in my view ...: Oppo R11s camera (portrait mode and low light images)

I thought I'd put this here because I find myself referring to these images (which I took as part of the earlier R11s comparison, but didn't include because the post was getting long) in other discussions I've had.

Summary

The camera system on the R11s (which is functionally the same as the OnePlus 5T) employs two cameras to do the job that the F1 does. It makes use of these cameras to give a bokeh effect and to assist in reducing picture noise in low light situations.

It does an impressive job at noise control in low light, but I can't say I'm fond of the "bokeh" effect. The boke effect is patently fake but will pass muster for non photographic people who only give it a quick look on Farcebook, Instacrap or Slapshat. The tons of rave reviews are either showing their utter ignorance or were paid to dribble nonsense.

There is a resoundingly stupid (channeling my inner John Cadogan) way of changing the aspect ratio of the camera (no, really).

Its still an excellent bit of hardware let down by the fools at Oppo in the software section (however given so few have long term (no, not 6 weeks, 3 years) experience with an Oppo as their daily driver I guess no one will know what they were missing (and why so many think McDonalds makes good food)

Poor-trait mode

Its important to state up front that details change when you take a portrait mode shot, the image size changes from 4068 x 3456 pixels to

5184 x 3888 (in the "normal" portrait mode)
3264 x 2448 (in the closer head and shoulder portrait mode)

weird isn't it ... because the only other way you get different dimensions of your image in pixels (and yes, it matters because the victims of marketing only ever seem to waffle on about how many megapixels the camera has, seemingly vacant and devoid of comprehension of what it even means or why its not the only metric) is to change how the phone shows the picture (red arrow).

Which weirdly in Full Screen crops the image down to a wide screen 2:1 aspect while actually keeping exactly the same long dimension (4608). It does not make the image any wider, just narrower (4608 x 2304). Aside from portrait there is no other way to get those extra pixels...

So lets look at a portrait mode image shall we?

Now I've put this red halo around me to highlight my primary beef with this system: it makes mistakes in combination.

Note that the area above my (balding) head is left un-bokeh'd ? I wonder if this is a failure of the algorithm or indeed to account for "big hair" in the typical fluff-head who festers iconic tourist locations to grab a selfie or 2 (x 10³).

If we were to recompose to carefully position my face at the edge of the frame I suppose we'd fix that.

Now its one thing for a photograph to be something you'd glance at on Farcebook (on a small screen) but its another to have a picture you took be something you'd want on your desk. So unless you only want a post card sized image (meaning you don't need 20 megapixels) you'l see this level of detail in the image.

which is crappy, pixel smeared (blame that heavy handed JPG processing I've complained about before) and has weird artifacts like my glasses, softening my beard and ear but not the boards behind me. So basically its a crap gimmick ...

Still for a quick glance (on your phone, not a print on your desk) for the "Slapshat generation" who only glance momentarily at your masterpiece,which you probably spent more time taking, trying different filters and generally gazing at yourself than anyone will looking at it, its probably just fine.

Myself I'll stick to my real camera thanks. Chances are that if you're reading my blog you're a photograper anyway, but in case you aren't, here are some examples of what one can achieve taking a portrait looks like using a real (yet still quite compact) camera with a similar angle of view and a sensor size which brings many advantages to the photographer.

Yes, that's what shallow depth of field is all about ... its a matter of physics and its going to require a lot of AI smarts to replicate it. But why bother doing that when you can actually carry a real camera if you happen to be into photography?

Anyway, while you're obsessing over the question of "is 20 megapixels good enough or do I need more" you can look at the 20 the Oppo R11s produces and ask yourself "is that good enough for me".

Consider that the above camera (a nearly 10 year old Panasonic GF-1) is only 12 megapixels, will set you back a puny $100 and be a lasting tool that will yield many excellent image especially in lower light. A real camera will show you what Depth of Field effect (note: not bokeh effect) can do. At the very least note the genuine and natural way that focus falls off with distance?

So now lets move onto the advantage (rather than the cheap gimmick) the camera has:

Low Light

This is one area that the dual camera shine at - low light (and wow, I wish it had RAW capacity, but probably that's asking a bit much when the 3 year older half the price F1 has that {right? lol}).

Now lacking OIS you'll need to have a tripod (and I doubt that OIS would be sufficient for these exposures anyway, but still).

