Many Xiaomi smartphone owners mistakenly believe that the built-in camera is only for daytime shooting or portraits in good light. However, the current flagship and even mid-range models of the Redmi and POCO series are equipped with sensors that can capture the beauty of the night sky. To get really impressive shots of the Milky Way or the starry sky, the standard automatic mode “Night” is often not enough.
The key to success is to switch to a manual camera mode called the Pro in the MIUI or HyperOS shell, where you gain full control of the matrix by opening the shutter for a long time to collect light from distant stars. In this article, we will detail the exposure, focus and stabilization settings that will turn your smartphone into a powerful tool for astrophotography.
Before we start, the quality of the final images depends on the aperture of your device’s lens. Owners of f/1.8 or f/1.7 models will get a much cleaner picture with less digital noise.
Preparation of equipment and choice of location
The first thing you need for a high-quality astrophotography is the absolute immobility of your smartphone. Any, even microscopic hand tremor at the time of shooting will smear the stars, turning them into fuzzy points. So having a stable tripod or a solid support (stone, parapet) is a prerequisite, without which you can not get a sharp shot.
The second critical factor is the distance from artificial light sources, and in urban environments, light pollution creates a dome of light that completely hides faint stars and the Milky Way, and you need to go out of town, into a zone with minimal illumination, where the sky looks really dark, not gray-orange.
- 📱 Charge the smartphone battery to 100% – long exposure and screen work quickly plant the battery.
- 🌡️ Let the phone cool before shooting – the heated sensor generates more digital noise at long shutter speeds.
- 🔦 Bring a red flashlight or turn on the screen the red dot mode to avoid blinding your eyes and maintain night vision.
⚠️ Warning: Never point your smartphone camera directly at the moon if you use a telephoto lens or zoom, and don’t look at a bright star through a viewfinder for a long time unnecessarily – although the risk of burning the matrix is minimal, the brightness of the full moon can be unpleasant for the eyes and auto exposure.
It's also important to wipe the camera before you start. During the day, small finger sniffles may be invisible, but at night, any light source that hits the lens will create powerful glare and "rays" that will spoil the frame. Use a soft microfiber to clean the optics.
Manual camera mode setting (Pro)**
To start shooting, run the standard Camera app and select the More → Pro mode from the bottom menu. In some models, this mode may be called Manual or denoted by the letters PRO. This is where all the necessary tools for controlling the physical parameters of shooting are located.
First, you need to turn off all automatic assistants. Find the lightning icon (flash) and make sure it's off. Then go to the white balance setting (WB). Set the value between 3,500-4,500 Kelvin so that the sky becomes a deep blue or black hue, rather than going into warm orange or cold purple.
The most important parameter is focus. Autofocus in the dark works extremely poorly and often "walks." Turn focus to manual mode by pressing the icon. AF (Auto Focus, so that it can be replaced by MF (The slider of focus must be moved to the extreme right, to the icon of the mountain or infinity (∞).
- 🎯 Point the camera at the brightest star or distant flashlight for precise peak focus settings.
- 🔍 Use zoom 2x or 3x when putting focus to better see details on the screen.
- 📉 After focusing, try not to touch the sliders again so as not to knock the setting down.
⚠️ Warning: If you see the stars stretched into short lines after you shoot, it means the shutter speed was too long for your focal length, or the phone was shaking.
To fine-tune your focus, you can use the image zoom function: point the camera at a bright object, press the zoom button (usually 2x or 3x), and slowly spin the focus wheel until the object is as clear as possible.
Exposure parameters: ISO and shutter speed**
After adjusting focus and white balance, it is the turn of exposure. ISO (light sensitivity) is responsible for how much the matrix will amplify the signal. For the night sky, the optimal range is between 800 and 3200 units. It is not recommended to raise ISO above 3200 on Xiaomi smartphones, as this will lead to color noise and loss of detail.
The second parameter is shutter speed (denoted by the letter S or stopwatch icon). Here you set the time the matrix will collect light. To shoot a starry sky without tracks (stars moving due to the Earth's rotation), the rule is 500. Divide 500 by the focal length of your lens (for a wide angle it is about 20-24 mm) to get the maximum shutter speed. This value is usually from 10 to 25 seconds.
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Use a self-start timer for 3 or 5 seconds. Pressing the down button causes a micro-vibration that will smear the frame. The timer will let the phone calm down before opening the shutter.
