Ah, blind camera comparisons, where camera neophytes and seasoned pixel watchers alike can mutually enjoy a high-stakes race between the best camera phones on the market.
Either way, be sure to vote for your favorite photo in each of the following scenes. The results will be revealed in the same article in a few days, so stay tuned for those!
Scene 1
Let’s start slow with a regular wide-angle shot I took on a mid-afternoon walk in the woods. Ah, the great outdoors!
Scene 2
While many swear by the ultra-wide-angle camera as the most suitable for landscape photography, it’s actually the telephoto and zoom that take more captivating photos. Quite counter-intuitive, I know, but often you have to get closer to tell a more compelling story.
Scene 3
Did you know that trees are made up of 99% cells, with only 1% of all cells considered “living”? Well, I didn’t, but now we all do. And did you know you can use an ultra-wide camera to capture multiple trees in the frame? I bet you did!
Scene 4
Here’s another scene filmed in the most perfect conditions imaginable: clear autumn skies, bright midday sunshine and relatively low humidity. Fortunately, no chickens attempted to cross the road at this usually busy downtown intersection.
Scene 5
I don’t really know what’s in this building, but it always attracts me when I go out for a photo shoot. Could it be the clean styling, the soothing paint or the mystery of what lies within? I guess we’ll never know. Anyway, which picture do you prefer here?
Scene 6
In this scene, we’re trying to get a good shot of the local department store, but for geographic reasons, we have to shoot mostly backlit, with strong background lighting. In this particular case, we managed to get the sun out of the picture, but we’ll test a more extreme HDR scene later. Anyway, which photo do you prefer here?
Scene 7
Floral paradise! Each of our three contestants has superb macro shooting abilities. The trio can do this using the ultra-wide-angle camera, which can focus much closer than wide-angle or telephoto cameras, and crop the center of the frame. The resulting macro shots are generally sharp and largely immune to motion blur from sudden subject movements, but unfortunately the background bokeh isn’t as pleasing as with narrower cameras.
Scene 8
Well, well, if that’s not one of the coolest bronze statues in my town! It depicts a famous local architect who lived nearby over a century ago. The cool thing about this statue is that it breaks the mold of similar memorials and has the subject sit on an actual park bench. Very cool!
Scene 9
Remember that extreme HDR scene we teased a few galleries ago? Well, here it is! When taking these three photos below, it was difficult to capture the facade of the bookstore without having the sun in the photo as well. Actually, it was possible, but I wanted to challenge all three phones as much as possible…for flares galore! Which phone did the best job here?
Scene 10
Finally, we have a beautiful sunset photographed in near-twilight lighting. Which phone did the best?