Hello dear readers. It's time to take stock of our enthusiast competition and pick three winners to whom we'll send selfie sticks from Meizu.
Before announcing the winners, I would like to leave a small comment on my own. I believe that a camera in a phone should be of such high quality that even an ordinary customer would get good shots, I think this is what the company's professionalism shows. I rarely shoot myself, but every time I do I want to see a decent photo.
According to the format of the competition. I have said many times that the volume of the text is not always a guarantee of victory, but some of the participants still continue to send very, very detailed comments. However, some of them were really interesting. And now we are announcing our winners.
Alexander Danilin receives the first selfie stick:
For me, the technical quality of the smartphone camera image is important. Understanding the limitations of both the matrix and the optics, I do not require bokeh from the smartphone camera, shooting at night without noise and other impossibilities. But it is important for me that the camera correctly and quickly fulfills focusing, so that the choice of shutter speed and ISO are adequate, without leading to blur. I would like to see natural color rendition, not a dirty gray scale, but not acidity either. Adequate shumodav and sharping work. The most correct white balance, the ability to choose and customize it. I don't need 15-20 megapixels, 6-8 is optimal. Optical stabilization is not needed either, let the optics be better and cheaper.
The camera in a smartphone is second in importance to me, after the screen. A smartphone with an obscenely bad camera does not exist for me, unfortunately. Optimal for me is pre-top.
Programs like this would be desirable – landscape (low ISO, shutter speed 1/60), sports (high ISO, shutter speed 1/250), child, HDR, twilight (stretching shadows to the detriment of highlights).
I don't take selfies, I don't need a stick. I consider the front camera unnecessary for photo purposes, except as a face and motion detector.
I liked Alexander's style of presentation: short, reasoned and to the point. Congratulations!
Second winner – user with nickname hammygt
Let me write briefly: yes, the quality of the camera is important! And it is precisely the 'quality', not the characteristics on paper. Many will say that optical stabilization, megapixels, etc. are important, and I will say that processing algorithms are more important! Now I use Google Nexus 5X and I can say that I am 90% happy with the camera. The remaining 10% I will write off on the fact that it is almost impossible for them to photograph the moon in the starry sky and cannot be lowered under water. Otherwise, it has a great camera! For living conditions, it is enough for 100%. I'll attach a simple example of a photo taken with friends in a bar. No processing. I have no complaints about the resulting photo. And I store all the photos in Google Photos – it's more convenient and saves space in my smartphone!
Another good reasoned answer, and even with an example of a photo. The shot really came out cool, given the lack of lighting and the large number of people in the photo. Congratulations!
The last prize goes to Sergey Starikov:
I bought both phones that I now use (Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and LG G4) with a focus on the camera and only then on performance and other characteristics. I am a reporter, I work on incidents. Therefore, the ability to take a photo / video and quickly send them to the editorial office – for me, this is, in fact, more than half of the successful work at any event. After all, as you know, it is better to see once than hear 100 times.
I shoot, of course, very often. In the summer, about 80% of the photo was taken on the LG G4 and only the remaining 20% on the Canon 60D. In winter, because of the short daylight hours, you will have to 'uncover' the camera more often, and this is not at all happy.
The difference, by the way, is not very noticeable. In particular, the federal media do not complain, with which we work closely enough. One photo, by the way, made it into the best photo of the week according to ITAR-TASS! Complaints from subscribers about the quality of the photo have not yet been reported.
Video – almost everything is only on a mobile phone, on which I also do primitive editing (cropping / cropping, sound alignment, plates with newsmaker data, watermarks).
I'll make a reservation: I shoot on my phone only if it's 1-5 meters to the subject. If there is more (provided that this is not a general plan), only then I take out the camera.
In principle, everything described above is suitable for 'personal' photos, as well as for those that I post on Instagram. On social networks I post different 'beauties' and something funny.
I store very personal photos and important archives on my hard disk, sometimes with duplication on a removable one. The rest is in Google Photos or OneDrive. On the latter, I have a 1Tb subscription to Office365 and this volume will be enough for me for a very long time.
In general, a good camera in a phone is convenient. It is banal because it is always boring to carry a backpack with a camera with you, and the moment that you want to capture as a souvenir, or share it with other people (loved ones, friends, or subscribers in social networks – it does not matter) can come at any second.
Well, and personally, a good camera in my phone helps me make a living.
P.S. Attached the very photo that TASS liked.
Great comment, Sergey – congratulations!
But you know, I liked one more comment, and there is no prize left for it. Therefore, specifically for this author, I asked Meizu to issue another selfie stick. Marina Turchina, I congratulate you! ?
The camera in the phone, i.e. the one that is almost always at hand. And it is needed, respectively, for everyday household purposes: to shoot a document (so, again, to have it at hand), a schedule, or readings from counters, as already mentioned. The 1.3 Mpix matrix of push-button phones, which were not smartphones, were also suitable for this. Now in my next smartphone-mobile-ceiling-phablet the camera resolution (13Mpix) is almost three times higher than in the first digital camera (5Mpix). And the fotik was purchased for accompanying on trips, and for retaking specific literature (oh, student years – one manual for half a stream :), and so on, and so on …. And these 5MegaPixels were enough! These pictures were enlarged, photoshopped, printed in the size of a poster, etc. Так что современная гонка за количеством этих Мпикс’ов, тем более в телефоне, как-то притянута за уши (кстати сказать, когда занимаюсь 'фотографией ради фотографии' — фотосессии, макросъемка диорам ручной работы и пр. беру зеркалку сони (всего-то) 12 megapixels).
But what is really important for me now with such a 'catch-up camera' is speed. Speed in everything: how quickly the application will start, how quickly the picture will be taken and processed. And one more trick: launching the camera from the lock screen (for which I once loved my iPhone, another 4th, and for which I love the current Meizu M3 Note).
Here is my youngest daughter still awkwardly gets up herself – 'click' and the moment is saved for the family archive, and the eldest is feeding the ducks on the pond, and now the birds came close, close – 'click', the photo was taken, and the ducks in a moment went to those who whose bread has not ended yet, but I managed to catch the moment! These everyday photos are needed only by the closest ones, and the most significant shots will quietly take a place in a photo album in 1015 format, and it is unlikely that my relatives will analyze what I was shooting there.
So, you should not invent a special application for a cell phone camera, or try to bring it closer to professional technology in terms of goals. There is no doubt that it is good when a smartphone with its camera replaces the camera in certain situations, and improving the quality of shooting with a phone is also a plus, but it’s ridiculous to imagine a photographer working with Nokia instead of Leica – at a wedding, in the wild, in a studio, on the front line … ).
Marina came out with a lively and emotional commentary with good examples of using a smartphone camera and well-founded arguments. I hope it will be easier to catch the right moment with the monopod!
Once again, I congratulate our winners, in the near future I will contact you with the contact information I have left. The rest of the participants, I ask you not to be upset, this is not our last competition of enthusiasts. Stay tuned for updates on the site!