Huawei P9 Reinventing Photography

I know that every time I write an article related to the mobile photography I raise blisters, more than one or one stirs in their seats and there are even those who decide to say goodbye to the blog. Well, there are opinions for everyone and all equally respectable. I am convinced that it is one more tool, like all the photography apps and that the photo is taken by the person behind it and not by the camera.

I already opened a debate about it and I am not going to repeat myself like garlic. But in short, the smartphone is always with you (or not?), while the camera is not something easy to transport anywhere. Especially if it’s an SLR. If we limit ourselves to the moments in which we take the camera, we can lose moments that are very worth photographing. I must admit that some of my best photos in the last three years have been taken with my smartphone. And it is that moving around with a little one attached to your skirts all day does not make it easy to carry an SLR.

Now we can go into qualities and others. Of course not, the sharpness that you can achieve with a SLR is not the same as with a telephone. But it is that the size of the sensor is not comparable. Now, within smartphones there are also different qualities. Some take better photos than others, as there are manufacturers who, aware of this love for photography, take special care to improve their cameras. Today I bring you one of these examples: Huawei P9.

What is special about the Huawei P9?

In this case, the mobile manufacturer Huawei has teamed up with Leica photographic technology to create a phone with two cameras. Why two cameras? Although there are other phones with two cameras, the function here is quite different. In this case, one camera collects information in color and another in monochrome. The combination of these two chambers achieves much more vibrant colors, sharper images and more accurate black and white. In addition, it is created to be able to photograph in low light conditions.

Its technology (which I will not describe here) facilitates faster images, with better focus and depth. The frontal camera It is also very well cared for, so if you like to take selfies, this is your ideal phone ;). Allows you to modify the aperture to achieve background blurring, as well as other manual adjustments.

If this has convinced you, keep reading as we are going to go into more detail.

Characteristic

I am not going to describe the phone beyond the data that interests us as a photography blog, so I will focus on dimensions and weight and the details related to the camera, which are relevant to us:

• Dimensions: 145mm/Length 70.9/Width 6.95/Thickness

• Internal memory: 32GB
• External memory: SD card

• Camera: Double Dual Camera 12MP f/2.2 Leica BSI CMOS Dual-tone flash. Front Camera 8MP, f/2.4. Here we stop because among all these strange names and acronyms that seem hieroglyphics, we find a rear camera with 12 MP and an aperture of f / 2.2, what does this translate into? In that you can achieve better photos with less light and with a greater blur of the background. And the front camera has nothing more and nothing less than 8MP and an aperture of f / 2.4. In the case of a front camera, it is amazing, because it is much better than many rear ones, that is why I said before that if your thing is the selfie or self-portraits, this detail should make you instantly fall in love.

• Video: 1080p 720p at 120fps

• Sensor size: 1/2.9″

• Stabilization of the optics: Nope

• Camera Filters: Original, Sentimental, Impact, DN, Valencia, Sad, Halo, Nostalgia, Dawn (7 in color and two in black and white)

• modes: Beauty (With levels from 0 to 10 to soften facial features), Video with Beauty Function (same but in video), Light Painting* (for long exposure photographs such as light painting, light trails, stars or silky effect of water ), Watermark (enter location, temperature and date), Monochrome, HDR (very useful when there is a lot of difference in light in different areas of the image), Night Shot (a longer exposure to capture more light), Slow Motion , Photo, Video (Full HD), Panoramic, Fast Camera, Document Scanning, Audio Note (allows you to take a picture and record a sound up to 10s). (*for this mode you need a tripod yes or yes 😉 )

• Camera Resolution: 12MP (4:3), 9MP (16:9), 9MP (1:1), 8MP (4:3), 6MP (16:9)
• movie mode: standard, vibrant colors, sharp colors

• Automatically add Leica watermark

• option of Grid Camera: different types of grid to help you compose the image

• Silent mode: so that the shutter does not sound when you shoot a picture

• Timer: Off, 2, 5, and 10s

• Click-to-capture option: you can enable this feature to tap on the screen and shoot or disable it to only focus when you tap on it+

• Capture smiles: shoot automatically when it detects a smile in the frame
• Object Tracking: to focus on a moving subject

• Keep the shutter pressed: for burst photography

• Volume key function: you can set it as shutter, zoom or focus

• Image settings: saturation, contrast and brightness
• Professional mode (or manual mode): aperture, metering mode, ISO (up to 3200), exposure compensation (-4.0 EV, + 4.0 EV), AF-S / AF-C/ MF (manual focus or single or continuous autofocus), white balance.

• Photo editor: It has an integrated photo editor that includes functions such as Rotate, Crop, Filters, Colors (to highlight a single color in the image, for example), Illusion (that’s what they call the blur: circular, linear or blurry), Adjustments (brightness, contrast , saturation, sharpness, highlights, shadows, hue, black and white), Beauty (soften, whiten, remove spots, slimming, enlarge eyes, brighten eyes, whiter teeth…), Mosaic (with pencil and eraser), paint brush, Watermark, Labeling (to add speech bubbles and other drawings)

your strengths

For my taste, the strengths of this smartphone are its double camera that allows a greater definition and sharpness of the image, its possibility of control manually many photographic parameters, which is very intuitive to handle and that for black and white photography is the best that there is now in smartphone.

drawbacks

As there is always some drawback, I have to say that it is not one of the best in screen resolution and that does not record in 4k, but in Full HD. But of course it’s not something so relevant as to stop thinking about it, these technologies change so quickly… Full HD was all the rage and now we’re going for 4K, maybe in a camera it’s more relevant but I don’t think so that you are going to record professional videos with a smartphone, right?

Design

The truth is that the design has been worked on, it is beautiful and elegant. With soft lines and an aesthetic that immediately enters the eye.

The details are very careful visually and tactilely.

Price

You can find it on Amazon for €279.90

Gallery

As we are talking about a smartphone to take photos, the best thing is to show you what it knows how to do, yes, it is clear that a Huawei P9 is not enough to achieve images like the ones I show you, the photographer has to put all of their part, but these are some examples of what you can achieve with this terminal:

Official video

You know, if you are looking for a smartphone that will help you shoot when you don’t have your SLR at hand, or as a second camera for “emergencies”, or for whatever reason but that achieves good images, I hope this article has clarified some ideas. If so, I will be infinitely grateful for a “Like” or if you share it on your favorite social network.

Thank you and see you soon!