Left: iPhone XS (full resolution image here). Right: Pixel 3 Night Sight (full resolution image here).

Left: 15-frame burst captured by one of two side-by-side Pixel 3 phones. Center: Night Sight shot with motion metering disabled, causing this phone to use 73ms exposures. The dog’s head is motion blurred in this crop. Right: Night Sight shot with motion metering enabled, causing this phone to notice the motion and use shorter 48ms exposures. This shot has less motion blur. (Mike Milne)

Left: Crop from a handheld Night Sight shot of the sky (full resolution image here). There was slight handshake, so Night Sight chose 333ms x 15 frames = 5.0 seconds of capture. Right: Tripod shot (full resolution image here). No handshake was detected, so Night Sight used 1.0 second x 6 frames = 6.0 seconds. The sky is cleaner (less noise), and you can see more stars. (Florian Kainz)

Left: The white balancer in the Pixel’s default camera mode doesn't know how yellow the illumination was on this shack on the Vancouver waterfront (full resolution image here). Right: Our learning-based AWB algorithm does a better job (full resolution image here). (Marc Levoy)

Yosemite valley at nighttime, Canon DSLR, 28mm f/4 lens, 3-minute exposure, ISO 100. It's nighttime, since you can see stars, but it looks like daytime (full resolution image here). (Jesse Levinson)

A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery, by Joseph Wright of Derby, 1766 (image source: Wikidata). The artist uses pigments from black to white, but the scene depicted is evidently dark. How does he accomplish this? He increases contrast, surrounds the scene with darkness, and drops shadows to black, because we cannot see detail there.

Pixel 3, 6-second Night Sight shot, with tripod (full resolution image here). (Alex Savu)

- Night Sight can't operate in complete darkness, so pick a scene with some light falling on it.

- Soft, uniform lighting works better than harsh lighting, which creates dark shadows.

- To avoid lens flare artifacts, try to keep very bright light sources out of the field of view.

- To increase exposure, tap on various objects, then move the exposure slider . Tap again to disable.

- To decrease exposure, take the shot and darken later in Google’s Photos editor ; it will be less noisy.

- If it’s so dark the camera can’t focus, tap on a high-contrast edge, or the edge of a light source.

- If this won’t work for your scene, use the Near (4 feet) or Far (12 feet) focus buttons (see below).

- To maximize image sharpness, brace your phone against a wall or tree, or prop it on a table or rock.

- Night Sight works for selfies too, as in the A/B album , with optional illumination from the screen itself.