Recommended app to manually set iPhone ISO / shutter settings

[Starslayer]

As the title says.  I have downloaded Lightroom but limit on shutter speed is 1s.  I see others like Camera +2  but are there any others , particularly free, that you guys can / would recommend to achieve purpose?

Thank you

[jjohnson3803]

I'm experimenting with NightCap Camera on my iPhone 7.  Seems pretty versatile, but my skies are garbage so I'm not expecting a lot.

 

[Starslayer]

13 hours ago, jjohnson3803 said:

I'm experimenting with NightCap Camera on my iPhone 7.  Seems pretty versatile, but my skies are garbage so I'm not expecting a lot.

 

Is that the paid or free version?  I have since found out that providing I am actually using it in the dark the iPhone 12 pro will allow speeds up to 30 seconds. Did not see that before as I was going through the settings in daylight. 

[jjohnson3803]

Paid, but it was cheap.  I'm told the newer iPhone cameras are very good at low light photography.  But that doesn't necessarily mean good for astrophotography, I guess.

Edited November 13, 2021 by jjohnson3803

[Stu]

7 hours ago, Starslayer said:

Is that the paid or free version?  I have since found out that providing I am actually using it in the dark the iPhone 12 pro will allow speeds up to 30 seconds. Did not see that before as I was going through the settings in daylight. 

Yes, I actually often use the native iOS app for this as it also stabilises the image and works really well even hand held.

I recently discovered Nocturne by Unistellar which seems excellent under a dark sky, provided the phone is held steady, ideally tripod mounted. It works out the best exposure and will run for 4 or 5 mins. No idea how it does it but the results were good the first (and only) time I used it. It’s been cloudy ever since!

[PeterStudz]

I have an iPhone 12 (non Pro) and tried a few iPhone apps including…

NightCap - ProCam - SlowShutter - Camera+ 2 - Lightroom - ImageCam - CortexCam - SpiralCam

Both telescope afocal and wide-field on a tripod. Personally everything I’ve tried so far fails to beat the native iOS camera app. Mind, I might well be doing something wrong! However, I can see than one of the above apps might be better on an older iPhone.

The iPhone 12 doesn’t have an astronomy mode. But it does have something called Night Mode which comes on in low light conditions. The allows “exposures” of up to 30 seconds. Although what it actually does is take several shots and stacks - ten 3 sec or nine 3.3 sec shots - depending on what/where you read. 

I’ve heard that the iPhone 13 goes further than this but I’ve no experience of using it.

I had a quick go on Orion with Nocturne last week in my light polluted Bortle 7-8 sky. That’s the first picture. It seems to deal with light pollution well. The second is with my iPhone 12 native camera app using a 30 sec “exposure”. The light pollution is obvious plus (not surprisingly) there’s some star trailing. And I know that when I’ve used the native iOS app in Night Mode in a truly dark sky the background is almost dark. The 3rd picture is the native iOS shot with some quick and dirty editing.

[Starslayer]

Thanks all. Some things to think about and try.

[jjohnson3803]

Nocturne looks interesting.  I like that you aim, hit the shutter release, and the phone (apparently) does the rest.  Unfortunately, my light polluted skies are currently obstructed by clouds, rain, and snow, so it will be a bit before I can try it out.

 

[jjohnson3803]

I was able to try Nocturne a couple of times and it works quite well.  It drains my phone battery pretty quickly, but I'm reasonably sure it's the age of the phone that's causing the problem.

[chrisdg1968]

I have night cap on my iPhone 11, it certainly allows much more control than the native iOS app on that model and there’s a very good tutorial on Cloudy Nights about using the long exposure mode properly and it has a few useful pre-programmed modes. 

[chrisdg1968]

Here’s M13 I managed to get with my 150 dob, not fantastic but allright I think for early attempts…also edited in native iOS photo app.