Despite the pandemic (or maybe because of it), it’s still that time of the year when families try to take their holiday pictures before sending off a physical or digital copy to loved ones. More often than not, these are taken at night time in front of a Christmas tree or holiday decorations. If you have the newer Pixel devices, you can use the tools that come with your smartphones to take better pictures even in low light situations. Google shares some tips on how to take nicer and better pictures with Night Sight in Portrait Mode as well as the Portrait Light feature.
Night Sight in Portrait Mode lets you take “professional quality low light portraits” without having to bust out a professional camera. It’s a feature exclusive tp Pixel 4a (5G) and Pixel 5 devices that lets you take these artistic photos even in low light conditions and still give you sharp subjects and even artistically-blurred backgrounds. It comes with an exposure bracketing technology that can merge up to 15 photos that will improve the details on your photos.
The Portrait Light feature has been integrated into the Pixel Camera so it can automatically enhance the lighting, especially in low light situations. It is a post-capture feature that is also available on Google Photos apps for those that have older Pixel devices that don’t have Night Sight. Google actually created a custom lighting rig with 64 different cameras, 331 LED light sources and asked 70 people to sit, all to train the AI technology behind this feature.
But of course, even with technology, there’s still some skill needed to take that perfect holiday photo. Google shares tips like tapping the subject you want to focus on, the perfect distance between photographer and subject and subject and background, adding soft and ambient lighting on subjects’ faces to avoid over backlighting, angling your camera so there are no lens reflections, etc.
The Night Sight in Portrait Mode is of course one of the come-ons of Google to get people to get their Pixel 4a (5G) or Pixel 5. Taking great photos is one of the considerations when buying a new smartphone so this might be a good feature to highlight.