Sony Xperia PRO-I comes with 1-inch 24mm f/2.0 main camera

[androidlad]

Announcement Oct 26.

[ntblowz]

Wonder how much the price will be?

[IronFilm]

Finally! Been a loooong time between drinks since we last saw a 1" cellphone. (the Panasonic CM1, launched back in the ancient days of 2014)

 

[ntblowz]

Well it is quite disappointing, only using 60% of the actual sensor size so it is actually 1/1.31" equivalent, and more pricy than A7C doesnt help.

[JurijTurnsek]

Kinda sucks that Sony branded the phone as PRO-I(maging) and then compromised on the camera bump thickness to crop the properly big sensor. With a price like that it should be a no-compromise imaging monster.

Interesting though, that the sensor is capable of 4K120p and GSMArena claims it is the same one as in the RX series.

[hoodlum]

Oops.

https://www.dpreview.com/news/1641689739/sony-just-packed-a-1-stacked-cmos-sensor-into-the-xperia-pro-i-but-there-s-a-catch

Quote

The big story is of course the 1"-type stacked CMOS sensor from the RX100 VII. However, in order to keep the phone small, Sony has designed a lens that can't project an image circle large enough to cover the entire area of the 1" sensor. That's why, instead of 20MP images, as you'd get from the RX100 VII camera, you get 12MP images. But this has a broader implication: the combination of a slower F2 lens (than many of its smartphone peers) and a sensor that's not quite as big as a 1"-type sensor means the image quality might not meet the initial expectations you might have when you think 'smartphone with RX100 sensor'. In fact, if you consider just the area used for 12MP stills, it has roughly a 12mm diagonal and 70mm2 sensor surface area: closer to the specs of a 1/1.31" sensor (such as the one in the Google Pixel 6).

With an F2 lens, we calculate that the main camera is then roughly F7.1 full-frame equivalent. For perspective, the iPhone 13 Pro's 1/1.65" sensor with F1.5 lens makes it F6.8 full-frame equivalent, which means the main imager on the Xperia Pro-I actually offers slightly less light-gathering and shallow depth-of-field ability than the iPhone 13 Pro, in single exposures before you consider computational imaging approaches, that is. This is something we've confirmed via signal:noise ratio analyses.

 

[Matins 2]

Screw Sony.

[Emanuel]

Shut up, you and I we have no need for, we'll shoot in the meantime with ours iPhone 13 Pro babe ; )

That 4K 120p is a blast in any way whatsoever!

[Emanuel]

*is no less than

 

https://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_pro_i-11174.php

about €1800...

[Andrew Reid]

17 hours ago, ntblowz said:

Well it is quite disappointing, only using 60% of the actual sensor size so it is actually 1/1.31" equivalent, and more pricy than A7C doesnt help.

Completely unhinged pricing. Plus they took away the periscope optical zoom module, which is on the cheaper Xperia 1 III.

New adventures in profit margins for shabby Sony.

And a straight flat out lie about the sensor size too.

It isn't a 1" sensor if you can't use it.

[Andrew Reid]

3 hours ago, Emanuel said:

That 4K 120p is a blast in any way whatsoever!

You can shoot this on the Oneplus 9 Pro for 800 euros don't forget 

[Andrew Reid]

21 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Finally! Been a loooong time between drinks since we last saw a 1" cellphone. (the Panasonic CM1, launched back in the ancient days of 2014)

 

It doesn't stack up today because the computational photography, quad bayer and high-speed readouts have overcome the shortcomings of smaller sensors. That's pretty much why, when the iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max came out, nobody could tell the difference in the images! That's despite the 12 Pro Max having a considerably larger sensor.

Quad bayer is an important step, makes bigger difference than upping the chip size and pixel size.

Currently the best image quality in smartphone land is:

Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra

Huawei P40 Pro Plus

In that order.

I have the Xperia 1 II and it's got a decent main sensor in it and natural image processing. It's nothing all that special though and the other camera modules are very middle of the road in that.

I can shoot 1/5 at ISO 100 in low light on the Mi 11 Ultra, in RAW, and the shots are pin sharp. The reviews didn't do it justice, they don't know how to do anything but point and shoot. It's got a lot of unexplored options and a Pro mode, and if you turn HDR to manual, most of the time it's better off off. Also for the best JPEG/HEIFs you need to disable RAW.

Anyway it is interesting to see where this stuff is going.

With the Cinema video modes and such advanced photo features.

