SOUNDIMAGEPLUS: Go with the flow - the Smartphone Aesthetic. Plus the 'Beastgrip' and the Huawei P40 Pro.

It's pretty obvious by now that the companies making DSLR and Mirrorless digital cameras and lenses are in serious trouble. Before the Coronavirus attack, they were steadily loosing sales, after it several look on the brink of bankruptcy. This industry won't collapse completely of course, but we may see a lot of scaling down and maybe some mergers to hold on to whatever of the market is left. The Pandemic hasn't exactly helped either. People are using their phones to communicate with and even some TV programmes shot in quarantine have been shot on iPhones.

There is as well a continuing battle between the users of 'proper' cameras and smartphone users. See 35mm v MF, Film v Digital, m4/3 v full frame etc. etc. And this is surely the most pointless conflict on the photographic internet since the 'battle' has already been lost. Smartphones are now the cameras of choice for the majority of the worlds population. And for the past weeks I've been using this.

This is called a Beastgrip. As you can see it's an adjustable cage for a smartphone and it fits most models. This takes away the problems of handling smartphones for photography, with all that unwanted button pressing and since I like a camera to look and feel like one I like it a lot. And as for all that 'It's light, it's small, it fits in your pocket crap' this is for using a smartphone camera seriously for stills and video. Snapshooters who are more concerned about Social Media should stop reading now.

So why have I embraced Smartphone shooting? Are they as good as DSLR's and Mirrorless Cameras? Well not yet, but that doesn't really matter. Are they capable of producing images capable of publication? Well the answer to that is yes and I've been selling smartphone pictures for years. Here's a list of why for me they work.

With the grip above they are easy and fast to use.
The new top of the range phones now have a variety of lenses, all in the one unit.
Smartphones are where all the innovation is happening. Those stuck in the mud camera manufacturers are not even close in terms of that.
They are designed to produce 'out of the box' spot on images.
No dust spots, because there is no lens changing and exposure of the sensor.
The smartphone 'look' with lots of depth of field suits my kind of photography.
They have direct access to the internet. None of those woeful apps the camera companies product.
It's a compact all in one package with great screens that show what your image is going to look like.
They are inconspicuous, though that grip does take a good deal of that away.
With the continuing decline of the camera industry, who knows whether 'proper' cameras will even survive or how much they will cost in the future.
They are silent to use.

Now this isn't for everyone. Wildlife photographers aren't going to switch to smartphones anytime soon. Neither will anyone who uses a lot of serious telephoto lenses, eg. sports photographers. But for general all round photography, smartphones work really well. They are the best cameras for street photography, they shoot great landscapes and architectural images and can handle portraiture very well.

The images above were all shot on smartphones and have sold via picture library sites. OK let's get more specific.

THE BEASTGRIP.

Beastgrip produce accessories for smartphones. The whole idea is to take smartphone photography seriously and produce gear that makes that possible. When I saw the cage my eyes lit up.

I've always liked the results I get from smartphones, but not using them in the field. Too many things to hit and mess up what I'm doing. This cage keeps the phone separate and means that the settings can be changed without holding the phone. Now some people have said this cage is heavy, which is ludicrous. It's not. It's very light and comfortable to use.

Beastgrip sell add on lenses for smartphones which you can attach to the grip. There is a wide angle and a 3x 'telephoto'. Unfortunately both are terrible and I have returned them.

THE HUAWEI P40 PRO

Huawei's latest smartphone and the best camera setup on any smartphone. This is a true genuine camera and if you have your doubts about smartphone cameras this is the one to change your mind. I have bought this as a camera only, I have no intention of ever putting a sim card in it. As you can see it's Leica branded and while I have no idea what Leica's involvement is, there are certainly signs that it's more than just lending their name to it.

The sensor size of the main 50MP lens is 1/1.28 at f/1.9. The diagram below shows how that would compare to other size sensors. The 18mm wide angle drops to a 1/1.54 sensor at f/1.8. The telephoto lens drops to f/3.4.

The current sensor in the iPhone 11 is 1/2.55, so the Huawei P40 pro sensor is significantly larger.

As you can see the Huawei sensor isn't that far from a 1" sensor. Roughly the same as difference between m4/3 and APS-C.

I need to explain the specs.

6.5" Full HD+ OLED touchscreen
Quad 50 MP / 40 MP / 12 MP / 3D sensing main cameras
32 MP front camera

Basically the camera shoots 12MP images. You can zoom using your fingers. It's a 5x optical zoom, which gives you up to the 35mm equivalent of a 125mm lens. (The Pro+ version gives a 10x optical zoom (240mm) , but I think that's pushing it a bit, plus it's only 8MP and a slower lens f/4.4) And you have more options. There is a 50MP 'Pro' camera which gives raw (.DNG) files and it's very good indeed, particularly considering the size of the sensor, which while being one of the biggest ever fitted to a smartphone, is still small compared to Mirrorless / DSLR. Incidentally the raw / DNG files are actually bigger than the jpgs. The contentious part is that it claims to have a 40MP wide angle lens. But this is a Quad Bayer sensor. Now I don't know what that means, but the upshot of this is that the wide angle (18mm in 35mm speak) lens produces a 10MP image. But, and it's a big BUT, you can upsize these images substantially and still retain the quality. And this is a quality lens, like nothing I've ever seen on a smartphone before. It's sharp, clean and handles distortion very well. It also has a genuine 'Leica look'. (N.B. When using this wide camera it switches to 3 x 2 ratio.) Finally there is a 32MP front 'selfie' camera. Personally I don't think that it's very good at all. But then I'm never going to use it.

Now the zoom will go past 5x using a digital zoom, but this needs to be used sparingly, as it goes up to 50x, which pretty much gives you total rubbish. You can shoot Panoramic images with it, there is a night mode which takes a while to take the picture, but is very good for seriously low light. However the camera itself produces excellent high ISO images, so it's hardly needed. the OLED screen is excellent and works great in bright sunshine. The video has superb stabilisation and produces excellent 4K footage. And the battery life is excellent.

All in all it's VERY impressive and here's a few pictures I have shot with it.

Now is it as good as a top of the range mirrorless or DSLR camera? No it isn't but for publication it's damn close. You can even do some 'computational bokeh' if you want. It's great virtue is it's really simple and fast to use. An 18-125mm optical zoom function, all in one small light box with a great live view screen. I absolutely love it and it suits my need to get great depth of field. But then I have the option to do macro work and create some bokeh as well.

The thing that really impresses me about the Huawei P40 Pro is it's versatility and above all it's speed. I can change things around very quickly and use what it offers. Now you probably think I'm crazy but I'm so impressed by the Huawei P40 that I'm selling a lot of gear. All my micro four thirds cameras and lenses and yes, my Leica M10. And no the P40 isn't as good as the Leica, but it's a lot more enjoyable to use. As I've said many times, while I like the idea of good cameras and lenses, that's not my ultimate goal. These days I'm much more concerned as to whether I can get the pictures I want in the simplest way possible.

One final thought. We've all heard the comment that when we take a good picture, some idiot pipes up that we must have a good camera. Well what if we take good pictures and we use the same gear as everybody else?