The Absolute Best GoPro Low Light Settings [2023 Update]

At some point, you will probably want to use your GoPro after sunset. Or maybe before sunrise if you are a morning person like myself.

Like most other cameras, GoPro doesn’t really like low-light scenes. It’s simply how all cameras work.

Luckily, we are not completely helpless.

The latest models – GoPro Hero 11 and Hero 10 – offer exceptional night footage. The catch is you have to use all the night mode settings and some of the tips that we recommend.

So if you are looking for the best and most practical GoPro low light tips, this post will go right down your alley.

Oh, and these settings will probably be aplicable for most common GoPro alternative cameras as well.

We get to do plenty of GoPro edits for clients that use our video editing services, and I can tell you right off the bat that GoPro is not a great camera for low-light situations.

Since GoPro cameras adjust pretty much everything automatically when you turn them on you would expect that it isn’t much you can do to improve the quality of the footage or photos shot in low light situations, right?

But there is. And I am not talking only about the auto low light mode inside the menu of your GoPro.

Let’s start with the beginning, shall we?

By the way, if you need help with video editing or with creating the concept for your video you can contact me here.

Factors that influence low light performance

The basics of shooting videos in low light are the same regardless of the camera you are using. So why don’t we start with that?

Aperture

The small opening, called Aperture, in the camera, performs the same role that of Iris in the human eye. Unlike the human eye, the aperture can be manually controlled. The size of the aperture determines the amount of light that crosses the lens and hits the light-sensitive surface.

Normally, the aperture value is represented as ‘f-stop’ or ‘f-number’ and in some cameras, the slash between ‘f’ and the number is omitted.

Using a wide aperture will let in as much as possible. The smaller the number, the brighter the image. So an f/2.8 will get you a brighter image than an f/4, for example.

The opening of the lens will also determine the depth of the field. Lenses with a smaller f-stop (bigger aperture) will give you a shallow depth of field, while lenses with a bigger f-stop (smaller aperture) will give you a larger depth of field.

Lenses with a big aperture are more expensive than lenses with a smaller aperture and it will make it harder for you to keep things in focus.

So, that’s all there is to know about the aperture in a nutshell. If you want to know more about aperture you can check out this article.

The GoPro comes with a fixed f/2.8 lens. So from that point of view, it’s pretty good for low light situations because it allows plenty of light into the sensor.

Source

ISO

ISO is the next parameter you can tweak to improve your low-light videos. But this is a two-edged sword.

It might get you better results, but it can also go terribly wrong.

ISO will produce great results if you know when to use it and how to use it wisely.

The ISO values are normally represented as ‘ISO followed by a number indicating its current brightness.’ Generally, the value starts from ISO 100 and goes as high as ISO 6400.  

ISO digitally brightens the image, but it is not something you want to use unless there’s nothing else you can do. So it’s kind of a solution of last resort if you ask me.

The higher the number, the brighter the image will get….but it will also become grainy or noisy.

So an ISO of 400 will get you a brighter image than an ISO 100, for example.

Personally, I like to keep the ISO as low as possible and brighten up the footage using video editing software. This leaves you more room to play around with the video in post-production.

If you crank up the ISO too much when you are shooting, you might end up with terrible-looking raw footage. And at that point, there’s not much you can do in post-production.

ISO basically makes the camera super-sensitive to every bit of light it “sees”.

For more info on ISO, you can check out this article.

Here’s how different ISO settings will affect the quality of a picture:

Frame rate

Frame rate, or FPS, will determine how many frames your camera will capture in 1 second. The higher the FPS rate, the lower the amount of light that reaches the sensor will be.

A higher ‘frames per second’ rate is often used to generate a smoother video.

With the filming devices available nowadays, you get a wide range of FPS options. Depending upon the GoPro model, the ‘frames per second’ ranges from 12 to 240fps, although you won’t be using all of them.

It makes perfect sense if you think about it. Each frame will cause the shutter to open and close. When the shutter is opened, the light reaches the sensor and that’s how the image/frame is being recorded by the camera.

So if the camera needs to record at a higher FPS, it means that the shutter will be opened for a shorter period, which means less light coming in.

If there’s not enough light in the scene you are shooting anyway, even less light will reach the sensor when you are using a high frame rate. Therefore you will get really dark or grainy footage (if you crank up the frame rate).

Sensor

Lastly, but not least, the actual size of the sensor will have a big impact on your camera’s low light performance. The bigger the sensor, the brighter the image it will capture, as there’s a bigger surface to capture the light.

This is how it works. The sensor in a camera picks up light using pixels.

Cameras with a bigger sensor contain more pixels.

The amount of pixels is in direct proportion to the details and light that the sensor can capture.

Hence, the higher the number of pixels, the better and brighter will the visuals.

Of course, you can’t do anything to control the size of the sensor. It is what it is.

What are the best GoPro low light settings

OK, now that we know a little bit of the basics, let’s see which of all these parameters we can control with a GoPro, and what would be the best settings to use in low-light situations.

As you probably know already, the GoPro is nothing like a DSLR. It is much easier to use and it will allow for fewer adjustments or manual settings to be made by the user.

I’m sure you love that about your GoPro. After all, you don’t want to be worrying about changing up settings while you are skydive, right?

Nevertheless, there are a few GoPro tweaks that will improve low-light performance.

