How to take a picture of the moon on Xiaomi: the complete guide

Xiaomi smartphone owners often face a paradox: the camera produces excellent results during the day, but it is worth trying to capture the night sky as a blurred white spot appears on the screen instead of craters. This is a common problem with light processing algorithms, which are default set to align exposure in dark conditions. However, modern flagships and even mid-range models have enough hardware capacity to take high-resolution pictures of the moon.

To get a detailed image of the Earth's satellite, you need to completely ignore the automatic settings and move to manually controlling the shooting parameters. You will not only need to have an understanding of the basic principles of photography, such as shutter speed, light sensitivity and focal length. In this article, we will take a look at every step, from choosing equipment to post-processing, to make your shot look professional.

Modern AI Camera algorithms in the MIUI or HyperOS shell can automatically recognize the moon and switch to a special mode, but rely only on artificial intelligence is not necessary. Often the system miscalculates the boundaries of an object or oversteps with sharpness, creating artifacts. Manual tuning allows you to control every pixel of the final image.

The first thing to do before you start shooting is to keep the device stable, and even microscopic hand shaking with maximum zoom will turn a clear disc into a lubricated porridge, and the ideal solution is to use a tripod, but if you don't have one, you can point your phone against a still object, a rock, a parapet, or a tree, and the main thing is to eliminate any vibrations when you press the shutter.

Preparation of equipment and timing

The quality of the final image depends not only on the camera settings, but also on the external conditions. To shoot the moon at a full moon when it is high above the horizon, the most difficult because of the bright light that knocks out the details of the surface. Experienced photographers recommend choosing periods of growing or waning moon when light falls to the surface at an angle, creating long shadows in craters. This emphasizes the relief and makes the photo voluminous.

The second critical factor is the cleanliness of the lens. At first glance, the glass may appear clean, but greasy finger marks create a diffraction effect, turning bright objects into sources of radial glare. Wipe your optics with a soft microfiber cloth before shooting. It is also important to consider weather conditions: high humidity or haze can significantly reduce contrast and detail.

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Use a 3 or 5-second delay timer so that the vibration from touching the screen does not smear the frame when the shutter is lowered.

As for the choice of smartphone model, the presence of a telephoto lens with optical zoom provides a huge advantage: the Xiaomi Mi Ultra series, Redmi Note Pro with a periscopic camera or the flagships of the 13 and 14 line allows you to zoom in without loss of quality using optical rather than digital mathematics. If you have a model without optical zoom, you will have to rely on a matrix crop and digital zoom, which requires even more accurate focusing.

• 🌑 Choose nights with clear skies and low humidity for maximum atmospheric transparency.
• 📱 Make sure your smartphone battery is at least 30% charged, as the Pro mode and high-brightness screen consume energy quickly.
• 🧹 Carefully wipe all the lenses of the main and TV camera before going to the shooting.

Setting up Pro-mode: exposure and sensitivity

To get a good picture, the standard Photo mode is not suitable, because it tends to illuminate the dark areas of the frame, making the moon just a white circle. You need to switch to Pro mode, where you can manually adjust all the parameters. In the camera interface, you usually need to swipe to the right or select the appropriate tab in the shooting mode menu.

The first thing you do is set the ISO light sensitivity to the lowest possible value, usually 50 or 100. High ISO adds digital noise that will look like colored porridge in the dark sky, completely destroying the texture of the satellite's surface. Low ISO will ensure image purity and maximum dynamic range.

⚠️ Note: Do not try to compensate for the darkness of the frame with a raise ISO. The moon is a bright object, and to shoot it, you need parameters close to the daytime shooting, despite the total time of day.

Then you have to adjust the shutter speed. As the moon moves across the sky, too long exposure will lead to a lubrication (motion blur). For phones with zoom, the optimal shutter speed range is from 1/125 to 1/400 of a second. If the shutter speed is too short, the matrix will not have time to capture enough light, and the picture will be black. If too long, the details will float.

White balance (WB) also requires attention. Automatic balance is often wrong, giving the moon an unnatural yellow or bluish hue. Set the value manually in the range of 4000-5000 Kelvin to get a neutral gray surface color. This will simplify further processing and make the picture more realistic.

Focusing and working with zoom

The hardest part of the shooting process is precise focusing. Autofocus on Xiaomi smartphones often takes a walk, clinging to clouds or simply losing an object in the dark. In Pro mode, switch focus to Manual Focus (MF) mode, you will see a scale that needs to be moved to the extreme right, to the icon of a mountain or infinity.

