It's better to shoot vivo Xshot than to shoot it well

IT 168 Evaluation As the easiest shooting equipment in the world, mobile phones have long been an ideal choice for users to record their lives. As early as 20 1 1, iPhone 4 has successfully surpassed Nikon D90 and become the most popular "camera" on Flickr. Portable, fast and social are the biggest advantages of mobile photography. Now, the camera function is also the best testing ground for mobile phone manufacturers to research and develop. The function of the camera directly affects the comprehensive evaluation of the product. The protagonist of today's evaluation is vivo Xshot, which is known as the "4G Smart Shoot" mobile phone.

▲vivo Xshot

Before the evaluation begins, we might as well look at some classic photos.

▲ classic Michael Jordan classic lens.

▲ Jordan's photos were taken by professional sports photographers.

▲ In Kunduz province, American Private David Gedert wore a helmet in the early morning sun.

▲ The photo of the US military was taken by the recruit Damon Winter and won the Poy Award.

In terms of performance, mobile phones are incomparable to professional camera equipment. But the mobile phone is closer to life, and portrait photographer Yasunari Sanyuan is very casual in the choice of shooting tools. It is said that this can make the subject have no sense of distance when shooting.

▲ People are used to recording interesting pictures with their mobile phones.

▲ In rural America in the 1930s, photos made time eternal, and you didn't pay attention to what camera you used to take them.

Professional equipment is more suitable for enthusiasts. For ordinary users, the process of taking pictures is as simple as possible. The most important thing is to record those fleeting pictures in real time. In an exclusive interview with vivo Xshot conference, Dong Wang, product manager of vivo, mentioned more than once that "taking a good smartphone is more important than taking a good photo". As its first camera phone, vivo Xshot's shooting concept has not only stayed in image quality and parameters. But more consideration is given to the actual experience of users.

So how does vivo Xshot give users a better experience?

Image quality is the foundation.

As I said before, image quality is not the most important thing. But good image quality is the basis of ensuring the user's photo experience. Because if the quality of photos is too poor, the fun of taking photos will be greatly reduced.

Vivo Xshot adopts13 megapixel camera, based on Sony's second-generation back-illuminated sensor and equipped with OIS optical image stabilization technology (on by default). Vivo Xshot's camera adopts 6P lens structure and supports F 1.8 aperture. Judging from the actual proofs, the image quality of vivo Xshot camera satisfies the author.

▲ Take a sample in vivo Xshot normal mode, and click to view the original image.

▲ Take a sample in vivo Xshot normal mode, and click to view the original image.

In addition to the normal camera mode, vivo Xshot also has a variety of camera modes built in. Among them, fast blind shot, sports, night scenes, children, and blurred background can best enhance the photo experience.

▲ A variety of smart camera modes

This may be the fastest camera phone.

As we mentioned earlier, "it is more important to shoot well than to shoot well." For what happens around us, many times it is fleeting. So how can we record some sudden pictures as quickly as possible? Ordinary mobile phone, unlock, quickly open the camera, focus, press the shutter. This process takes several seconds.

According to the demand of snapshot, vivo Xshot creatively developed the function of fast blind shot. When the screen is blank or in any state (including games and movies), double-click the shutter button, and the camera will automatically open to take five continuous shooting. These five photos will adopt different color temperatures, brightness, etc. So that the user can select one or all of them.

▲vivo Xshot blind shot operation video

As you can see, the speed of blind shot is really suitable for snapshots.

▲ There will be five continuous shooting in blind shot.

The pixel of the photo taken blindly is still 654.38+03 million, but there is still a BUG in this function. Is continuous shooting didn't focus at infinity, photos out of focus. According to the communication between the author and insiders of vivo, this problem is being repaired.

▲ blind shot sample, click to see a larger image.

