Macro Photography with P30 Pro

koi8ru

Member
Dec 30, 2006
35
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As you probably already know, there is more than one way to take close-up pictures with your P30 Pro. You can use the dedicated Super Macro mode (found under More in your stock camera app) or manually set the focus to macro in Pro mode. However, two years of experience have taught me that by far the best way to take really crisp macro shots with my phone is not an obvious one. In fact, I bet you have never even tried it.

You see, our phone comes with 2 primary lenses, each with its own sensor. The main lens boasts a 40MP sensor, making it the default choice for your everyday shots, while the wide secondary lens has a 20MP sensor, which makes it sound a little underwhelming. However, when it comes to macro photography, the wide lens has one major advantage over its big brother - a much shorter minimum focus distance. This allows you to bring the lens much closer to your subject before the image becomes blurry. So to take superior close-up shots with your P30 Pro, all you have to do is switch to the wide lens by selecting the Wide picture mode in the camera app. You can combine this with the dedicated HDR mode (found under More in your stock camera app) to eliminate any unwanted shadows. However, be aware that at such close proximity to the subject the autofocus can no longer be relied on. So manual focusing is strongly recommended.

Below are some sample pictures taken by each lens at their minimum focus distance.

40MP Primary Lens at minimum focus distance:
https://ibb.co/61kjmDQ

40MP Primary Lens, Closer Look:
https://ibb.co/ftpmCnx

20MP Secondary (Wide) Lens at minimum focus distance:
https://ibb.co/f4J7rCD

20MP Secondary (Wide) Lens, Closer Look:
https://ibb.co/dktkjqH

As you can see, the wide lens was able to capture far superior detail at minimum focusing distance compared to the 40MP shot. In real life application this means less cropping and more pictures like these:
https://ibb.co/cTn6W2J
https://ibb.co/1TtJHyz
https://ibb.co/Qb8PfNh

Have fun with your Macro shots!
 
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poulos971

Member
Jun 30, 2010
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It's actually up to you. The RAW file only offers you a lot more freedom, with greater dynamic range and sharpness than a jpg file. You can crop and still get a perfectly sharp picture, you can play with lighting, shadows, colors ... to get exactly what you want.
In my case, a better quality and a more realistic / natural look. Most of the time, I get oversaturated pictures, with an exaggerated HDR effect and lack of detail using the auto mode (and I'm not only talking about macrophotography).

Regarding this specific RAW picture, I cropped and increased saturation and texture using Photoshop. The whole process took no more than ten minutes.
To give you an idea, here is what it looks like unedited : https://ibb.co/3mVKFbX
 

koi8ru

Member
Dec 30, 2006
35
32
0
It's actually up to you. The RAW file only offers you a lot more freedom, with greater dynamic range and sharpness than a jpg file. You can crop and still get a perfectly sharp picture, you can play with lighting, shadows, colors ... to get exactly what you want.
In my case, a better quality and a more realistic / natural look. Most of the time, I get oversaturated pictures, with an exaggerated HDR effect and lack of detail using the auto mode (and I'm not only talking about macrophotography).

Regarding this specific RAW picture, I cropped and increased saturation and texture using Photoshop. The whole process took no more than ten minutes.
To give you an idea, here is what it looks like unedited : https://ibb.co/3mVKFbX
I do enjoy playing with RAW. However, as I only ever post my pictures on social media where their quality gets butchered by the site's own compression engine, I find it difficult to justify the time investment in RAW editing. So I stick to JPEG format in Pro mode with master AI disabled.
 
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Leoxur

Senior Member
Apr 27, 2014
388
51
28
I would add something to this post : shoot in RAW. You'll need to post-process the pictures, but the results are way much better regarding color, sharpness and lighting than what the auto mode can provide !

Quick comparison :

Auto mode :
https://ibb.co/QfzW5F3

RAW file manually edited :
https://ibb.co/bmWmmLq

I can assure you this flower wasn't anywhere near pink !
I tried many times to use RAW, but it works only at full res of 40mp an noise is incredibly hight, even with good light. Ho do yout set for those 2 example shot??
 

poulos971

Member
Jun 30, 2010
44
14
0
I tried many times to use RAW, but it works only at full res of 40mp an noise is incredibly hight, even with good light. Ho do yout set for those 2 example shot??
Yes, the RAW file will always be a full resolution picture (i. e. 40mp using the main camera, 20mp on the ultrawide and 8mp on the telephoto).
To avoid noise, you must shoot at the lowest possible ISO setting ! It also depends on the sensor used (as the main one is bigger, it produces less noisy pictures than the ultrawide / telephoto).

This example picture was shot in 1/500s at 50 ISO using the ultrawide camera.