But mechanically moving the slider towards the end of the scale is only half the story. Because of the optics of the phones, the infinity point may not match the physical end of the lens' stroke a little bit, so you need to turn on the lens, or you just look at the screen carefully, slowly moving the focus slider back and forth until the craters are as sharp as possible.

Now, zoom. If your smartphone is equipped with an optical telephoto lens (usually 2x, 3.3x or 5x), use it. Digital zoom (e.g. 10x, 30x, 50x) is just a crop of the main matrix image. However, Xiaomi smartphones have a Super Moon feature that, when zoomed in, uses neural networks to finish the drawing of details. If you want an honest shot without AI intervention, limit yourself to optical zoom and the subsequent crop.

• 🔍 Use the screen magnification (magnification) in the viewfinder to accurately check the focus on the edges of the lunar disk.
• 🚫 Avoid using digital zoom above 10x, If your device does not have a periscopic camera with an optical approximation.
• 🎯 Fix the focus by slightly pressing the slider so that it does not get lost when touching the screen.

It is important to understand the difference between optical and digital magnification. Optics retain the detail transmitted by the lenses, whereas digital zoom simply stretches the pixels. In models without a telephoto lens (for example, some versions of Redmi), the quality of the shot on a 30-fold zoom will be significantly inferior to the flagships of the Mi Ultra series.

Use of the AI-scenarios and the moon regime"

Xiaomi owners have a unique advantage: the built-in AI Sky algorithm or a separate "Moon" mode in the scene gallery. When you point the camera at the satellite and hold the phone still for a few seconds, the AI recognizes the object. The Moon icon may appear on the screen, meaning that the phone has switched to a special shooting mode with multilayer processing.

This mode works on the principle of HDR: the camera takes a series of images with different exposures and glues them together, pulling out details in light and dark areas. In addition, the neural network can add the texture of craters based on the database if the real resolution of the sensor is not enough. For ordinary users, this is the best way to get a beautiful picture of the here and now without deep knowledge of the photo.

Nevertheless, AI-It can work incorrectly if the moon is covered by thin clouds or close to a bright light source, and the result may look unnaturally "charted" (too sharp). AI leave for quick pictures on social network.

To activate scene mode, open the camera, click on the mode menu (usually "More") and select "Pro" or find the "Night Sky" scene. In some versions of MIUI, just point the camera, and the "AI" icon in the corner of the screen becomes active, suggesting optimization.

Comparison of shooting modes for different models

The effectiveness of shooting depends on the hardware of your device. The table below compares the capabilities of different Xiaomi series of smartphones when shooting the moon.

As you can see from the table, having a periscopic camera is a game-changer. Ultra-flagship owners may not use AI mode at all, getting a fair picture. For low-end devices, AI Moon is almost the only way to get a recognizable image of a satellite, because the physical limitations of optics do not allow you to see craters without software interpolation.

It’s also worth mentioning the save format. If your smartphone supports shooting in RAW (DNG), be sure to turn this option on in the Pro mode settings. RAW file saves all the information from the matrix without compression and processing. This will give you a huge margin for editing: you can pull shadows, remove noise and adjust colors without losing quality, which is impossible with conventional JPEG.

Post-processing and error elimination

Even a perfectly shot often requires minimal refinement. The standard editor at Xiaomi Gallery allows you to customize the image basic, but for serious work, it is better to use third-party applications such as Snapseed or Lightroom Mobile.

Next, work with contrast and lights. Reduce the value of "Highlights" a little bit to show the details in the bright part of the disk, and add "Contrast" to make the edges of the craters clearer. Be careful with the "Sharpening" parameter - its excess will create white halos around the object, which looks unnatural.

⚠️ Warning: Don't overdo it with color saturation. The moon is a gray stone, it shouldn't be bright yellow or orange unless you're taking it off specifically at sunrise near the horizon.

If you see noise (colored dots) in the picture, use the noise reduction function. RAW-It's more efficient in the files. Also check the horizon -- even a slight tilt of the frame can cut your eye, so use the Turn tool to align.

The result should balance realism with artistic expression. Don't be afraid to experiment with a black-and-white filter - monochrome images of the moon often look more dramatic and hide possible color flaws inherent in small smartphone matrices.