Use 24 or 30 FPS

The most important thing you can adjust on your GoPro in order to improve your low-light shots is the FPS – Frame Per Second.

GoPro cameras can shoot in 30, 60, 120, and even 240 fps if you lower the resolution. That’s great for slow-motion shoots if there’s good lighting.

But if the lighting sucks, you will need to lower the frame rate.

So instead of using 60 fps or more use 24 fps. As mentioned above a slower shutter speed will allow more light to come it. Yeah, so much for those nice slow-mo shots, but that’s a compromise you need to make if you want decent-looking low-light footage.

You can still use the 1080p resolution, just go with 1080 @ 24 fps instead of 1080 @ 60 fps.

You can go out and film the same scene at 60 fps and then at 24 fps and look at the difference.

The 60 fps one will be significantly darker. It may also lack colors because there’s less light reaching the sensor.

Avoid the ‘Flat’ profile and use GoPro Color

When the aim is to increase the brightness of a voice taken in poor light, most users set the color profile to Flat.

Although you’ll get a brighter image, because the feature automatically brightens the shadows, the outcome would be blurry, noisy, and grainy.

Instead, for high-quality low-light footage, choose the GoPro Color profile.

With this setting, you’ll get a brighter visual, but the noise in the shadows remains hidden.

The camera makes no unnecessary attempt to brighten the darker, shadowy areas. 

Use the “Low Light” mode

GoPro comes with a built-in low light setting which will let the camera decide what adjustments it needs to make in order to make your shot look as good as possible given the light conditions.

Now, as mentioned at the beginning of this post, the GoPro uses a fixed aperture lens of f/2.8, so it can’t do anything about that. What it can do though is to lower the FPS and increase the ISO.

So when you are using the low light setting on your GoPro, even if you have set the frame rate to 60 fps the camera can decide on its own if it needs to lower it at 30 fps, for example.

So when you edit your video, even if you will have selected 60 fps on the menu, you will notice that you have 2 frames that are duplicated.

So that’s actually a 30 fps shoot.

Skip GoPro Wide and use SuperView

Here is another trick to brighten the image without increasing the noise in the visuals.

Do not use the GoPro Wide setting. This lens setting increases the pixel size, which will lead to the cropping of the footage.

When you make the pixels bigger, you allow an increase in the noise in the visible footage.

You can avoid this by choosing the GoPro SuperView, which reads the whole sensor and reduces the noise at the same time brightens the image.

Boost the ISO

I use the ISO to bright my shoots as a last resort solution. And when I use it I don’t like to go higher than ISO 1600 for videos and ISO 800 for pictures.

Otherwise, I find the shots to look too grainy. So I’d rather not shot at all or have them shot in a brighter place. This brings us to the next tip.

The shutter speed must be double the frame rate

To improve the quality of the visuals captured in a low-light environment maintain a frame rate that’s just half of the shutter speed.

Suppose the shutter speed you have opted for a filming session is at 1/48, then the frame rate should be 24fps.

If the shutter speed is lower than 48 for 24fps, then the resulting image would be too weird, too bright, and too blurry.

Find a light source

Sometimes you are better off by simply finding a place where there’s more light.

Maybe there are some street lights you can get closer to or maybe you can shoot when there’s a full moon.

Either way, experience has taught me that most of the time there are ways to find a spot with better lighting. So instead of making the image brighter “inside the camera”, work on picking a better spot.

Use lights

This might seem like a “daaaa” advice, but hey, it works.

If you can, lit your scene using an external light source.  No matter how bad your lighting setup is, it will make the scene look better than if you would use a higher ISO for example.

Here’s an example of an external on-camera light for GoPro.

To put everything together here is the best low-light video setting for your latest GoPro Hero 10 camera:

Color: GoPro

FPS and Resolution: 24fps and 4K

Shutter speed: 1/48

Sharpness: Medium

White balance: Auto

Lens: SuperView

But rate: High

Hyper smooth: On

ISO Min/Max: 100/800

How to edit low light GoPro videos

Okay, so now that we got all that out of the way, let’s talk a little bit about the post-production part. Video editing.

There are a number of things you can do to improve low-light videos in the post-production stage.

Now, this is not going to be an in-depth video editing lesson because there’s so much to cover, but here are a few things that will help:

1. Increase the exposure
2. Decrease the contrast
3. Use plugins such as Neat Video or Denoise to get rid of the grain in your videos.
4. Adjust othee Lumetri paramenters until you are happy with the outcome

Any of the above techniques will work for footage coming out of any GoPro alternative camera too by the way.

If you can’t figure it out feel free to reach out to my video editing agency and we might help.

Conclusion

To recap everything, here’s your step by step checklist when you shot in low light with a GoPro:

1. Find a brighter spot if you can and shot in that spot instead.
2. Lit your scene with any lights that you have on hand.
3. Lower the frame rate to 24 fps.
4. Avoid the ‘Flat’ profile and use GoPro Color.
5. Skip GoPro Wide and use SuperView.
6. The shutter speed must be double the frame rate.
7. If the shot is still too dark, increase the ISO a little bit.
8. Or let GoPro do its thing by selecting the “Low light” auto mode.

That’s pretty much it. If you feel that I left something out, feel free to let me know using the comment form below.