do you think it's better then middle range budget mirrorless camera ?
I don't know because I stopped using cameras for my trips, since I got a Nexus 5 with HDR+ and before that I mostly used the typical compact Sony cyber shot with Carl Zeiss lense.
And I only regret to use smartphone as main camera when I switched from the N5 to Z5 Compact and went to Paris and took ugly photos. Specially nightly photos and closeup photos. This is the main reason I sold that phone after 6 months and went for the 5X.
Probably you can get better details with those cameras you mention. But there are some key features in HDR+ (this is all post processing) that do a lot of magic:
- Focus in most of the areas. (You can focus on a person's face and still capture the details behind a window that points to the street / or the clouds in the sky/ or other faces; as if you had focused directly on that window or clouds).
- More dark skies at night. The night photos look amazing. Nightly skies try to be converted to a more solid dark colour.
- Same good quality with sunny photos that have a lot of sunlight or sun rays and you can't see well trough the camera app when taking the photo because of the high brightness. After HDR+ you could have a good result more opaque.
Other things I like from the latest Google phones cameras:
- Panoramas. Sometimes I take a panorama with just 1 captured image, because of the increased FoV to fit a building. And sometimes you need to take more than 1 because the building still doesn't fit.
- Capture photos when walking: In previous HDR+ Nexus cameras when you press the shutter, camera starts capturing and you can have blurry photos if you were moving. In The Pixel 2 when I press the shutter of the camera (also walking and with HDR+ enhanced) phone camera blocks and take some time to capture to maximize the possibility of a crisp shot. (And if you press the shutter and starts shaking the camera it won't capture till you stop shaking)
So I'm taking photos when I don't have time to stop now.
- Minimum focus distance: I love close-ups / macro shots and the latest Google phones had a good minimum focus distance and mixed with HDR+ the result is amazing.
(The Z5 Compact I owned used to have a wide angle but terrible minimum focus distance I hate this).
What I don't really care is the new portrait mode. You get 2 photos when using it. With blurry unfocused areas and the original with no blur. I think this is only useful for CV photos or some close-ups or special cases. There is a lot of people that loves this feature. I personally prefer the photo that contains more data for 99% of my captures.
Sent from my Pixel 2
