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

[Emanuel]

Nice find on that Sharp entry, Andrew, had no idea about : )

Back to this release now, to my experience, this sounds much of a planned and very organised marketing move.

Ah and I meant for 4K 120 fps up there obviously.

[Andrew Reid]

The Leitz phone is basically that Sharp phone with a different back casing (both Japan only as well)

On the other hand I highly recommend the Mi 11 ultra once you dial the look in and use it in Pro mode.

[Snowfun]

I could sort of understand the Xperia Pro model. Silly expensive but it did have features which, in the right market, justified the price. But I can’t understand why Sony have used the “Pro” branding for this. It’s not “pro” anything (other than possibly “pro-fit” for Sony). Makes the original Pro less appealing (I’d love one for my A7Siii because it would make touch focus so much easier - I think). Bizarre branding decision. 

[visigoth]

On 10/27/2021 at 12:50 AM, Andrew Reid said:

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.

We could really use a reviewer who has the right priorities as a photographer.  I'm sick of DXOMARK advising me to buy phones that crank up the noise reduction and sharpening to produce smeared, detail-deprived JPEGs. I did look into the Mi 11 Ultra, and decided against it only because it's not the most elegant implementation of Android, even if the camera is apparently lovely.  My solution was to buy a Pixel 6 Pro, and install a modified GCam that — unlike the stock camera app — allows granular control of noise reduction (luma and chroma); sharpening of various sorts; HDR levels; and a bunch of other parameters that I frankly don't understand. 

Through experimentation, I've managed to create a camera that shoots JPEGs with sensible sharpening and HDR, and a perfectly acceptable level of analog-like noise that preserves as much detail as the RAW files.  The sensor is not quite as large as the Mi 11 Ultra's, but Google's computational approach is state of the art.  One drawback:  the RAW files are lousy.  For some stupid reason the algorithm applies lens correction *twice* in Lightroom or Photoshop, so that complex distortion is reintroduced (and there's no way of shutting this off, or correcting it after the fact).  That said, the JPEGs are the best I've experienced on a smartphone.  For years I used a modded Pixel 3 XL, also with great results.

I'd be truly interested in your take on the Pixel 6 Pro's video.  I'm not qualified to judge it — my work has always been in still photography.  From what I can tell, the modded GCam doesn't permit you to alter the video parameters from stock.  So it would be nice to know whether you think the phone with stock app holds its own with the other devices out there, in terms of image quality, stabilization, sound quality, etc.

This is a thread over at the XDA forums that discusses this GCam mod in considerable detail:

https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/modded-gcam.4359015/

[kye]

4 hours ago, visigoth said:

We could really use a reviewer who has the right priorities as a photographer.  I'm sick of DXOMARK advising me to buy phones that crank up the noise reduction and sharpening to produce smeared, detail-deprived JPEGs.

Not likely to happen soon.

This is because the most basic tests don't reveal things like NR vs sharpening and charts don't reveal things like temporal NR.  If you're wanting RAW-like performance and aren't willing to shoot RAW, and don't want to buy/test/sell models yourself, then I'd suggest doing what the rest of us do and waiting for many people to get the camera and test it in the various ways that they do and then reading and reviewing all the feedback and reviews we can get our hands on so that we have some confidence that we understand the good and the bad and the quirks of something before purchasing.

Otherwise we're subject to the manufacturers PR gimmicks where they say a camera has X and Y and Z, but it's not until a good reviewer gets it and discovers that it can't do X and Y together and that X and Z only happen simultaneously with setting A enabled and setting B disabled, etc.

[visigoth]

2 hours ago, kye said:

Not likely to happen soon.

This is because the most basic tests don't reveal things like NR vs sharpening and charts don't reveal things like temporal NR.  If you're wanting RAW-like performance and aren't willing to shoot RAW, and don't want to buy/test/sell models yourself, then I'd suggest doing what the rest of us do and waiting for many people to get the camera and test it in the various ways that they do and then reading and reviewing all the feedback and reviews we can get our hands on so that we have some confidence that we understand the good and the bad and the quirks of something before purchasing.

