I’m traveling to a spot where I’ll likely see the Northern Lights and I only have my iPhone to take pictures. What settings or apps work best, and do I need any accessories? Need advice on how to get clear, vibrant shots.
First of all, capturing the Northern Lights with an iPhone can be tricky, but not impossible. Your best friend will be the camera’s manual controls, which are often limited on the native app. Download an app like NightCap Camera or Halide—these let you control settings like ISO and shutter speed, which are essential for low-light photography.
Here’s what you need to do:
- Use a tripod! Your hands are the enemy here. Even the slightest movement will blur the photo. If you don’t have a tripod, try stabilizing your phone on a backpack, rock, or anything solid.
- In the camera app, set a long shutter speed (try 10-20 seconds) and a high ISO (start at 800 and adjust). If the app has a manual focus option, set it to infinity.
- Turn off flash (duh) and lower your screen brightness so it doesn’t blind you every time you snap a photo.
- If it’s freezing out, bring a battery pack—cold weather drains your phone battery like crazy.
Keep expectations realistic—your iPhone shot might not look like a professional DSLR photo, but you’ll still capture the magic. Also, take a moment to actually watch the lights with your own eyes instead of obsessing over pictures—seriously, no photo can replicate that!
Alright, so iPhones aren’t exactly top-tier equipment for astrophotography, but they’re not useless either. Some tips building off what @espritlibre said (good points there, btw, especially about the tripod):
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RAW Mode: if your iPhone supports ProRAW, USE IT. This gives you way more data to play around with during editing, which can save underwhelming shots. The native Camera app lets you enable this if you’re on an iPhone 12 Pro or later. If not, apps like Halide also support RAW capture.
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Editing Matters: Even if you can’t capture the perfect shot (and let’s face it, on an iPhone, you probably won’t), editing can work wonders. Apps like Lightroom or Snapseed let you fix exposure, bump up contrast, and emphasize the greens and purples of the lights.
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Experiment With Burst Mode: It’s unconventional, but for those fleeting moments where the lights are dancing faster than your settings can handle, burst shots might actually grab something halfway decent.
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Okay, unpopular opinion time: skip the battery pack. I don’t get why people think keeping the phone warm is life-or-death. Tuck it inside your coat pocket when you’re not shooting and you’ll be fine.
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Keep expectations modest: Look, your jaw will drop when you see the real thing, but your iPhone shots might look like someone smeared highlighters across a blackboard. Doesn’t mean they’re bad—it just means you’re capturing memories more than magazine covers.
Lastly, don’t obsess over the perfect shot. The Northern Lights are fleeting, and staring at your phone screen the whole time is honestly a rookie mistake—trust me on this one. ‘Pic or it didn’t happen’ isn’t worth missing the real spectacle.