In recent years, mobile phones have been incorporating the so-called night modes photography. These have been designed to be able to take photos in low light with great quality. Something that has led many to wonder whether the LED flash beyond using it as a flashlight for our terminal.
Night photography has nothing to do with even the cheapest mobiles compared to what was common a few years ago. Night modes have come to offer amazing results even when the camera is not the best on the market.
Is the flash for the camera phone still useful?
The truth is that in recent years fewer and fewer of us use the LED flash of the phone’s camera. And it is that there are fewer and fewer occasions in which it is necessary to use it, in fact in most cases we use the flash when we are not taking pictures. Either to use it to illuminate our face in a video call, or as flashlight, which has become practically the first use of these flashes by most users. And the problem in many cases is the night modes, which have become almost anecdotal use of LED flash of the telephone.
The problem is that most phones they do not allow to use the flash when we use the night mode, because the reality is that in these cases it is a hindrance. Since the flash what it does above all is to illuminate the part of the scene that we have closest, but it creates great imbalances in the light of the areas furthest from the camera’s sensor. For that reason the software used by the night modes of the cameras end up offering better results than the use of the flash itself to be able to illuminate the scene. That is why the use of flash has already become something very residual in many mobiles, and above all also because most users no longer seek to complicate their lives taking photos and activating the flash.
We use it less and less
The use of the LED flash has become very specific when it comes to taking photos. Since it is recommended for example in cases in which we need to take photos of details, a label, or a macro night photography, where a direct light source is really necessary so that the detail is shown, and especially so that the image and the text to which we take the photos is not shown blurry.
That is the usefulness of flash, showing specific scenes with a highly focused detail on objects, or if we do a portrait, in which we only see the faces and silhouettes of the people sacrificing the rest of the scene. Therefore, when it comes to night photography, having a night mode, it no longer makes sense to use the LED flash.