Otherwise we're subject to the manufacturers PR gimmicks where they say a camera has X and Y and Z, but it's not until a good reviewer gets it and discovers that it can't do X and Y together and that X and Z only happen simultaneously with setting A enabled and setting B disabled, etc.

That's what I've been doing, of course.  But Andrew said, "Still looking to branch off my interest from EOSHD and mirrorless cameras so I should get into enthusiast smartphone camera reviews..."  And I'm suggesting he do precisely that.

A few possibilities:  this site could partially morph into a phone review site. The problem is that the name is confusing enough as it is:  very little here has to do with EOS, as far as I can determine.  Another thought is to approach DXO, to see whether they might be convinced to take a serious reviewer on board.  Perhaps the best option would be to find an established magazine, in print or on the web, that would be open to publishing a column by an expert that concentrates on smartphone reviews for actual photographers. 

Back in the Pleistocene Epoch I used to write for Wired; I no longer know anyone there, or I'd make an introduction.  But there are all sorts of appropriate places these days, including YouTube channels. And you're not limited by the genre of publication:  I could see this on a photography site, a tech publication, a general magazine (New York, etc.) — *everyone* is interested in smartphones.  It's a matter of cold calling — which sounds daunting, but it's how most things happen. 

[PannySVHS]

Instead of waiting for a breakthrough in artefact free image acquisition, we could get the creator of the raw recording motion app on board. We could furthermore support his efforts. Maybe the android powered mft camera would record raw with the motion app!

https://github.com/mirsadm/motioncam/releases

[kye]

5 hours ago, visigoth said:

That's what I've been doing, of course.  But Andrew said, "Still looking to branch off my interest from EOSHD and mirrorless cameras so I should get into enthusiast smartphone camera reviews..."  And I'm suggesting he do precisely that.

I agree - there's definitely a gap in the market for these things and lots of attention is definitely being paid to them.

Purely technical testing is relatively well covered by places like DXO, and it's the practical usage area where I think @Andrew Reid could differentiate.  For my own work I have decided that 1080p delivery is good enough, so the testing I do is "what is visible on a 1080p timeline? and 1080p on YT?" rather than trying to pixel pee at 6K or whatever.  

Similar things for a site that does smartphone testing could be:

• for vloggers, what is the quality like at 4K YouTube upload?  how good is the slow-motion?  how good is the selfie-camera?  how good is the stabilisation?  
• for home video, how well does it record a toddler indoors in artificial lighting after dark? **
• for influencers, what is visible for Instagram / Snapchat?  How much can you crop?
• for technically inclined stills shooters, how big can you print it before you see blur at 1m viewing distance?

(** this test is a particularly difficult task as it requires face-detect AF in low-light with a fast-moving subject and is often exposed to mixed-lighting too.  it's also by far the most common photography question that non-photographers ask me when they learn I'm "into cameras")

I really do think that this could be a winning recipe for another site.  Andrew could cross-link to it in the navigation on EOSHD and the forums here to drive traffic to it, and cross-link back to here from there.  There are lots of successful sites where the founder either started or acquired other sites and now they all drive traffic to each other.  Once you work out how to make one site successful you've done a lot of the work to making additional sites profitable, and a lot of back-end things can be shared between them.

[PannySVHS]

Wouldnt support influencers with knowhow and brains but stay focused and true to cinema with my words and message.

For stills there are guidelines for printing resolution. There have been building size ads done with 6MP cameras.

If Andrew sees benefit to himself and this site in covering smartphones, great. If it inspires me to do a film like Tangerine, even better. Just catering to the needs to a youtube tech audience would be dull for me.

 

[kye]

6 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

Wouldnt support influencers with knowhow and brains but stay focused and true to cinema with my words and message.

