How to photograph Christmas lights with a phone or camera

Whether you want to capture a stunning picture of the expansive Christmas lights in the city or an Insta-worthy snap of the perfectly decorated tree in your living room, here’s how to photograph Christmas lights the right way. 

Whether you’re shooting with a mirrorless camera or the smartphone in your pocket, there’s no reason why you can’t capture aesthetic photos of lights this Christmas. Many modern phones are perfectly capable of capturing sharp snaps with a pleasing amount of bokeh, with the right settings. 

There’s also the challenge of shooting in a darker environment to ensure the lights pop without completely losing sight of the baubles dangling from the tree or the buildings lining the street. 

Keep reading to learn how to photograph Christmas lights this winter. 

How to photograph Christmas lights 

If you want to capture a more diffused look where the lights have softer edges, all you have to do is create some bokeh. 

To achieve this effect, you’ll need to shoot with a larger aperture. You also may want to experiment with slowing down the shutter speed and lowering the ISO to allow more light in without causing the photo to become noisy or oversharpened. 

How bright the image is will depend on how much you slow down the shutter speed – the slower you go, the brighter the photo will be and the more detail it will retain. Very slow shutter speeds also require more stability to prevent the photo from becoming a blurry mess, so make sure you mount your camera or phone on a tripod or prop it up against something solid to keep it still. 

Some cameras also feature built-in bokeh buttons which make blurring lights in the background of photos significantly quicker as you can do so with the push of a button. One example of a camera that can do this is the Sony ZV-1F, but it’s by no means the only one.

You can see the bokeh button in action around 55 seconds into our sample video below, or scroll down to see some screenshots from the video.

Do you need a camera?

All of these settings can be found in the manual mode of DSLRs and mirrorless cameras, as well as some more photography-focussed Android smartphones. However, that doesn’t mean you’re out of luck if your phone’s native camera app doesn’t include any manual shooting options.

There are loads of third-party apps in the App Store and Play Store that allow you to adjust the aperture, ISO and shutter speed when shooting on your smartphone.

We used the RAW+ app on iOS as it comes with a free trial, but if you’re happy to spend a small one-off fee or a monthly subscription, you’ll find even more options to choose from. Some popular apps we’ve encountered include ReLens, Halide and ProCam for stills, and Blackmagic Camera for video. There’s also Open Camera exclusively for Android users.

You can also use your phone’s built-in portrait mode to add bokeh to lights behind your subject, making it ideal for capturing cute selfies and group photos at festive events or a pic of your cat in front of the Christmas tree.

Regardless of which app or feature you use, we’d recommend pairing it with a capable camera phone. Some of our top-rated recommendations include the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL for stills, the Vivo X200 Pro for lowlight and the Honor Magic 6 Pro for variable aperture.

How to photograph Christmas lights with a smartphone

What you’ll need 

• A smartphone
• An app that provides you with to access manual camera controls (we used RAW+ in this guide)

The Short Version 

1. Open any manual camera app