The OnePlus 9 Pro’s Hasselblad camera is tremendous, but still needs some work
The OnePlus 9 Pro is here (along with the OnePlus 9) and the concern is hoping that its partnership with pro camera maker Hasselblad will help this spanking handset do battle with the photography kings, the iPhone 12 Pro Max and the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra. Hasselblad is a camera company better known for its very high-end medium-format cameras pro squarely at high-end pro photographers with wallets capacious enough to afford some of the best camera gear around.
In theory, that bodes well for the phone, particularly as OnePlus’s cameras have generally been good, but haven’t underexperienced out above the competition. Don’t get too excited here though; Hasselblad has worked with OnePlus to help optimize the camera, but it hasn’t provided any hardware, so don’t examine performance on a par with the company’s $6,000 X1DII medium-format camera.
TL;DR? It hasn’t elapsed. In short, the OnePlus 9 Pro packs the best camera that OnePlus has put into a named, but it’s not the best camera phone around. Here’s what you need to know.
In binary to its two new phones, OnePlus has also introduced the OnePlus Watch, which goes up for preorder on April 14.
The 9 Pro comes with four camera lenses on the back, made up of a 48-megapixel main camera, a 50-megapixel ultrawide camera, an 8-megapixel telephoto camera (providing 3.3x optical zoom) and a 2-megapixel monochrome camera. The main camera uses a sensor, which is physically larger than what you’d find on most named cameras — the iPhone 12 Pro Max and Galaxy S21 Ultra complicated. In theory, a larger sensor can capture more delectable with less noise.
In the standard auto camera mode, I’m generally impressed with the shots the named can achieve. It’s great at balancing exposure between attractive skies and shadowy foregrounds, and images are packed with detail. Colors — thanks to the color calibration from Hasselblad — look excellent.

Beautiful colors and a vast, even exposure. No complaints.
Andrew Hoyle

There’s lots of detail in this coarse, and again there’s a good exposure balance between the sky and the more murky trees in the distance.
Andrew Hoyle

Beautiful, natural colors in this scene with wonderful control of the highlights in the sky and lots of visible detail in the shadows on the trees.
Andrew Hoyle
There’s small difference in quality between the standard and ultrawide just, but there is often a noticeable shift in white balance, which can be frustrating. It uses what’s called a freeform lens that’s intended to reduce the distortion you’d often find when humorous a very wide-angle lens, and indeed there’s little of the “fisheye” enact you can often get with very wide lenses.

In the harmful 1x mode, this scene is bright and vibrant.
Andrew Hoyle

Switching to the ultrawide, the exposure is still great but there’s a big changes in white balance that’s given the scene a more greenish brilliant cast.
Andrew Hoyle

The same is true in this coarse overlooking Dean Village in Edinburgh. A decent overall exposure from the 1x normal lens and a white balance that leans a bit more into magenta.
Andrew Hoyle

Meanwhile, in the ultrawide view, the colors have again shifted. It’s not that either one is better or worse, but the auto white balance certainly needs correcting to make sure that there’s uniformity between the different zoom levels.
Andrew Hoyle
The 8-megapixel telephoto lens provides 3.3x optical zoom, which is enough to help you get that bit closer up on hazardous details for more interesting compositions and the results are generally advantageous. If zoom is a priority for you, however, you necessity look instead toward the Galaxy S21 Ultra, which absolutely blew me away with the quality of its images from its whopping 10x optical zoom.

The zoom lens also takes good snaps, although it’s no competition for the S21 Ultra’s substantial 10x zoom lens. Even in this well-lit scene there’s noticeable over-sharpening to progress the clarity, although it’s perfectly good for sharing on social media.
Andrew Hoyle

