Smartphone photography has already been improved and changed dramatically by Google’s Pixel phones. However, their latest addition might represent their most significant step forward.
Introducing Night Sight
Night Sight is the next step in Google’s evolution process of computational photography. That’s because it mixes in together machine learning, up to four seconds of exposure and smart algorithms, generating low-light images of shocking quality.
Camera app tweak
Some people managed to try it before it was officially released, thanks to the camera app tweak. It was released by cstark27, a user of XDA Developers. The results stunned Pixel users. Even though the version used is pre-official, meaning that Google is still unhappy to release it, the new night mode turns any Pixel phone in the best low-light camera.
Saved from darkness
All the photos taken with a Pixel 3 XL that had this new feature are obviously improved. According to Google, Night Sight will keep you from ever using the flash again. This will make almost any phone camera engineer quit their job in anger.
Really, it is an incredible achievement. Considering the fact that the Google Pixel 3’s camera was already one of the best low-light performers when it took a photo in which you could hardly see anything, you knew that there couldn’t be anything else done to improve it.
Still, we got Night Sight which improved, even more, the low-light capabilities of Google’s phones.
Let’s get real
Night Sight is by far the ideal solution to any low-light situation. The night mode will blow out some highlights if you have focused and small sources of bright light. Although a long exposure would blow out an entire screen, so the night mode will keep photos readable. Again, all this comes from pre-release software. Google is getting closer to the real thing, so let’s wait a bit more.
Tim M. Hill helped bring Digital-Overload from a weekly newsletter to a full-fledged news site by creating a new website and branding. He continues to assist in keeping the site responsive and well organized for the readers. As a writer to Digital-Overload, Tim mainly covers mobile news and gadgets.
