iPhone X Low light, Photos looks brighter than Video

[python0704]

Hi,

I'm using iPhone X. Recently I noticed in low light conditions, eg kid's room at night with a nightlight on, I can take acceptable photos but when switch to video mode, the footage is much darker. Surely I can manually increase the brightness but that just introduce more noise. Is this suppose to act this way or do I have a faulty camera? I cannot recall how previous iphone works as I don't switch between photo and video in low light before.

 

[Newtons Apple]

Hi,

I'm using iPhone X. Recently I noticed in low light conditions, eg kid's room at night with a nightlight on, I can take acceptable photos but when switch to video mode, the footage is much darker. Surely I can manually increase the brightness but that just introduce more noise. Is this suppose to act this way or do I have a faulty camera? I cannot recall how previous iphone works as I don't switch between photo and video in low light before.

Video requires a much fast frame rate so it is understandable that video could be more dim. With a single image the iPhone can use a longer exposure hence holding the camera very steady will give best results.

 

[now i see it]

Video is shot at 30FPS. Stills can be shot at slower shutter speeds. That's why.

 

[kohlson]

As well, videos are recorded with a different codec. It's not clear to me that making them lighter in post would introduce noise - you may want to give it a try. The latest iMovie has this capability, and FCPX does well with this sort of thing.

 

[orev]

As well, videos are recorded with a different codec. It's not clear to me that making them lighter in post would introduce noise - you may want to give it a try. The latest iMovie has this capability, and FCPX does well with this sort of thing.

Codec is about compression, not the light conditions. A codec could introduce noise via jpeg artifacts as very low bitrates/qualities, but that is not what is happening here. Making something lighter in post means amplifying all of the pixels, and CCDs tend to have more noticeable noise in low light. If you amplify everything, you amplify the noise as well. It's not being "introduced", only amplified so you can see it.