For stills there are guidelines for printing resolution. There have been building size ads done with 6MP cameras.

If Andrew sees benefit to himself and this site in covering smartphones, great. If it inspires me to do a film like Tangerine, even better. Just catering to the needs to a youtube tech audience would be dull for me.

Your response doesn't really make much sense...  

I agree that only catering to a YouTube audience would be dull, and I think would miss the majority of smartphone users too.  That's why I specified influencers (many of whom don't use YT at all), parents, and amateur photographers.

Cinema has little overlap with smartphones, and despite things like Tangerine being released, this isn't likely to change.  Tangerine was a raw and verite style film that benefitted from being shot on a phone because that supported the aesthetic of the creative vision of the project.  This will not be true for the vast majority of films and will probably never be.

Yes, I'm aware of the "5MP is all you need" argument, but it doesn't reflect the way that this market segment thinks (they're technically based) and also doesn't reflect high-end printing technology.  Have you ever seen a high-resolution metal print in real-life?  They are absolutely stunning!  The eye is quite capable of seeing the increased contrast and retina-level detail of a print like this.  I remember seeing one landscape print that was perhaps 2m/6ft square hanging in a friends home, and they installed a dedicated down-light for it (how galleries do) and it was hugely impressive standing 2m/6ft away from it but if you stood arms-length from it the experience was immersive and drew you in to it.  Everyone who saw it was taken back by it and was drawn in to walk right up to it and examine the textures and details of the image - to explore it by literally walking left-and-right looking at it.  
People don't print 8x10s and hang them on their wall much anymore, or not the people I know, but they do print large canvas prints (which can have good DR and colour) and they sometimes print metal prints, which have huge DR and very high resolutions.
People also print 5x7s and make large collages of images of their family, and make videos of their family members for relatives and friends on social media.

These are the target audiences that aren't being covered by EOSHD but might be interested in smartphone cameras.

[PannySVHS]

300dpi CMYK print for getting ones eyes very, very close and still believing the print to be a photograph would work very well. Like I said, there are guidelines for certain viewing distances. I do think that statement makes sense. Other than that, you are´nt coming across to me as kind in responding as you used to. You are a native speaker. I´m not. That´s all sense I will be making for the rest of this week. I have not seen a metal print in real life, nor have I seen a Daguerrtypie in real life but would love to see it.

 

[kye]

2 minutes ago, PannySVHS said:

300dpi CMYK print for getting ones eyes very, very close and still believing the print to be a photograph would work very well. Like I said, there are guidelines for certain viewing distances. I do think that statement makes sense. Other than that, you are´nt coming across to me as kind in responding as you used to. You are a native speaker. I´m not. That´s all sense I will be making for the rest of this week. I have not seen a metal print in real life, nor have I seen a Daguerrtypie in real life but would love to see it.

Apologies if I mis-understood your intended meaning...  I thought you were saying that there was no point directing the site to three of the four audiences I listed and were then saying it would be dull to only address it to the single remaining one!

300dpi on a print that was 6ft by 6ft would be 466MP (assuming I did that math correctly).  100dpi would be 51MP.  Those are a little larger than the stills resolution from smartphone cameras, but not so far away as to be ridiculous, so it would make sense to have a site 'standard' and to evaluate them not based on the number of pixels but on actual resolution (ie, lines-per-inch).  I'm thinking specifically of landscapes here, but architecture etc would also require the same technical evaluations.

The more I understand about the language of cinema the more I realise that the trend of smartphone camera tech isn't going in that same direction.  This makes sense from a product perspective as well, as in almost all cases the people making cinema don't really get any advantage from using a smartphone rather than a camera with some other form-factor.

[PannySVHS]

But kye, it would indeed be dull to me personally if this site started catering to the average tech review taste. Apologies accepted big time of course!:) If smartphone reviews help me to pull something off like Tangerine, that would have to be "one charming motherxxx smartphone review".