Real World Test of Huawei P40 Pro Camera By Thomas Heaton

Hello everybody welcome to the channel. Today's video is gonna, be a little different from usual, because today, I'm going to be looking at both graphic capabilities of a mobile phone. This is the Huawei P 40 Pro, now and being honest with you, I wouldn't normally do a video like this, but I'm making an exception today for a couple of reasons. A couple of valid reasons. Reason number one is that who are we going to touch? They were very complimentary about my photography in my videos, and they asked if I'd like to try the camera on their phone now. Normally it would be a no right I'm, not really that interested, but I looked at the specs and I thought what 50 megapixel RAW files, three four five cameras onboard: how do they squeeze that into a phone is beyond me? Yeah, okay looks cool, but it's not you know it's not what my channels about this isn't a tech channel.

However, over the past few weeks, I haven't been able to get out. With my you know, cameras and tripods yeah I, really miss going hiking and I really miss you I'd. Do anything just to pack my tent and go up and mount in and sleep on top of the mountain and get that beautiful sunrise or go into the woods and do some landscape photography the proper way? But we can't do that and that content will come in the future when we all get out of lockdown, but what I have been doing to satisfy my creative needs is I've been going out a heck of a lot with my mobile phone? Now we are allowed out once a day to walk the ROG or exercise or anything like that, and that's what I've been doing. That's how you know it's very therapeutic. It's how I get out of the house is how I'm not going stir-crazy as I, go and walk the ROG or a go for a bike.

Ride and I'll. Take my phone with me, and I'll be looking for compositions and images, and especially when you get a good light. You know it's nice to have a phone and be able to capture that image. So the timing of Huawei was perfect, and I thought. You know what I would love to look at.

Your phone because I've been using the camera on my phone more than I ever have in the past, and it's disappointing. So let's see what this bad boy can do so in this video I'm only going to be looking at camera, the stills' camera, the photographic capabilities of this phone I'm, not gonna, be looking at video, and I'm, not gonna, be looking at the phone itself, because this isn't a tech channel. Now, who are we making some pretty bold claims? They say that the camera in this phone has the world's leading smartphone sensor and I can see why they say that because this thing will deliver a 50 megapixel raw file, and that is quite impressive, but I. Just want to get one thing out there and that's a one question very quickly that some people may be wondering, and that is well. This phone replaces your DSLR or mirrorless camera and the answer straightaway is no.

No, it will not, and I didn't want. You know for one second for anybody to think that that's what I was saying on this channel- it's not the case, but that's not to say that the camera on this phone is bad. In fact, you are going to be amazed at how not bad this camera really is. In fact, it's quite extraordinary. So on the back of the phone you can see this.

This is the ultra vision, Lacey camera system, and there are four cameras, not four lenses for cameras, four sensors, but only three of them actually take photographs. The fourth one is really clever: I, don't know why they don't implement this in DSLR this technology, but the fourth camera. What it does is it fires our an infrared beam that hits the subject and bounces back to the camera, and then that tells the camera the distance between the lens of the subject so that it can focus which means in low-light situations, if you're trying to focus on an object that doesn't have much contrast, because it's dark, it can focus, it can nail the focus because it doesn't rely on contrast, is using that infrared beam. So that's pretty impressive, but it only works on subjects that are relatively close to the camera. The other three cameras again are pretty impressive, and I've jotted down some specs here.

So that done we are. We are gonna. Look at the images of like I, say: I've massively tested it, so the camera on the left is a hundred and twenty-five millimeters. This is full-frame equivalent by the way 125 millimeter lens that produces a 12 megapixel image, not that the next camera is 23, millimeters, full-frame equivalents and that produces a 50 megapixel image, 50 megapixel raw file and then the camera on the rights. The far camera is an 18 millimeter, which is like the wide version.

It is super wide. It's nice, 18, millimeter, full-frame, equivalent, 40, megapixel sensor, so three very useful cameras, and apparently I'm so bad at this type of thing, yeah there's also a selfie camera can't say: I've used it. So, let's give it a go. I'm not really don't really take selfies, but it works, so we're now inside Lightroom, and before we dive deep into some pros and cons of the camera on the YP, 40 I should say: I've been shooting it in two different modes' mode. One is essentially fully auto.

You turn on the camera. Your point, you frame your zoom, and if you want to change your meter reading, you can lock focus and then drag your finger to wherever you want the camera to meter from so. The second mode is the pro mode, and this allows you to control all of your exposure settings. Your shutter speed, ISO, not aperture, because, that's fixed, but it also allows you to take advantage of the 50 megapixel sensor. So you can shoot a raw file, 50 megapixels, if you use in the medium lens.

So when you shoot in mode one, which is your know the full auto mode, you don't actually get a fifth a 50 megapixel image. Only in the pro mode can you grab that 50 megapixel raw file when you shoot in Auto what it does is. It uses the 50 megapixel sensor, and it takes an image, and it combines all of those pixels into one bigger pixel, which means a 50. Megapixel sensor becomes a 12 megapixel sensor, but with bigger pixels, it's called pixel, pinning, and I'll be honest. Don't fully understand it, but the end result is a much cleaner file, although it's not as high-resolution it's much cleaner, which means when you shoot in low light situations, you should get a much better quality file, and it's funny because this technology is so clever that in my mind, it makes the Pro Mode completely redundant.

So there is no doubt that the images that come out of this phone are fantastic. Well, I really want to push it. So I went out in a lot of challenging low-light situations again, usually just walking the ROG or going for a run, and you can see the detail, the color and the quality of the images. You know I mean look at this photo for example, and all shot handheld. This one was taken way after sunset, and you can see.

