The Night Sight camera feature was perhaps the most exciting highlight of the Pixel 3 announcement last month. It's designed to help improve the way you capture photos in low-light environments with both the rear and front cameras of Pixel phones. In the next few days, it's rolling out to all three generations of the Pixel devices as part of an update to the Google Camera app.
Google announced the feature's upcoming availability today and said Night Sight uses machine learning to preserve the natural color of objects at night, among other capabilities. Since taking images in low-light conditions often leads to blurry photos, the feature works to first analyze your hand's tendency to move and then measure the amount of motion in the scene you're shooting. This happens before you hit the shutter button and the feature will then adapt in accordance with the information it collects.
Night Sight is, of course, meant to reduce the amount of picture noise as much as possible. But it doesn't do that magically. It still needs to capture enough light just like any other camera does in low-light settings. That means you and your subject need to stay still while the capture process is taking place.
The feature is also capable of minimizing motion blur when it captures a moving subject, Google claims, by capturing "an equal amount of light over a burst of many photos that are dark but sharp" and "merging this burst." The result is a bright and sharp image, as shown below.
You can pull up the feature either by tapping the "Try Night Sight" notification once Google suggests it or manually finding that mode in the camera app. The feature represents Google's cognizance of the fact that "life’s best moments aren’t always perfectly lit," so it's nice to see the Night Sight feature arriving on all Pixel devices.
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