Night shooting without slow shutter

In many cases, flash or slow shutter is a common solution for shooting at night. However, the former has a small effective range, and the latter needs special stabilizing devices. If it is shot by ordinary users, these two methods are not suitable. Therefore, vivo Xshot adopts the soft night shooting technology of American Rainbow, and six photos of continuous shooting are combined into one night shot.

▲ After turning on the night scene mode, there is no need to adjust it, just like ordinary photography.

When the night scene mode is turned on, the effect is displayed in real time, that is, what you see is what you get. And users don't need to make any adjustments, just press the shutter button. After the photo is taken, there will be a prompt that is being processed, and the time is within one second.

▲ Left normal mode, right night view mode, click to see a larger image.

Night view mode and HDR mode are actually a bit similar, both of which are composed of multiple pictures. However, the photos synthesized by night scene mode have more uniform light, which effectively reduces the appearance of noise while retaining a lot of details.

▲ Left normal mode, right night view mode, click to see a larger image.

▲ Left normal mode, right night view mode, click to see a larger image.

Because the night scene mode is not simply to improve ISO and reduce the shutter speed, it will not cause obvious overexposure. Therefore, the night scene mode can be used not only at night, but also in indoor weak light and outdoor backlight, and can be used in places with unsatisfactory light anyway.

▲ I accidentally used 6 million pixels. Click to view a larger image.

▲ Use night view mode under backlight, and click to see a larger image.

Play games with Xiong Haizi.

Children have cute expressions, but they always don't cooperate when taking pictures. It always takes a lot of effort to show them the camera. Vivo Xshot's built-in children's mode is designed to solve this problem.

▲ Practical operation of children's mode

Play some special sound effects through the speaker to attract children's attention. Just press the shutter at this time. According to my experience, the effect is good, but children are not interested in every sound effect. In addition, I don't know if it is because of hearing protection, the sound of these sound effects is slightly insufficient outdoors.

▲vivo Xshot children mode

Background fuzzy pattern

When using professional equipment such as SLR, we can take photos with shallow depth of field, that is, blurred background, through larger aperture and longer focal length. However, on the mobile phone, it is difficult to take a good-looking blurred photo even if the F 1.8 aperture is adopted in vivo Xshot due to the congenital deficiency of lens aperture and focal length.

Therefore, vivo Xshot provides users with a background blurring mode, and the parts outside the main body are blurred by software algorithms.

▲ Left fuzzy mode, right normal mode

You can observe the blurred photos in the above picture, and the flowerpots, roads, trees and buildings behind them are all blurred. Judging from the proofs, this kind of treatment is quite natural.

However, the success rate of fuzzy pattern recognition is not high. I think it is better to add a subject identification icon, which allows users to manually select the fuzzy parts.

▲ The author focuses on the flowers in front and clearly runs to the flowers near the taxi.

Action stereotype

The motion mode of vivo Xshot is not realized by increasing the shutter speed, but by extracting the picture of 0. 1 second before pressing the shutter as a photo. This is similar to rewinding a video tape. I believe that the background is being recorded, and you can extract the image by pressing the shutter.

▲vivo Xshot sports mode

▲vivo Xshot sports mode

In sports mode, the advance of 0. 1 second can make up for the shortage of the shutter speed of the mobile phone. In high-speed sports scenes such as sports meeting and racing track, you can take more photos you want.

Editor's comment: Under the premise of limited optical conditions and space conditions, there is a natural bottleneck in the promotion of mobile phone photography in hardware. Vivo Xshot is a good attempt to improve the camera experience through software algorithms. From the experience of these days, the normal mode of vivo Xshot can meet most of the needs. Combined with the night scene mode, most photos satisfy the author.

For users who have no photography foundation, they just need to press the shutter by switching between various modes, which is similar to a "fool" camera. Even so, many good photos can be taken. And because the reliability of the machine has improved, users can do whatever they want. The real experience should be like this.

Of course, because it is the first camera phone, vivo Xshot still has many bugs, which is expected to be gradually improved in the future system upgrade push.