Oppo F1 - front vs rear camera

The question came up as to the quality of the front shooter on the Oppo F1. Not having other phones to compare it to I thought I'd whack up a compare of its front to its back.

First (most of) the EXIF data

Front Camera                     Rear Camera
Filename - IMG20160708161903.jpg IMG20160708161805.jpg

ExposureTime - 1/25 seconds 1/33 seconds
FNumber - 2.00 2.20
ISOSpeedRatings - 179 248

ShutterSpeedValue - 1/25         1/33 seconds
ApertureValue - F 2.00 F 2.20

FocalLength - 2.94 mm 3.46 mm

ExifImageWidth - 3264          4160
ExifImageHeight - 2448 3120

GainControl - Low gain up High gain up

Some of those points are interesting ... like the low gain / high gain

Now, the overviews

Front

and Rear:

Both were shot on a tripod, but when you spin the phone around the camera becomes "at the other end" and while I shifted the tripod clearly it wasn't perfectly enough. The Front camera is a little wider angle than the Rear ... which is interesting to note.

The tree was shot at about "selfie" distance (meaning arm distance) to examine images at that focal distance.

Now, lets explore the image a little. By default I don't 100% pixel peep as that is not what a print looks like, I use 50% as my experience has shown that screen at 50% is pretty close to close examination of a print (often at 300dpi).

So Front:

then Rear:

I chose the same focal point on  both (not that the front camera shows any evidence of focusing) and its interesting to note that the colour balance is different between them too.

However on this occasion I think its actually interesting to look at 100% pixel view.

Front:

Rear:

which shows a number of interesting things.

• the Front camera appears sharper (check the fine detail of the "air ferns" behind the leaves) however when you look though the image you can see that the Front Camera (not focusing at all) has of course got closer in focus by its design - however the rear camera has managed to mistake focus (god knows how) and focus at the distance of the wall behind it
• the rear camera seems to have a better dynamic range
• the front camera seems to have a better JPG rending (something I've complained about on this phone a lot)

So ... there you go