Why photography is difficult at night

The key ingredient for a photo is light. When it’s dark, cameras compensate by spending more time capturing light and increasing their sensitivity to light, often adding unwanted motion blur and noise to your photo.



Flash helps by adding light to the scene, but it awkwardly blinds your friends and can annoy others around you. Not to mention, it usually creates unflattering photos and isn’t even allowed in many places where photography is permitted. Flash also only brightens nearby subjects and isn’t useful for landscapes or faraway objects.

Tripods stabilize the camera, allowing it to capture more light, but they’re bulky and impractical for everyday use. By enabling longer captures, tripods may also introduce unwanted motion blur from moving objects.

How Night Sight works

Night Sight constantly adapts to you and the environment, whether you’re holding Pixel or propping it on a steady surface. Before you press the shutter button, Night Sight measures your natural hand shake, as well as how much motion is in the scene. If Pixel is stable and the scene is still, Night Sight will spend more time capturing light to minimize noise; if Pixel is moving or there’s significant scene motion, Night Sight will use shorter exposures, capturing less light to minimize motion blur.

