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The importance of sensors in your phone camera

Written By AJ Viray
Published • March 3rd, 2022
Mobile
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For years, people have enjoyed taking photos using their mobile phones, and we all know how convenient it is. Camera quality is the main priority for most smartphone buyers, and phones with multiple cameras are the new norm. We have seen exciting camera setups throughout the years, from dual cameras to four or even five lenses at the back. But does it help take better pictures overall?

Realme 9 Pro (1)

realme is one of the brands which have been coming up with exciting new camera systems to better cater to its market. Just recently, its latest Number Series smartphones: the realme 9 Pro+ and the realme 9, were launched globally. With these smartphones being rolled out in other markets, we can assume it would only be a matter of time until it becomes available locally. With the 9 Pro Series, realme leveled up their photography with just a total of 4 cameras, the triple camera for the rear and a 16MP front shooter

The 9 Pro sports a 64MP Nightscape main shooter, while the 9 Pro+ packs a 50MP f/1.8 Sony IMX766 OIS main. The rest is the same. There are the 8MP f/2.2 ultra-wide and a 2MP f/2.4 macro.

With these cameras, it makes the photos pretty good. Exposure, HDR, and colors are on point. We’ve been using both devices for some time now, and it feels that the camera performance of this phone is ONE of the best. The photos are vibrant in daylight, with good details, excellent dynamic range, and decent exposure levels. In addition, the 8MP wide-angle camera captures a good 119-degree field-of-view, impressive dynamic range, and worthy details for an 8MP sensor.

The camera can also take pictures in Macro mode. The shots are impressive; they lack some details, but it’s usable, and it’s better than other 2MP macro shooters out there. Zooming at 6x (for 9 Pro) and 20x (for 9 Pro+), details are still visible. The images that come out are passable for most use cases but those who have a keen eye on detail and love to nitpick may find small things that may turn them against.

Surprisingly, when it comes to low light, even the night mode turned off, the quality is pretty good.

realme 9 Pro series doesn’t have depth sensors, and to be honest, it is unnecessary. However, despite not having it, portraits come out pretty good. The background blur looks natural, but it is worth mentioning that you have to be careful about the distance between the camera and the subject.

For selfies, even without the beauty mode, this phone produces social media-ready snaps with a decent amount of detail, providing for a pretty great selfie. Color accuracy is good, and details are present.

realme smartphones are loaded with interesting and useful camera software features. For example, a feature called “Street Photography Mode” for more fun and creative social media-ready snaps. You also get 13 filters for the standard photo mode, another 13 for portrait photography, and filters for video mode.

Realme 9 Pro (2)

SO now, to answer the question, is having more cameras on your phone better? Although having more cameras can be beneficial sometimes, that’s not always the case, so it’s a NO. Given the compact form factor of our phones relative to professional cameras, extra lenses and sensors provide us with a variety of tools to be able to capture images better in certain situations. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the photo quality will be better. Sensors with higher megapixel counts just means that the photo will be larger, allowing you to crop without hassle.

Realme 9 Pro (3)

Also at a basic level, sensor size determines how much light the camera has available to create an image. While resolution plays a role in detail, it’s the amount of light captured that determines a camera’s exposure balance, dynamic range, and even sharpness. This is why 16MP and 20MP DSLR cameras still look better than today’s 108MP smartphones.

ALSO, IF the software processing the image is not that good, even if you have quad or Penta cameras out there, quality can still turn out pretty bad.

Realme 9 Pro (4)

realme’s processing is excellent, and they put reasonable efforts to get the camera performance of realme 9 Pro and 9 Pro Plus right. With its triple rear camera setup, realme 9 Pro and 9 Pro Plus are capable of detailed, vibrant pictures, good dynamic range, and decent exposure level for daylight pictures. If you’re interested in the basics of photography, these cameras give you the tools you need to get the right angle and frame to end up with some nice-looking pictures to show off on your Instagram feed or in any of your socials. Don’t make the mistake of thinking four cameras are automatically better than three or two.

While the realme 9 Pro Series has launched in other markets, right now there’s still no word if this will be available locally. Stay tuned to find out.

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AJ Viray

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One Comment

joberta says:

3 years ago

Nice paid ad by Realme. Its not the number of lenses really, image processing (software) plays a large part. Just look at iphones with single lens cameras and the google pixel 3a. They can and will run rings on a lot of android handsets even if they have 48mp, 50mp, 64mp, 108mp lol.
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