How to improve image quality when shooting low-light video on your iPad

iPad video recording quality - hero image

If you tend to shoot video with your Apple tablet, be sure to take advantage of a handy iPad video recording quality toggle to boost your low-light footage. Follow along with our quick tutorial to learn how to enable this helpful feature and see whether your iPad supports it.

Introducing Auto FPS

Standard camera settings on your iPad include recording video in thirty frames per second. Power users may choose to boost that to sixty frames per second for smoother motion. However, increasing the recording frame rate often leads to degraded image quality when shooting in low-light scenarios. This can be circumvented somewhat on compatible iPads.

Compatible models

Apple provides a handy toggle to fix low-light video on the following supported iPad models:

  • iPad Air (4th generation and later)
  • iPad Pro 11-inch
  • iPad Pro 12.9-inch (3rd generation and later)

Learn how to identify your iPad model.

Follow along with us as we show you how to improve the iPad recording quality when capturing video in low-light situations with the tablet.

How to improve iPad video quality in low-light

To increase the iPad video quality when shooting video in low-light situations, enable the setting to automatically reduce the frame rate to 24 fps.

  1. Open Settings on your iPad.
  2. Choose “Camera” from the root list.
  3. Touch the option “Record Video” in the camera settings.
  4. Do one of the following:
  • iPad Air 4: Touch “Auto FPS,” then apply the feature to only 30 fps video or to both 30 fps and 60 fps video (iPadOS 14.2 or later required).
  • iPad Pro: On the 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro models, turn on the option labeled with the text “Auto Low Light FPS.”

This’ll prompt your iPad to automatically reduce the frame rate when it detects you’re shooting low-light video — from 30 fps or 60 fps down to 24 fps — so each frame receives more light.

iPad video recording quality - a screenshot showing the option enabled

As a result, the video capture quality will improve when shooting in low-light situations, Moreover, video file size will be lower than without the Auto FPS setting.