We've got all the detail and the color in the foreground. Whilst remaining or what's maintaining, all of these all the highlight detail and capturing the color in the sky, I mean this: is a phone handheld pretty much at nighttime and look at it. It's absolutely superb, and all of that is down to the technology and the phone, the AI or the processing of whatever magic it does in there. It does it very, very well because the JPEGs look absolutely fantastic, so it was the raw mode of this phone that got me really excited a 50 megapixel raw file from a mobile device is pretty impressive, and this is one example here. So this is a handheld 50 megapixel raw file, and there is a lot of information in this photo.

However, I do feel that the image quality is limited by the lens, as it struggles to resolve the detail of which that high megapixel sensor is capable of capturing, which leads me even more to believe that the benefits of the raw file isn't that fine control that you would expect from a raw file, but instead it's so that you can have a 50 megapixel file bin down to 12 megapixels. Giving you bigger, pixels, more light gathering capabilities, so the science and magic within the phone could do its thing and produce an exceptional JPEG. This is the JPEG, and it's just great it looks clean the colors look good. The contrast looks good. You know for a phone shop.

This is fantastic, so I believe that the AI is so good in this phone that there is no need to shoot raw because, let's face it, okay, let's be honest with ourselves. When we take pictures on phones, it's incredibly unlikely. We want to extract that raw file, put it onto our computer and spend hours editing it unless you capture an extraordinary moment in time, and then you've always got the option to shoot raw and get that full 50 megapixel file, but not you know, put 9 percent of the shots on this phone. You just want it in normal mode and let the artificial intelligence do all the work, because it does a fantastic job. I'm still blown away by this.

So, let's take a look at the three cameras or three lenses on this phone, because there is a bit of a difference between them, so the 18 millimeter full-frame, equivalent wide lens, is great. Have that field of view on a phone and for it to produce the quality of images on my horizons are not straight sorry, yeah, so for it to produce the quality I mean you can see here with a great contrast, great color, and you know it's not a massive file, but it's certainly decent enough quality for most social media situations and most uses that you would put images from the phone -. So that's the 18 millimeter and the quality is superb. If we look at the 23 millimeter equivalent, which is gone, that uses that 50 megapixel sensor, yeah I mean it's fair. This situation here this scene that you're looking at what I found interesting was the bench and the fact that it's all been taped off because were in living in crazy times.

Right now. Look at the quality. This is a very, very, very difficult situation for any camera to handle have got the Rising Sun. Very bright sky, deep shadows down here, it's absolutely nailed. It then looks at it.

Look how good this file is, and that is you have not done any again straight out of phone, and that is the yeah. That's the sort of medium lens of 23 mil equivalent lenses. So when you switch to the longer lens or the longer camera in the 125 millimeter equivalent camera, it's yeah, the quality falls down a little actually in broad daylight in bright conditions. It's absolutely fine, it's more than acceptable, but it does struggle in those low-light situations. So you, you know you are handheld, although it does have optical image stabilization.

It's still. It's not bad, like this image is okay, it's captured it quite well, but when you really start to push it, let's have a look here: yeah when you really start to push it, it struggles, but you know there's a long focal length and in a tiny housing you know the lens is tiny, so physics is never gonna. Well how you had to have that super crisp, sharp image, quality- and, let's not forget this- is a mobile phone. The fact that it's got a fixed hundred 25 mil lenses in there with optical image stabilization is its impressive, but the image quality of that lens versus the other two, not as good. This phone also has a night mode, and whilst it does a great job allowing you to effectively handhold a seven-second exposure, I was surprised to see that shooting a night scene using the normal photo mode actually produces a much better final image.

What I found night mode good for was those cityscape images where you have lots of bright lights and deep shadows now, I don't have any cityscape scenes where I live, but this pub gives you a great example of when night mode really comes into its own. You can also find HDR mode which I tested in a very, very challenging situation and no surprises the phone handled it perfectly. So this is just a great example of the quality of this phone, and it is I'm being like completely honest with you. This is blow me away, but I mean just the JPEG file, the color, the vibrancy, the detail, the contrast having a little play in Lightroom. You know I've deleted some distractions out of the image in Photoshop and just by having a little of a play, just messing on with a bit of a vignette.

Maybe just oh just increase the vibrancy a little. I don't need to do much, that's all I probably could drop. The highlights. I mean ice is a great image from a phone from a phone, so yeah very cool. What's my conclusion, so my conclusion is very much dependent on the quality of the large print that is currently coming out of my printer right now, and that will tell me really how good this is- and let's not forget this as a mobile phone.

So while that's printing, in summary, what I would say is this is never going to replace DSLR or a mirrorless? Okay, it's just not going to happen, but for those situations, when you don't have your camera on you, you can't have your camera on you. This is really it just is good. It's such a fine substitute- and you know maybe you're, watching this, and you're not even interested in having a camera and taking photography that seriously. You just want some other takes good images. Well, this is up there.

I can honestly say hand on my heart. I would rather have the camera from this phone, then carry a phone and a little point and shoot, and I think. Sadly, the days of point-and-shoots are numbered. You know this is outstanding. My print is ready, hang on all right.

Now we have it. This is a 12 megapixel, JPEG I just played around with in Lightroom that image there. Oh, let's have a look. It's good, it's not bad! It's good! The sky looks great. The waves look good.

You can see a little. You know you can see a little of digitalization I, suppose that's! We can call it on the tree on the lock there and the driftwood all in all, yeah there you go. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and that is my conclusion of the hear, a p40 Pro mind-blowing. We live in such an age. Don't we right there! You go thanks so much for watching if you've never seen this channel before usually I'm out doing landscape stuff with you know this sort things on yes subscribe and when lockdowns oval getting the camp of animal go somewhere and have an adventure, but until then stay safe.

Thank you for watching and bye for now.

Source : Thomas Heaton