Sony Xperia 5 :: Great Camera on a Smaller Smartphone! By The Art of Photography

This year has been an fascinating year for smartphones, and what I am excited about is the camera technology that we've seen we've had things like the Huawei P 30 Pro, the iPhone 11 we've had the Google Pixel for the Sony Opera. One I did a review on the Sony Xperia one a few weeks ago. It's a phone that I really love. I love the camera system. That's on here now we have the Sony Xperia v, which is like the little sibling. It's the tiny version of the Xperia One and that's what I want to talk about today, unlike some other phone companies that will remove an essential feature on their lower end model and I, don't know like something like one of the camera lenses.

Sony don't do that. They actually just give you a little mini version of the phone and I want to talk a little about what I'm loving about the Xperia v. So, let's check this out first off the biggest difference between the Xperia v and the Opera. One is that the v is slightly smaller and just a little lighter and because your screen is smaller at 6.1 inches, it's also a 2k screen compared to the 4k that comes on the Xperia one other than that it's the same specs as the larger model. You get the same: snapdragon, 855, processor, 128, gigabytes of internal RAM and a micro SD slot for optional storage.

You also get the same triple camera and lens array. That is one of the top cameras of any smartphone. This year each sensor is 12 megapixels. The ultra wide-angle lens is a 16 millimeter equivalent. The standard wide is a 26 millimeter equivalent and the portrait lens is a 52 millimeter equivalent.

Just like the Xperia one, you have minimal buttons on this phone. There is a fingerprint reader on the side. You have your volume up and down the power button and my favorite. You actually have a dedicated camera button and what's really cool about this, just like the Xperia 1. If you have press it will autofocus, or you can fully press to take an image, or you can adjust your settings to make this continuous high speed.

So as long as I'm pushing down on this button, it's going to take in a series of images. Of course, you also get Sony's IAF technology, which is the first found in any smartphone. Autofocus calculations are performed up to 30 times per second, so it's also extremely fast. You can shoot 10 frames a second in continuous speed, which is really nice for moving or unpredictable subjects and, like the Sony, alpha cameras, your shots are exposed properly and always in focus. You have a hybrid opt electronic image, stabilization system, which assists not only for stills but also for video.

Now, like the Xperia One, the Xperia v maximizes low-light imaging with larger sensor size. It has a pixel pitch of 1.4 microns and you of course have an f-stop of 1.6 on the lens Sony uses the same raw noise reduction that is used in the Alpha series cameras, which will give you exceptional image quality in pretty much any lighting condition. Now Sony does run their own skin on top of the Android OS, but it is one of the best that I've seen and feels very close to a pure Android experience with a few additional features, and so, for instance, the Xperia uses what Sony calls side, Sense double tapping on the side of the display will open a quick menu which is scrollable, either open an app or feature or just swipe down. If you want to close this, if you swipe up on the side of the display, you're going to get the 21 by 9 aspect ratio multi window. What this does are it allows you to use multiple apps that are viewable on the screen.

At the same time, it's really kind of a cool feature, especially since this bone is so long. It actually works really well.21 by 9 is a super wide screen. Cinema format, which the entire phone has been designed around watching media on this device from Netflix or any other provider, is just absolutely fabulous experience I actually traveled this year, I had a really long flight between Los Angeles in New, York, City and I brought my experience. The display is absolutely gorgeous and, of course, it's capable of not only 4k but HDR and hog playback. The only difference is these Xperia v has 2k instead of 4k, and it's kind of negligible.

When I compare them side-by-side, you don't really lose a lot, but this might be a deciding factor if you're trying to decide which phone you want to go with. If you view a lot of media on a phone, so the bigger screen on the Xperia 1 is probably worth the extra money. If this is important to you, we've got Dolby Atmos, and it makes watching content on your phone. A lot of fun Sony also uses what they called dynamic vibration, which is very unusual. So what this does are it uses the phone's haptic vibration to enhance audio that's coming from the device, and so you might not want this on with everything it's kind of weird for YouTube content or even music, but I think it works really well for movies.

Either way you can control it to what you want it to do the screen. So when you tap on one of the volume buttons, the control will come up for the adjustment for dynamic vibration. Shooting video is a pretty cool experience on the Xperia phones as well. Both phones ship with the cinema pro app, which is designed by the cine Alta team, and this is the team that puts together high-end movie, cameras that Sony sells, and the dedicated video app allows for full manual control over movie making, including ISO, and even manual focus, so like literally, you can do, focus pulls on your phone. It's really wild video output is 10 bit HDR and you can apply various Lutz to your footage for various visual effects.

One of my favorites is by far the Venice BS color, which is based on the Sony, Venice cameras. So in fact, there's an entire film that was made on the Xperia one, and I'm going to link this up in the show description, I recommend you watch it. It also includes a behind-the-scenes of how it was made. It's a really nice showcase for what can be done with these smartphones. Now this film was shot entirely on the Xperia 1, but you have all the same technology in the Xperia v.

There is no difference. It's just a smaller form factor. Xperia 5 will be available for order starting November 5th at a retail price of $7.99, the Xperia 1. Interestingly enough Sony are doing a promo on this that same week. So if you want the bigger screen, the bigger phone, you can get this for $50 off that week, and so it becomes $900 us instead of 950.

So I have used my experience several months ago. Quite a bit. I've done a lot of photography with this I've made videos with it. I've traveled, with it, I've used it as a phone and Sony were gracious enough to send me the Xperia 5 more recently, to check out, but I think what Sony is offering with. These phones are a fascinating alternative to what the competition is doing now.

Sony are not new to the smartphone market. They've had experience for a long time. It's a different model number naming system that they've had they have kind of launched a rebranding with the Xperia 1 and now the Xperia 5, and what these phones represent. As I mentioned in my other videos, they are really a collaborative effort with multiple departments under Sony's umbrella. So you have Sony alpha.

You have cine Alta you've got Sony bra via gaming I mean Sony, has all these things that they can bring together with the phone. Now speaking of this from the camera perspective for using this for photography most of the competitions. So if you look at Apple, Huawei Google are experimenting with what we refer to as computational imaging, and so this is a way of performing algorithms on the software level that are able to enhance images. What I love about Sony is with the Xperia One and now the Xperia v. These are just traditional photography cameras.

They just went out of their way to put great sensors and great cameras in these, and I think the lenses are nice, and I think it offers an experience. That's just very different. If you want to do night, photography get something to prop the phone up against. You've got up to 30 seconds of exposure, and you can get some perfect results. You've seen my sample images so anyway, check them out.

I will drop links below love to know what you think so leave me a comment. I'll see you guys in the next video until then later.

Source : The Art of Photography