Amazing. Mind-blowing. Unbelievable. Those are just a few words that come to mind after experiencing Google’s Night Sight night mode on the Pixel 3.
In case you missed Google’s Pixel 3 announcement or the numerous tech articles that followed, Google’s Night Sight is a soon-to-come feature for the tech giant’s Pixel smartphones.
Night Sight. Ever take a photo in low light? You can either get a grainy photo or you can use flash, which is awkward and harshly brightens your photo. Night Mode uses state of the art techniques in computational photography and AI to capture vibrant and detailed photos in low light — without the need for flash.
When the Pixel 3 was released (our full review is coming soon), it released with out the new Night Sight mode. According to our sources, it should be coming sometime in November. However, as is often the case, an intrepid modder has managed to mod the new Google Camera app to enable Google’s latest feature.
He discovered that it was incredibly simple to enable the Night Sight feature in the latest camera version. All he did was change 0x0 for the Camera.enable_cuttlef value to 0x1 (cuttlefish is the code-name for the Night Sight module in the app).
While we don’t condone installing apps from unknown sources, those who have used and tinkered with Android for any amount of time can’t help it — myself included. The modded camera app installs as a separate app than the default Google Camera app so you can run it alongside the official camera app should you choose to install it. NOTE: Techaeris is not responsible for any issues or damage you may incur if you install this modded app. That being said, we’ve installed it on four devices (Pixel 3, Pixel 3 XL, Pixel 2 XL, and Pixel) with no issues. You can get the link from XDA-Developers below.
Enough rambling, I’m just going to say that while I was impressed with the examples Google showed at their press conference. However, once I installed the modded Google Camera app and started playing around with it, I was blown away. Literally. O.K., maybe not literally but to be honest, this Night Sight mode is pure sorcery.
Without further ado, check out some of the image comparisons and be the judge yourself. The darker images below are taken in default HDR+ mode, some impressive enough in their own right, while the lighter and/or clearer ones are taken in Google’s new, unreleased Night Sight mode. All images below are straight out of the camera, merely resized or
As you can see in the examples above, while Night Sight isn’t perfect, it’s definitely very impressive more times than not. While the brightness in some isn’t that much better, the increased clarity when you view it at full size and more accurate
What do you think about Google’s Night Sight night mode for mobile photography? Have you had a chance to play around with it yet? Let us know in the comments below or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.
[button link=”https://www.xda-developers.com/google-camera-night-sight-google-pixel-3-google-pixel-2-google-pixel/” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: XDA-Developers[/button]Last Updated on February 3, 2021.