Now the F1 does not have portrait mode (no loss IMO) but it does have long exposure and ISO control in the manual settings as does the R11s, so we can directly compare them here.

I took this shot (scaled down for overview) with the F1

and this one with the R11s

Now I gave the R11s an advantage by using its faster F-Stop (f1.7 but f2.2 for the F1) to allow it to use the same shutter speed (important for hand holding). This is an advantage because by using a slower ISO (1600 vs 3200), it can have less noise in the image. Looking at the above shows that:

they aren't exactly the same exposure (the F1 is brighter giving more foreground exposure) because f1.7 >> f2.2 is not a full stop, but three quaters of one. None the less this is significantly darker than just that, indeed I'd put it at at least half a stop or maybe even a stop
at these sizes the noise and image quality differences don't matter much

But again, if you've gone on a holiday and taken your prize shot of Rome at Night with the only camera you had (the phone), which you want to print big (like A4 or larger, and the R11s will yeild a print as large as 58.5 x 43.9 cm or 23.04 x 17.28 inches) then you'll be interested in the details.

So when peeking at the pixels, this is about the differences you'll see in a print

which is astounding and makes the R11s a superior camera.

Now its worth pointing out that this was a super extreme test, and to my eyes (and I have good night vision) the sky was barely observable as a glow and I could not see details on the ground. To even get sharpness in the shed I critically manually focused (which both will do, in the expert mode), AF shots were not as good in this low light with either camera. Still the amount of detail in the R11s is amazingly good for what it is. I wonder if it had RAW how much more I could get out if (as I know I can with the F1)

Bottom line: If I was travelling I'd be comfortable to have this camera with me for night shots. Yep its that good. Having said that the F1 has advantages in other areas and when I use RAW (which when I'm taking more than a snapshot I always do), so for a person even faintly serious about photography the F1 is still the better outfit.

Discussion

Why do Oppo continue to develop their phone hardware and yet also continue to degrade their phone software?

To me the R11s is a great camera system on a phone (for what one can reasonably expect), its sad to me that they've dropped many of the features from the camera software (like the Expert Mode seperable focus and metering, "Super Macro Mode" and RAW) but as I normally take my regular camera with me I'm not too worried.

The inbuilt HDR does a much better job than the HDR on the F1 (although not as good as the F1 does in RAW and using Snapseed see here), so I don't want to muddy this review up with that complex discussion but just to show how well the R11s does on the HDR mode.

Standard image:

and HDR engaged:

So much better preservation of highlights and shadows. to get that with the F1 I needed to use RAW and touch up in Snapseed;

which as it happens, is to me a more "natural" looking image, preserved highlights and appropriate shadow details, with (as observed in other posts) a slightly wider angle of view (which I appreciate).

But if you're a Pareto Principle sorta person (where you aim to get 80% of the benefits for 20% of the effort then the R11s camera offers much and is a (slightly unclear) development from what was offered 3 years ago in the F1.

Of course if buying new you have no choice (well and soon you probably won't be able to get a new R11s anyway as its last years phone), the R11s is a competent phone camera.

I'm as yet undecided if the R11s will become my daily driver for a number of reasons, these being:

the colour rendition of the R11s makes it seem punchier than it is, meaning others will see limp washed out images (which look good to you) (on a positive note, I can say that it has a much better rendition of the rgb gamut than almost any other screen does, so there's that)
lack of voice shutter trigger
I don't like the bigger phone to hold (and the reduction in bezel size makes for touch errors)
less control
no RAW

However as I normally also travel with a GF-1 and a couple of lenses some of this is moot.

In its favor the R11s's faster processor means I can process RAW images from my proper camera in much less time. For instance I did a comparison with my Sony A7 cameras raw files and found this for transferring and converting 3 ARW files:

R11s

Transfer speed = 12mbs

3 ARW file conversion = 17.46 sec

Snapseed conversion

Open time = 4sec

Processing = 9.4sec

Transfer speed = 10mbs

3 ARW file conversion = 34 sec

Snapseed conversion

Open time = 4sec

Processing = 32sec

Processing time was less of a "oh my god, I'm getting another beer" event when using my Panasonic GF-1 (because its a 12Megapixel camera and the Sony is 20Megapixels ... and more pixels means a longer time)

Lastly I'll leave you with a shot taken with my GF-1 but not used in the previous comparison (here) of phone and camera cameras