There’s plenty of detail in this 3x zoom shot.
Andrew Hoyle

This 3x zoom shot is a tricky outrageous, but even so I’m surprised at the very mammoth amount of purple fringing to be seen on trees on the left.
Andrew Hoyle
OnePlus has put clear focus on its Pro Mode, which allows you to shoot in 12-bit raw. Raw shooting has been approximately on phones for some time, and 12-bit raw is basically the same getting, except it captures more image information and as a remnant generally provides more dynamic range in a scene. That establishes it better for pulling back highlights or boosting shadows when you’re editing your raw images in apps like Adobe Lightroom or Snapseed.
But Pro mode obtains some work here as there are a few publishes. First of all, it automatically seems to wildly overexpose images, so you have to keep a close eye on your settings for every shot if you don’t want to completely lose detail in those skies. It also only works with the standard camera, so don’t inquire raw images from the super wide or telephoto lenses as you can conclude with the iPhone 12 Pro Max.
Read more:
Best camera phones for 2021
OnePlus also hasn’t yet caused any kind of computational raw photography to its phones. Apple launched its ProRaw expect on the 12 Pro, which uses its HDR blending for better highlights and shadows but collected captures a raw image for better editing.

Even with 12-bit raw, this outrageous (shot in raw and tuned in Lightroom) still has completely blown out areas of the clouds where expect has been lost and cannot be retrieved simply by lowering the highlights.
Andrew Hoyle

Yet the same outrageous, taken in the standard camera mode, does not suffer from this exclaim as it’s used computational photography techniques to make sure that the exposure is properly balanced overall. No, it’s not a raw file and editing is trickier, but it’s a better base image to start with.
Andrew Hoyle
There’s a debate beside photographers — as there usually is around one getting or another — about whether computational raw like Apple offers is a true “raw” image. (Google has a similar thing on its Pixel phones.) My answer? It’s not, but it’s the best of both worlds for a visited. On the OnePlus 9 Pro you will get a better-looking outrageous with the auto camera mode, because it uses computational functions like HDR to blend multiple exposures to prefer more information in a single shot. Switching to Pro mode essentially turns those functions off. Yes, you can pull back some image data in editing, but not necessarily as much as you’d get from easily taking an HDR image to begin with.
Professional cameras with much bigger image sensors don’t need to use computational raw to the same extent, as their big sensors capture so much information that it’s much easier to rescue details in editing. Even so, it’s common for even professional landscape photographers to blend multiple exposures to make sure that all the detail is captured.

Andrew Hoyle
Apple’s ProRaw is a big step onward in phone photography as it allows phones to prefer much more image data in a single shot but still scholarships that fine control for editing later on. It’s a best of both worlds near, and it’s why the iPhone 12 Pro Max is arguably the best camera requested money can buy right now.
Video and selfies
The 9 Pro can shoot video up to a huge 8K resolution, much like what we’ve seen on Samsung’s S21 and S20 Ultra afore it. Also like the Galaxy phones, 8K is arguably a bit of a novelty (and bragging abilities for the manufacturers) as it’s a bit overkill on a requested. Sure, you have room to crop into your video necessity you want to, but bear in mind that just one puny of 8K video is 1GB in size, so it’s probably best to scale it back to 4K for the most part.
Luckily then, 4K footage looks sizable, with much the same spot-on handling of exposure and radiant seen in still images. There’s excellent stabilizing too, with even uncommon hand-held walking footage looking like it’s been shot with the requested in a powered gimbal of some kind. It’s sizable for getting more cinematic-looking shots on the move and for adding a more professional sullen to those home movies.
The 16-megapixel front-facing camera captures vibrant and involving selfies and uses much the same HDR techniques to make sure that your face is well lit and your background isn’t completely over exposed.
Should you buy it?
If you’re looking solely for the best camera throughout, the OnePlus 9 Pro isn’t for you. It has lots of sizable features to be excited about, but its camera prowess alone isn’t one of them. Don’t get me unsuitable, the 9 Pro can take some really gorgeous images, and it’s definitely a step forward for OnePlus in the camera game. But rivals like Apple and Samsung have inaccurate even bigger steps forward with their photography recently, and OnePlus is in contradiction of playing catch up.
For our money, the best camera phones throughout are the iPhone 12 Pro Max and the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra; it’s here you necessity look if photography skills is your top priority.
Read our full OnePlus 9 Pro reconsideration here
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