If you want to capture the movement of stars (star tracks), then the shutter speed can be set to a maximum (up to 30 seconds in normal mode or more in special modes), but for a static sky it is better to stay within 20 seconds.
| Parameter | Recommended value | Influence on photo |
|---|---|---|
| ISO | 800 – 1600 | Balance between brightness and noise |
| Excerpt (S) | 10 - 25 secs | Brightness of stars and lack of lubricants |
| White balance (WB) | 3500 – 4000 K | The natural color of the night sky |
| Focus (MF) | Infinity (∞) | Sharp points in the sky |
Experiment with combinations of ISO and shutter speeds. If the frame is too dark, try increasing the ISO to 3200, but watch for snow in the image.
Use of the "Long Shutter" and "Night" mode**
In new versions of firmware MIUI HyperOS has a special mode. → Long Exposure: This mode automatically takes a series of images and glues them together to remove noise and amplify the signal, and it's a great alternative to manual mode for those who don't want to mess with the settings.
You can also use Night Mode, where artificial intelligence algorithms decide how many frames to make and how to process them, but it has a downside: it often “crushes” the sky, making it black, and can misinterpret stars as noise by removing them.
- 🌌 Long exposure mode is best suited for shooting static landscapes with stars.
- 🚗 When shooting with moving objects (machines), it is better to use manual mode to control lubricants.
- 🤳 Night mode is good for quick hand shooting, but for astrophotography on a tripod it is less predictable.
The Secret of Clear Sky
For maximum quality, many professionals prefer to shoot in RAW (DNG) format, which is available in Pro mode, which contains raw information from the matrix and provides a huge opportunity for subsequent color correction in editors.
Shooting the Milky Way on Xiaomi**
Taking pictures of our galaxy requires even more careful preparation, the Milky Way is only visible far from cities and at certain times of the year (it is best seen in the northern hemisphere in summer), and the smartphone camera is able to capture the structure of the galaxy's arms if you set the parameters correctly.
It is critical to use the format. RAW. Enable this option in the top camera menu (icon «RAW» or «DNG»). Normal. JPEG strongly compresses the image and loses the subtle details of the glow of the galactic disk. RAW-The file will look faded and gray immediately after shooting, but that’s okay.
⚠️ Attention: Files in format RAW It takes up a lot more memory (about) 20-30 Make sure you have a few gigabytes of space before a long photo shoot.
When shooting the Milky Way, try to include an object in the foreground (a tree, a tent, a human silhouette) in the frame. This will add scale photos and make the composition more interesting, otherwise the picture will look just like a set of dots.
☑️ Checklist before shooting the Milky Way
Astrophotography processing**
A snapshot taken on even the best smartphone rarely looks perfect right after the shutter is pulled down. A raw file (especially RAW) requires post-processing, and you can use mobile apps like Lightroom Mobile, Snapseed, or the built-in Xiaomi gallery editor.
First of all, you need to work with exposure and contrast. Raise the shadows a little bit to show the foreground details, lower the light areas (Highlights) to restore the texture of bright stars. It is also useful to increase the "Clarity" or "Textura" parameter, which will emphasize the structure of clouds or galactic dust.
Noise reduction is a big step. Lightroom has a section called "Details" that can neatly reduce color noise without blurring the stars themselves. Be careful with luminance noise reduction to avoid turning stars into mush.
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The main secret of processing is not to overdo it. The natural night sky should not be bright blue or purple, and the stars should not have huge halos.
Frequent mistakes in shooting stars**
Beginners often make common mistakes that negate all efforts, the most common being the use of digital zoom; in astrophotography, zoom only with your feet (closer) or optical zoom, if any. Digital zoom simply stretches the pixels and kills quality.
Another mistake is ignoring the wind, and even if your phone is on a tripod, a strong gust of wind can shatter the structure, so in windy weather, cover the tripod with your body or use a heavier suspension to stabilize it.
- 🚫 Don’t use a flash – it will only light up dust in front of the lens and spoil the frame.
- 🚫 Don’t touch your phone during exposure – even a light touch of the screen can lubricate the shot.
- 🚫 Don’t expect the result “like in a photo on the Internet” without processing – smartphone screens have limitations in dynamic range.
Remember, astrophotography on your phone is a process of trial and error: take a test shot, rate the histogram and the result on the big screen, then adjust the ISO settings or shutter speeds.