Frank Doorhof

Just for fun some shots I took with the Huawei P20 pro during todays workshop at #alabfotostudio
And of course you want my opinion on the phone so far….

Well in all honesty it really blows my mind to see what this phone/camera can do. The OS experience, or let me say the “look and feel” is ok, but I like the Samsung OS just a tad better, mostly because I can place more apps in a folder, it would be possible on the Huawei but somehow they choose to probably “copy” Apple and only add a few, I loved the Note 8 for just letting me use a lot of space on screen when the map was open.

The navigation with the home button if fricking awesome and I’m already fully used to that and I don’t see any need for the bar anymore, this is “perfect”. The screen is more than OK, the speed is good, battery life is very very good, I did charge a little bit in between and ended day 2 with 25% left, I guess I charged maybe a max of 40% in total during these two days, the Note8 wouldn’t make it till the end of the day, just like my iPhones.

I do experience some issues with BT disconnecting when an app is running in the background but this seems to be an issue with Ore0 8.1 someone told me and not Huawei, let’s hope Android fixes this in the near future, it’s not a big deal (and probably why my battery life is so long) but it’s a bit annoying when I run my iTPMS system in the RV in the background.

But most of all the camera…..
I expected the 40MP camera to be ok in good light and actually very bad in normal lighting situations I experience in the studio. Everytime I get a new Phone I try some modelshots with it, and always I end up laughing a bit… not because they are so good but more at the advertising guys claiming “the camera reinvented” yes sure…. in bright light its great but don’t even think about more challenging situations…. the P20 Pro IS different, trust me.

I’ve shot the images in this blogpost with the P20 pro with the modelling lights from the Broncolors, and to be fair, these modelling lights are a lot less bright than the Elinchroms I have in our studio so I expected the results to be worse than the Note8, especially because the light is so much lower in intensity…. now I’m not gonna tell you it beats or even equals my 42MP Sony A7RIII, FAR from…. but man is this one SWEET camera, the images are pinsharp and can actually be pushed pretty far. Nadines outfit was pretty dark and I was able to use the dodge tool to get back some details from the blacks without any real sacrifice to the shots WOW.

I still have my 30 days return policy…..
Not going to use it.
LOVE the camera, and this is all 40MP, imaging what you can do with the pixel”binding” at 10MP, I can’t wait to take this baby out with me during a street shoot, or with proper ledpanel lighting, I think it will blow everyone away.

Many reviews online focus on the 10MP performance, or JPG. I really have to stress that although those are far from bad (in fact for a smartphone they are really good), but where the camera really shines is in RAW, now I understand that for some people the RAW workflow from a phone doesn’t sound appealing, my answer is just very simple…. if you want quality don’t shoot JPEG, unless you need to… which in the case of the P20 Pro means…. nightshots, even panoramas I would shoot in RAW 40MP and just stitch them together in Lr.

Zooming…. I won’t really use, I’ll just crop in on the 40MP RAW file, because the zoom essentially is just 10MP and it’s JPEG, I can probably get a better quality by just cropping in on the RAW file. The nightmode is something else… I really hope that in the future something like this is also possible with 40MP RAW files (far future) because that mode is VERY addictive. I constantly see myself looking for situations where I can try it out 🙂

Anyway…. let’s show you the images I shot today.

Model/stylist : Nadine

All images in this blogpost are lowered in resolution to 1250 longest side. This is because our internet here is pretty bad. Full res images I can upload when we are back home and people want them.

As promised part II in the review of the Huawei P20 pro.
Today it’s all about the camera, of course one of the reasons most of you guys are probably interested in the phone.
And let’s not make this longer than needed and immediately tell it like it is…. this thing ROCKS.

Now don’t expect anything spectacular image wise, we are now on location for this weekends workshops and I just took some shots during a nice diner we had with our friends.

First images is a car that I found close to where we parked our RV.
First image is shot with the 40MP camera and the second in Night mode.

What you can see in the night mode is that it almost looks like a clean HDR shot, details are extra enhanced and there is a lot of detail in highlights and shadows, colortemp is different but could be corrected of course, for the blog post however I only lowered the resolution.

Next up was the restaurant.
These shots were all done in night mode.

In all honesty these shots blew me away, my friend had his iPhone with him and his images looked a lot more noisy 😀
All images look incredibly clean and are razor sharp, I’ve seen some samples online of oversharpenend images but in real life I think it’s ok in these shots, in fact I downloaded them on my laptop to judge because I don’t trust a phone screen (any phone), but the images looks REALLY nice.

Next up was outside.

Difficult high contrast scene, but look how the P20 pro handles this, on ANY other phone (heck probably camera) the outside would have been pitch black or the inside would be blown out. Remember this is all shot handheld with a 4 second shutter time…. it’s insane.

PITCH dark alley, with only the lights you see.

Outside of the restaurant.

A few crops
Because you of course also want to see some 100% crops, here we go.
click on the files for full versions.
First image is from the 40MP RAW with slight sharpening to take away the softness of a RAW file, I’m editing this on my laptop so I might have overdone it slightly. But you get the idea.

bsh

rbsh

First careful conclusion.
And remember this is VERY careful because these are literally the first shots I took with the camera.

40MP RAW files are gorgous, even without 100% perfect lighting there is more than enough “raw” (pun intended) detail, but the real jawdropper is the night mode, I never saw something like this before, and it’s actually very addictive. Just go to night mode, press the shutter and wait for 3-4 seconds and you see the magic happen on the screen, it is a 10MP file but boy does it look great. And lets be honest… I would rather have a great 10MP shot than a noisy 12-16MP shot that you can throw away.

Is there some processing going on?
Yep without any doubt, but I don’t think it takes away from the shot, I would have backed down slightly on the noise reduction but it’s not like I say “WOW, back down” it’s more like “I would fine tune this a bit more”, but do remember I look at these shots as a photographer and not a consumer, and those two are TOTALLY different in what they like.

The RAW files however are a VERY pleasant surprise and actually surpass what I hoped and expected. Do remember that this is not in any way a camera that will blow away or even come close to compact cameras that are designed for photography, but for a smart phone this is literally amazing and mind boggling.

As I mentioned in the previous preview/review normally smartphones make small steps in their evolution, 1MP more, a bit less noise, some cool extra features, etc. Let’s say that if you look at an iPhone from 3 years ago and the present one you will see a difference, but the difference is noticeable not mind blowing different. The P20 Pro in my personal opinion after these first shots does just that…. keep in mind it’s a smartphone… tell yourself to NOT compare it to even a budget DSLR/Mirrorless and what you have is actually unbelievable for a smartphone….

I’m very anxious to see where this leads…
Will this be a one off and are we back to 12MP next year, or is this THE trend that others will follow…. I hope that last one. I’m having LOADS of fun at the moment and I’m 100% sure that the night mode and 40MP RAW files are going to give me loads of good shots.

Ok
“Frank how are the zooms?”
I don’t care to be honest.
When I shoot 40MP RAW files I can always crop to 10MP and zoom that way. I will try it out without a doubt, but for now I think the 40MP RAW setting or nightmode will be the modes I’m using. When I want to use zoom I loose my RAW option and it’s back to 10MP, I will have to test if that’s worth it.

Leave comments below what you think about this phone with a camera… or should/dare I say the camera that can make phonecalls