Samsung Sunrise Photography: Blue Hour to First Light

Sunrises happen fast. There’s colour in the sky well before the sun itself appears – typically, during the half an hour of darkness that precedes it, the sky will change colour from deep blue, to pink, to gold. By the time the sun’s disc has fully cleared the horizon, the best of the colour may well be gone. Shooting a sunrise involves both planning (the previous evening) and reacting to rapidly changing light levels (very dark to very bright in a matter of minutes).

Plan the sunrise the night before

1. 1

   Find where the sun will rise

   The Photographer's Ephemeris will plot the direction of sunrise on a map for any location and date; Sun Surveyor will do likewise and can show you, using your phone's camera, where the sun will rise from any particular position (handy if you're trying to work out whether that rock will block the view!).

2. 2

   Note the twilight times

   Work out when golden hour and blue hour will be (Sun Surveyor shows these times, as does The Photographer's Ephemeris, along with all the different twilight stages, on its handy timeline; note when civil twilight starts as this is usually when you start to see colour).

3. 3

   Check the cloud forecast

   Check whether it'll be a clear sky (which can make for lovely sunrises with subtle gradations of colour, but can lack drama) or whether there's a chance of some cloud, as high, thin cloud (cirrus) is best, because the Met Office points out this can be coloured while the sun is still quite low in the sky.

4. 4

   Choose a foreground in daylight

   If you're able to visit your chosen sunrise location the afternoon before, do so; it's easier to find interesting foregrounds (rocks, a jetty, etc) and figure out compositions in daylight than fumbling around with a headlamp at 5am!

5. 5

   Set up the phone before bed

   Charge your phone and consider taking a small tripod; select Pro mode and set picture format to shoot both JPEG and RAW (on a Galaxy S25 Ultra running One UI 9, checked in November 2026, this is found in Camera settings under Photo format), and turn on the composition guide (also in Camera settings on the S25 Ultra) to help keep the horizon straight in low light.

According to NOAA, there are three types of twilight. Civil twilight ends at sunrise and begins when the sun is 6 degrees below the horizon. Nautical twilight is when the sun is between 6 and 12 degrees below the horizon. Astronomical twilight is between 12 and 18 degrees below the horizon. How long each of these lasts depends on your latitude and the time of year, so you should rely on the times given by the app. Other planning apps compared with Sun Surveyor and PhotoPills can be found in our photography apps guide.

Settings from blue hour to first light

The shutter speed can be changed manually in Pro mode. On the latest Galaxy flagships, the Pro mode shutter speed goes up to 30 seconds, much more than enough for blue hour shots.

But on some Galaxy A and M models, the longest exposure in Pro mode is only 10 seconds, or you won’t be able to change the shutter speed at all, so please check on your phone first.

According to Samsung, when you change the shutter speed manually, ISO sensitivity can’t be set to Auto, so you’ll need to adjust that manually, as well.

Shooting blue hour

If you want to stick with shooting in Pro mode (under More) at blue hour, we would suggest using a tripod (as you’ll almost certainly get blur trying to handhold shots in this low light), and using the 1x lens for the best light-gathering. Start with a 2 second exposure time and ISO 100, and tweak from there depending on what your first few test shots look like.

We’d also recommend using the 2-second delay timer to avoid any camera shake from tapping the shutter button. For focus, try manually setting it to somewhere near the far end of the focus slider and see how that looks (zooming right in on an image in Gallery is a good way to check for softness), and try dialling it back a bit if needed.

And for white balance we’d recommend a set-and-forget value in the 4000 to 5000K range, to retain as much of the blue hour look as possible (as opposed to letting Auto white balance try and correct the colour back to something more neutral). Want to go further? See the white balance guide for a description of the Kelvin scale.

Without a tripod, use Night mode, which Samsung describes as using multi-frame image processing to combine a series of images into one shot. Their advice when shooting in poor lighting is to just keep the camera as still as possible for a few seconds while it takes the photo. The Night mode guide details its approach to determining exposure times.

When the sun clears the horizon

As soon as the sun appears, brightness increases quickly (within a minute or two) and settings that were perfect at blue hour will result in over-exposed highlights. Switch to Photo mode and use HDR, then tap the sky and drop the brightness until the clouds retain their colour. For shooting in bright skies, the sunset guide explains exposure in greater detail.

• For a large sun, use the 3x (S24, S25, S26, S25 FE and S26 FE) or 5x (S24 Ultra, S25 Ultra and S26 Ultra) lens. Just make sure you stand well back from your foreground to keep everything in scale.
• Watch for flare on the ultra-wide when the sun is fully exposed. In this case, try to find a position where the sun is partially obscured by a rock or tree.
• Don’t forget to turn around after a few minutes! Colours in the east may fade fairly quickly, but you may find that side-lit cliffs and fog last longer.

What changes from phone to phone

As you might imagine, the main camera on every current Galaxy performs best at blue hour, thanks to its bigger sensor and brighter lens.

Beyond that, some differences between the phones can change how you approach photography.

• For long exposures you’ll need Pro mode and a phone with shutter speed control. Some A and M series models top out at 10 seconds or don’t have a shutter speed option at all. Flagship phones can shoot exposures as long as 30 seconds.
• Expert RAW is available on S series flagships and the Z Fold phones (and newer Z Flips) via a separate (free) app. Samsung doesn’t (currently) list FE models, so if you want to shoot RAW on those phones (or any A-series phone), your best option will be to check whether Pro mode offers RAW copies.
• Most S series phones and the Z Fold7 and Fold8 Ultra include telephotos. Other models (including the S25 Edge, the Z Flip models and all A-series phones) don’t have dedicated telephoto cameras but can offer a 2x crop of the main camera instead.
• All Galaxy phones’ ultra-wide angle cameras use smaller sensors than the main cameras, and that difference is even more pronounced on A-series and Z Flip models, so we’d recommend using the ultra-wide angle cameras when conditions are brighter and falling back to the main (1x) camera at the darkest point during blue hour.

Sunrise problems and fixes

• In low light, noise creeps into blue hour shots. This is because the shutter speed is too fast. Try a slower shutter speed before increasing the ISO.
• Horizons slant in the dark. Enable the composition guide in the Camera app settings to access a level and gridlines (available in recent versions of One UI).
• A shaky tripod leads to blurry photos. The phone moves a bit when you tap the shutter button. Consider using the 2-second timer or a Bluetooth remote.
• Foggy camera lens. According to Samsung’s S26 user guide, drastic changes in temperature can result in foggy lenses. Allow your phone to dry naturally at room temperature before taking photos.
• Blown-out sun. When the sun is higher in the sky, a long exposure results in an overexposed sun with lens streaks. Try using Photo mode or a faster shutter speed in Pro mode (1/1000s works well).

Editing a sunrise

In Samsung’s Gallery editor (open up the editing tool with the pencil icon), you can slightly decrease the Brightness level and then increase the Contrast a little. Free apps like Snapseed have more fine-grained controls such as Curves and White Balance tools. Snapseed also has a Dehaze tool, which can be useful on hazy mornings, but don’t use too much! Remember that sunrises tend to be cooler and softer than sunsets, so don’t lose that in your edits.

For a blue hour frame with a lit town or a reflection, the water reflections guide covers still water at dawn, and the landscape guide shows how to build a foreground into the frame.