iPhone camera settings for northern lights?

Recommended iPhone settings for photographing the northern lights

Night Mode exposure

• Use the longest Night Mode exposure your phone allows

• Handheld: usually 3 seconds

• On a solid surface or tripod: 10 seconds

This increases the camera’s chance of capturing vertical pillars and color separation. Robin’s photo used a 3.4 second exposure.

Lens choice

• Use the 1x wide lens

• Avoid the 0.5x ultrawide unless the aurora is extremely bright

The wide lens has better low-light performance and cleaner color.

Focus and exposure lock

• Press and hold on a distant light or star until AE/AF LOCK appears

• Tap the ± icon and drop exposure to –0.3 to –1.0

This keeps the sky from blowing out and helps maintain detail in the beams.

Stabilization

• If you don’t have a tripod, lean the phone on your car window, hood, or a fence

• Any vibration will blur the light pillars

Robin’s image shows clean edges in the red and green zones because the phone stayed still for the full exposure.

Capture in RAW if possible

• Settings → Camera → Formats → enable Apple ProRAW

RAW gives stronger color recovery later, especially when the aurora is faint to the eye but intense to the sensor.

Do not zoom

• Digital zoom turns aurora colors into noise

If you need a tighter crop, do it in editing afterward.

Keep the lens clean

• Even one fingerprint can create haze or glowing edges around the aurora

This is especially noticeable with red arcs.

Why iPhones capture stronger colors than your eyes

The phone stacks multiple low-light frames and pushes color saturation to reveal wavelengths your eyes can’t fully see in darkness.

Robin’s shot near Paw Paw shows bright red pillars and a soft green base, colors that often look muted in person but appear vivid on the sensor.

See what the northern lights looked like the same night, further south, in Elkhart, IN.