Still looking to branch off my interest from EOSHD and mirrorless cameras so I should get into enthusiast smartphone camera reviews because the existing guys aren't photographers, they're tech social media influencers and that is a different skill set - marketing and presentation. I don't think they even talk about RAW in the reviews and the phone review sites don't bother testing it either, because again they're not really that knowledgeable about photography. Anybody who is, point me to them and I'll reach out.

[BTM_Pix]

Sony had a far better idea about how to graft an RX100 to an Xperia over eight years ago now.

And it used the whole sensor.

Typical Sony, give them an inch and they'll take 40% of it off you.

[Emanuel]

2 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

You can shoot this on the Oneplus 9 Pro for 800 euros don't forget 

Very true, for some reason I bought mine : )

Better than to not be able to lock the exposure as happens with the ASUS Zenfone 7 Pro despite the flip camera so no total buyer's remorse here ; )

Still willing to check their HDR promise anyway as much as the complete manual exposure they seem to deliver for first-run :- )

[IronFilm]

8 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

It isn't a 1" sensor if you can't use it.

Yes, I feel deceived now by Sony!

7 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

Still looking to branch off my interest from EOSHD and mirrorless cameras so I should get into enthusiast smartphone camera reviews because the existing guys aren't photographers, they're tech social media influencers and that is a different skill set - marketing and presentation. I don't think they even talk about RAW in the reviews and the phone review sites don't bother testing it either, because again they're not really that knowledgeable about photography. Anybody who is, point me to them and I'll reach out.

Could be a worthwhile niche exploring. 

dxomark (which is of course famous in the photography world, for their sensor reviews/tests), has a smartphone dedicated section: https://www.dxomark.com/category/smartphone-reviews/ 

[Andrew Reid]

6 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Yes, I feel deceived now by Sony!

Could be a worthwhile niche exploring. 

dxomark (which is of course famous in the photography world, for their sensor reviews/tests), has a smartphone dedicated section: https://www.dxomark.com/category/smartphone-reviews/ 

That can be useful but they always make some clangers you need to watch out for...

- Usually they don't bother testing the actual focal length of the zoom optics. For example some test shots at 4x when the periscope optics doesn't get used until 5x. I've seen entire reviews from them which ignore a whole camera module.

- They don't even bother changing the default settings and picture profiles. So if a result looks like an oversharpened HDR mess, that's why. The Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra has controls for dialling down sharpness, contrast and saturation. The HDR mode is usually best turned off too.

- They seem allergic to testing RAW. It's like if DPReview only showed you dynamic range in the JPEGs. RAW Is a good way to bypass the over processed look of a smartphone.

- They don't really make proper judgements on colour and skin tones, the artistic side

- The overall scores are a bit off, some better phones too low down and some new models too high up.

[Andrew Reid]

13 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

Sony had a far better idea about how to graft an RX100 to an Xperia over eight years ago now.

And it used the whole sensor.

Typical Sony, give them an inch and they'll take 40% of it off you.

I always thought it was weird how this ended up being so much thicker than the complete RX100 body.

And now for the sake of a few millimetres of extra phone thickness we get a $100 smartphone lens on a $1800 handset.

Sony make much better 1/1.28" sensors for Huawei than what they've stuffed into the Xperia Pro I.

Quad Bayer, 50 megapixel, RYYB, and most amazingly of all the lens fits it

[BTM_Pix]

22 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

I always thought it was weird how this ended up being so much thicker than the complete RX100 body.

And now for the sake of a few millimetres of extra phone thickness we get a $100 smartphone lens on a $1800 handset.

Sony make much better 1/1.28" sensors for Huawei than what they've stuffed into the Xperia Pro I.

Quad Bayer, 50 megapixel, RYYB, and most amazingly of all the lens fits it

Do you know how much of the 1" sensor Leica take off people with their phone ?

(Obviously they are doing some serious taking off people on the money front for it !)

 

[Andrew Reid]

Leica need something to do now Huawei kicked them out of bed.

I am still surprised they chose Sharp, but rumours are Xiaomi may get the Leica treatment next.

The trick here seems to be to go really wide at 19mm to fit the lens in the phone.

Which means pretty much every normal shot is going to be a 60% crop of the sensor.

The Sharp's 1" sensor cannot however overcome the rubbish image processing and colour science.

I wonder if the Leica version of it has a few extra colour profiles thrown in for your 2 grand?!

At least it got released.

I am still wondering where that Sharp 8K camera went!

[BTM_Pix]

36 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

I wonder if the Leica version of it has a few extra colour profiles thrown in for your 2 grand?!

It has a thing called Leitz Looks which Leica have tuned to give authentic simulations from cameras like the Monochrom.

The auto focus on it is supposed to be pretty shit, so that's authentic too.