For many people, photography skills are a key factor when deciding to buy a phone. In other words, what kind of pictures can be taken with the device, how versatile a device is in this respect. Xiaomi also places great emphasis on these features, and the Chinese company is one of the market players that is also developing mobile photography intensively.
The official technical specifications of a product can also tell you a lot about the quality of the photos it is capable of producing. We will now look at these aspects in more detail.
Resolution: The value in megapixels indicates the resolution of the image, i.e. the number of pixels that make up an image. Some manufacturers pay a lot of attention to this, and Xiaomi, for example, is no longer a rarity with 108 megapixel models.
To give you an idea of how big a word this is, suffice it to say that 8K TVs have a resolution of 33 megapixels...
It is legitimate to ask why anyone would need such a high resolution. And the answer is simple: it makes it easy to digitally enlarge an image without compromising image quality. Also important is that more pixels means more image information, which can be useful for various image enhancement and image modification algorithms.
But that doesn't mean you can't get a good picture with, say, a 12-16 megapixel camera. But the fact is that more megapixels means more possibilities and more chances of getting a good result.
Recorded value: This indicator, given by "f", provides information about the amount of light reaching a camera sensor. Obviously, the more the better, and this is important when the external lighting conditions are not ideal. That is, it is dark or there is little light. It is important to note that in this case the LOWER the value, the better the result.
So a camera with an f/1.7 aperture takes better low-light images than a camera with f/2.2.
The end result is noisier and more often blurred. In our experience, it's possible to shoot decent quality images with f/1.8, f/1.9 apertures even in less than ideal outdoor conditions.
Ultra-wide angle of view: With ultra-wide-angle cameras, the focal length is reduced, meaning that "more" can be captured from the same distance. Compared to a conventional camera, the result will be as if the photo was taken from a distance. This is obviously very useful when taking landscapes and cityscape photos, when the user has no possibility to "stand back".
With ultra-wide-angle cameras, there may be slight image distortion, a fisheye effect. But manufacturers are working hard to overcome these drawbacks, and Xiaomi, for example, has made this a top priority.
Macro: Macro cameras are designed for capturing very, very close-up shots. In other words, if you want to photograph the inside of flowers, bugs, snowflakes, you should consider this aspect when making a purchase decision.
Zoom: In mobile photography, there are basically two ways to zoom in. Optical zoom is the better option, as it mechanically brings the image content closer to the viewer. With digital zoom, details are cut out of the image by software, so it's a kind of artificial magnification. The quality of this may not be as good as optical zoom, but the high resolution mentioned earlier makes a big difference. Even if the original image is 12000×9000 pixels, you can cut out a 4820×2160 (4K) or 1920×1080 (Full HD) pixel section of it and still get a good image quality.
Optical stabilizer: The optical stabilizer built into the phone effectively helps to eliminate image errors caused by image shake. This is important when shooting in the dark, when the shutter speed is faster to allow more light to reach the sensor. So if you have optical stabilisation and it's active, you can reduce the amount of blur or even eliminate this distracting image phenomenon altogether.
Manual focus: Some phones allow the user to change the focus themselves. In our experience, this is a very useful feature but is not used much by the average user in everyday life, as fiddling with the settings is more awkward on phones than on "normal" cameras.
Car Focus: The electronics then adjust the sharpness of the image itself, i.e. the focus. Nowadays, the most common is the so-called PDAF focus, which is very good for fast movements and can be used at long distances, but may not work properly in low light. Laser focus, for example, is useless at long distances, but works very well in the dark and is fast. So-called contrast-based focus is useless in motion and low light, so although it is very good in detailed environments, it is no longer used in phones.
