shooting options.
Check the flash icon is not yellow and is turned off.

At this point, iOS should automatically enter Night Mode. To check, look for a crescent moon icon at the top of the Camera frame. It should be yellow, if it isn’t then tap the icon to enable it.

NB: If the icon isn’t present, then I’m sorry to have to tell you that the place you are in when trying to take the shot has too much ambient light. This won’t work under street lamps, for example.

There’s a couple more things to know:

Your iPhone will automatically choose an exposure time if the feature is automatically enabled. If you want to manually control the exposure time just tap the yellow crescent moon icon and adjust the dial.
However, if the this feature is not automatically enabled (you had to tap the icon to enable it) you will also need to manually set exposure time.

One more thing

When you capture an image in this way be prepared for the process to take noticeably longer than usual. This is because your phone is doing a whole bunch of image processing to get the image you want. While it works it is important to: