Huawei – frans goes blog

Compact lenses, great photos?

Sports and wildlife photographers in particular are famous (or notorious) for investing in and carrying around lenses that are often just huge: large, long, and heavy. Is it possible to take great photos with small, compact lenses, or is an expensive and large lens the only option for a hobbysist photographer who’d want to reach better results?

Winter details, captured with Canon EOS M50, and the kit lens: EF-M 15-45mm f/3.5-6.3 IS STM.

I am by no means an authority in optics or lens design, but I think certain key principles are important to take into consideration.

Perhaps one of the first ones is the style of photography one is engaged with. Are you shooting portrait photos indoors, or even in a studio? Or, are you tripping outdoors, trying to get closeup photos of elusive birds and animals? Or, are you rather a landscape photographer? Or, a street photographer?

Sometimes the intended use of photos is also a factor to consider. Are these party photos, or something that you’ll aim to share mostly among your friends in social media? Or, is this that important photo art project that you aim output into large-format prints, and hang to your walls – or, in to a gallery even?

These days, digital camera sensors are “sharp” enough for pretty much any purpose – one of my smartphones, Huawei Mate 20 Pro, for example, has a 40 megapixel main photo sensor, with 7296 × 5472 native resolution. That is more than what you need for a large poster print (depending on viewing distances and PPI settings, a 4000 x 6000 pixels, or even 2000 x 3000 pixels might be enough for a poster print). There are many professional photographers who took their commercial photos for years with cameras that had only 6 or 8 megapixel sensors. And many of those photos were reproduced in large posters, or in covers of glossy magazines, and no-one complained.

Frozen grass, photographed using Huawei Mate 20 Pro smartphone.

The lens and quality of optics are more of a bottleneck: if the lens is “soft”, meaning that it is not capable of focusing all rays of light in consistent, sharp manner, there is no way of achieving very clear looking images with that. But truth be told, in perhaps 90 % of cases with blurry photos, I blame myself rather than my equipment these days. There are badly focused photos, I had a wrong aperture setting or too long exposure time (and was not using a tripod but shooting handheld) and all that contributes to getting a lot of blurry looking photos.

But it is also true, that if one is trying to achieve very high quality results in terms of optical quality, using a more expensive lens is usually something that many people will do. But actually there are “mainstream” photography situations where a cheap lens will produce results that are just – good enough. It is particularly the more extreme situations, where one is for example trying to get a really lot of light into the lens, to capture really detailed scenes in a very consistent manner, where large, heavy and expensive lenses come to play a role. This is also true of portraiture, where a high-quality lens is also used to deliver good separation of person from the background, and the glass elements, their positioning and the aperture blades are designed to produce particularly nice looking “bokeh” effect (the out-of-focus highlights are blurred in an aesthetically pleasing manner). And of course those bird and wildlife photographers value their well-designed, long telephoto range lenses that also capture a lot of light, thereby enabling the photographer to use short enough exposure times and get sharp images of even moving targets.

A cropped detail, photo taken with SIGMA 150-600 mm f/5-6,3 DG OS HSM Contemporary tele-zoom lens on a dim winter’s day.

In many cases it is actually other characteristics rather than the optical image quality that makes a particular lens expensive. It might be the mechanical build quality, weather-proofing, or the manner the focusing, zooming and aperture mechanisms, and how control rings are implemented that are something a professional photographer might be willing to pay for, in one of their main tools.

In street photography, for example, there are completely different kind of priorities as compared to wildlife photography, or studio portraiture, where using a solid tripod is common. In a street, one is constantly moving, and also trying not to be very conspicuous while taking photos. A compact camera with a compact lens is good for those kinds of reasons. Also, if the targets are people and views on city streets, a “normal range” lens is usually preferable. A long-range telephoto lens, or very wide-angle lens will produce very different kinds of effects as compared to the visual feel and visual experiences that people usually experience as “normal images”. In a 35 mm film camera, or “full-frame” digital camera, a 50 mm lens is usually considered a normal lens, whereas with a camera equipped with a (Canon) “crop” sensor (APS-C, 22.2 x 14.8 mm sensor size) would require c. 30 mm lens to produce similar field of view for the image as a 50 mm in a full-frame camera. Lenses with this kinds of short focal ranges can be designed to be physically smaller, and can deliver very good image quality for their intended purposes, even while being nicely budget-priced. There are these days many such excellent “prime” lenses (as contrasted to more complex “zoom” lenses) available from many manufacturers.

One should note here that in case of smartphone photography, everything is of course even much more compact. A typical modern smartphone camera might have a sensor of only few millimeters in size (e.g. in popular 1/3″ type, the sensor is 4.8 x 3.6 mm), so actual focal length of the (fixed) lens may be perhaps 4.25 mm, but that translates into a 26 mm equivalent lens field-of-view, in a full-frame camera. This is thus effectively a wide-angle lens that is good for many indoor photography situations. Many smartphones feature a “2x” (or even “5x”) sensor-lens combinations, that can deliver a normal range (50 mm equivalent in full-frame) or even telephoto ranges, with their small mechanical and optical constructions. This is an impressive achievement – it is much more comfortable to put a camera capable of high-quality photography into your back pocket, rather than lug it around in a dedicate backbag, for example.

Icy view was taken with *Canon EOS M50, and the kit lens: EF-M 15-45mm f/3.5-6.3 IS STM.*

Perhaps the main limitation of smartphone cameras for artistic purposes is that they do not have adjustable apertures. There is always the same, rather small hole where rays of light will enter the lens and finally focus on the image sensor. It is difficult to control the “zone of acceptable sharpness” (or, “depth of field”) with a lens where you cannot adjust aperture size. In fact, it is easy to achieve “hyperfocal” images with very small-sensor cameras: everything in image will be sharp, from very close to infinity. But the more recent smartphones have already slighly larger sensors, and there have already even been experiments to implement adjustable aperture system inside these tiny lenses (Nokia N86 and Samsung Galaxy S9 at least have advertised adjustable apertures). Some manufacturers resort to using algorithmic background blurring to create full-frame camera looking, soft background while still using optically small lenses that naturally have much wider depth of field. When you take a look at the results of such “computational photography” in a large and sharp monitor, the results are usually not as good as with a real, optical system. But, if the main use scenario for such photos is to look at them from small-screen, mobile devices, then – again – the lens and augmentation system together may be “good enough”.

All the photos attached into this blog post are taken with either a compact kit lens, or with a smartphone camera (apart from that single bird photo above). Looking at them from a very high resolution computer monitor, I can find blurriness and all kinds of other optical issues. But personally, I can live with those. My use case in this case did not involve printing these out in poster sizes, and I just enjoyed having a winter-day walk, and taking photos while not carrying too heavy setup. I will also be posting the photos online, so the typical viewing size and situation for them pretty much obfuscates maybe 80 % of the optical issues. So: compact cameras, compact lenses – great photos? I am not sure. But: good enough.

More frozen grass, *Canon EOS M50, and the kit lens: EF-M 15-45mm f/3.5-6.3 IS STM.*

Mobile photography – RAW or JPG?

One photograph – three data-sets, three realities.

Is it worth setting your smartphone camera to use RAW format, instead (or: alongside) of the standard JPG format?

I must say I am not sure. Above you should be able to see three versions of the same photo. The first one is one produced with the automatic settings of my Huawei Mate 20 Pro. It is a f/1.8 photo coming from the main camera module, processed with various algorithms to create a “nice”, tonally rather balanced JPG with 2736 x 3648 pixels.

The second one is direct/non-edited conversion of the original RAW (imported into desktop Lightroom, then directly turned into JPG), with 5456 x 7280 pixels and plenty of information that is potentially valuable for editing, yet it is also bit too dark and the lens quality is frankly probably not quite worth all those pixels, to start with (the depth of field is narrow here, and most of the photo is soft, when you look it 1:1 in a large screen).

The third version is the RAW-based and Lightroom-edited photo, where I have just accepted some “auto” corrections that the software has available for beginners. This time, we can see many of the details again better, since Lightroom has tweaked the exposure and contrast settings and tonal curves. Yet, the change of white balance setting into the automatic “daylight” version has made the cold, Autumn morning photo to appear a bit too warm in colours to my mind.

This could be of course fixed in further, more nuanced and sensible Lightroom editing, but the point perhaps is that the out-of-camera JPG that Huawei is capable of producing is a rather nice compromise in itself. It is optimised for what the small, fixed lenses are capable of achieving, and the file size is good for sharing in social media – which is what most smartphone photos are used for, in any case. Artificial intelligence does it best to produce what a typical “Autumn Leaves” shot should look like. That might then again be something that you like – or not.

It is surely possible to achieve more striking and artistically ambitious (“non-typical”) outcomes when the original photo is taken in RAW, even when it is coming from a smartphone camera. But I would say that the RAW based workflow probably really makes sense when you are using a SLR style camera with a lens that is sharp enough for you to really go deep into the details, do some more ambitious cropping or tonal adjustments, for example.

Or, what do you think?

There are various articles online that you can also have a look on this, e.g.

There is no perfect camera

One of the frustrating parts of upgrading one’s photography tools is the realisation that there indeed is no such thing as “perfect camera”. Truly, there are many good, very good and excellent cameras, lenses and other tools for photography (some also very expensive, some more moderately priced). But none of them is perfect for everything, and will found lacking, if evaluated with criteria that they were not designed to fulfil.

This is particularly important realisation at a point when one is both considering of changing one’s style or approach to photography, at the same time while upgrading one’s equipment. While a certain combination of camera and lens does not force you to photograph certain subject matter, or only in a certain style, there are important limitations in all alternatives, which make them less suitable for some approaches and uses, than others.

For example, if the light weight and ease of combining photo taking with a hurried everyday professional and busy family life is the primary criteria, then investing heavily into serious, professional or semi-professional/enthusiast level photography gear is perhaps not so smart move. The “full frame” (i.e. classic film frame sensor size: 36 x 24 mm) cameras that most professionals use are indeed excellent in capturing a lot of light and details – but these high-resolution camera bodies need to be combined with larger lenses that tend to be much more heavy (and expensive) than some alternatives.

On the other hand, a good smartphone camera might be the optimal solution for many people whose life context only allows taking photos in the middle of everything else – multitasking, or while moving from point A to point B. (E.g. the excellent Huawei P30 Pro is built around a small but high definition 1/1.7″ sized “SuperSensing”, 40 Mp main sensor.)

Another “generalist option” used to be so-called compact cameras, or point-and-shoot cameras, which are in pocket camera category by size. However, these cameras have pretty much lost the competition to smartphones, and there are rather minor advances that can be gained by upgrading from a really good modern smartphone camera to a upscale, 1-inch sensor compact camera, for example. While the lens and sensor of the best of such cameras are indeed better than those in smartphones, the led screens of pocket cameras cannot compete with the 6-inch OLED multitouch displays and UIs of top-of-the-line smartphones. It is much easier to compose interesting photos with these smartphones, and they also come with endless supply of interesting editing tools (apps) that can be installed and used for any need. The capabilities of pocket cameras are much more limited in such areas.

There is an interesting exception among the fixed lens cameras, however, that are still alive and kicking, and that is the “bridge camera” category. These are typically larger cameras that look and behave much like an interchangeable-lens system cameras, but have their single lens permanently attached into the camera. The sensor size in these cameras has traditionally been small, 1/1.7″ or even 1/2.3″ size. The small sensor size, however, allows manufacturers to build exceptionally versatile zoom lenses, that still translate into manageable sized cameras. A good example is the Nikon Coolpix P1000, which has 1/2.3″ sensor coupled with 125x optical zoom – that is, it provides similar field of view as a 24–3000 mm zoom lens would have in a full frame camera (physically P1000’s lenses have a 4.3–539 mm focal length). As a 300 mm is already considered a solid telephoto range, a 3000 mm field of view is insane – it is a telescope, rather than a regular camera lens. You need a tripod for shooting with that lens, and even with image stabilisation it must be difficult to keep any object that far in the shaking frame and compose decent shots. A small sensor and extreme lens system means that the image quality is not very high: according to reviews, particularly in low light conditions the small sensor size and “slow” (small aperture) lens of P1000 translates into noisy images that lack detail. But, to be fair, it is impossible to find a full frame equivalent system that would have a similar focal range (unless one combines a full frame camera body with a real telescope, I guess). This is something that you can use to shoot the craters in the Moon.

A compromise that many hobbyists are using, is getting a system camera body with an “APS-C” (in Canon: 22.2 x 14.8 mm) or “Four-Thirds” (17.3 × 13 mm) sized sensors. These also cannot gather as much light as a full frame cameras do, and thus also will have more noise at low-light conditions, plus their lenses cannot operate as well in large apertures, which translate to relative inability to achieve shallow “depth of field” – which is something that is desirable e.g. in some portrait photography situations. Also, sports and animal photographers need camera-lens combinations that are “fast”, meaning that even in low-light conditions one can take photos that show the fast-moving subject matter in focus and as sharp. The APS-C and Four-Thirds cameras are “good enough” compromises for many hobbyists, since particularly with the impressive progress that has been made in e.g. noise reduction and in automatic focus technologies, it is possible to produce photos with these camera-lens systems that are “good enough” for most purposes. And this can be achieved by equipment that is still relatively compact in size, light-weight, and (importantly), the price of lenses in APS-C and Four-Thirds camera systems is much lower than top-of-the-line professional lenses manufactured and sold to demanding professionals.

A point of comparison: a full-frame compatible 300 mm telephoto Canon lens that is meant for professionals (meaning that is has very solid construction, on top of glass elements that are designed to produce very sharp and bright images with large aperture values) is priced close to 7000 euros (check out “Canon EF 300mm f/2.8 L IS II USM”). In comparison, and from completely other end of options, one can find a much more versatile telephoto zoom lens for APS-C camera, with 70-300 mm focal range, which has price under 200 euros (check our e.g. “Sigma EOS 70-300mm f/4-5.6 DG”). But the f-values here already tell that this lens is much “slower” (that is, it cannot achieve large aperture/small f-values, and therefore will not operate as nicely in low-light conditions – translating also to longer exposure times and/or necessity to use higher ISO settings, which add noise to the image).

But: what is important to notice is that the f-value is not the whole story about the optical and quality characteristics of lenses. And even if one is after that “professional looking” shallow depth of field (and wants to have a nice blurry background “boukeh” effect), it can be achieved with multiple techniques, including shooting with a longer focal range lens (telephoto focal ranges come with more shallow depth of fields) – or even using a smartphone that can apply the subject separation and blur effects with the help of algorithms (your mileage may vary).

And all this discussion has not yet touched the aesthetics. The “commercial / professional” photo aesthetics often dominate the discussion, but there are actually interesting artistic goals that might be achieved by using small-sensor cameras better, than with a full-frame. Some like to create images that are sharp from near to long distance, and smaller sensors suit perfectly for that. Also, there might be artistic reasons for hunting particular “grainy” qualities rather than the common, overly smooth aesthetics. A small sensor camera, or a smartphone might be a good tool for those situations.

One must also think that what is the use situation one is aiming at. In many cases it is no help owning a heavy system camera: if it is always left home, it will not be taking pictures. If the sheer size of the camera attracts attention, or confuses the people you were hoping to feature in the photos, it is no good for you.

Thus, there is no perfect camera that would suit all needs and all opportunities. The hard fact is that if one is planning to shoot “all kinds of images, in all kinds of situations”, then it is very difficult to say what kind of camera and lens are needed – for curious, experimental and exploring photographers it might be pretty impossible to make the “right choice” regarding the tools that would truly be useful for them. Every system will certainly facilitate many options, but every choice inevitably also removes some options from one’s repertoire.

One concrete way forward is of course budget. It is relatively easier with small budget to make advances in photographing mostly landscapes and still-life objects, as a smartphone or e.g. an entry-level APS-C system camera with a rather cheap lens can provide good enough tools for that. However, getting into photography of fast-moving subjects, children, animals – or fast-moving insects (butterflies) or birds, then some dedicated telephoto or macro capabilities are needed, and particularly if these topics are combined with low-light situations, or desire to have really sharp images that have minimal noise, then things can easily get expensive and/or the system becomes really cumbersome to operate and carry around. Professionals use this kinds of heavy and expensive equipment – and are paid to do so. Is it one’s idea of fun and good time as a hobbyist photographer to do similar things? It might be – or not, for some.

Personally, I still need to make up my mind where to go next in my decades-long photography journey. The more pro-style, full-frame world certainly has its certain interesting options, and new generation of mirrorless full-frame cameras are also bit more compact than the older generations of DSLR cameras. However, it is impossible to get away from the laws of physics and optics, and really “capable” full frame lenses tend to be large, heavy and expensive. The style of photography that is based on a selection of high-quality “prime” lenses (as contrasted to zooms) also means that almost every time one changes from taking photos of the landscape to some detail, or close-up/macro subject, one must also physically remove and change those lenses. For a systematic and goal oriented photographer that is not a problem, but I know my own style already, and I tend to be much more opportunistic: looking around, and jumping from subject and style to another all the time.

One needs to make some kinds of compromises. One option that I have been considering recently is that rather than stepping “up” from my current entry level Canon APS-C system, I could also go the other way. There is the interesting Sony bridge camera, Sony RX10 IV, which has a modern 1″ sensor and image processor that enables very fast, 315-point phase-detection autofocus system. The lens in this camera is the most interesting part, though: it is sharp, 24-600mm equivalent F2.4-4 zoom lens designed by Zeiss. This is a rather big camera, though, so like a system cameras, this is nothing you can put into your pocket and carry around daily. In use, if chosen, it would complement the wide-angle and street photography that I would be still doing with my smartphone cameras. This would be a camera that would be dedicated to those telephoto situations in particular. The UI is not perfect, and the touch screen implementation in particular is a bit clumsy. But the autofocus behaviour, and quality of images it creates in bright to medium light conditions is simply excellent. The 1″ sensor cannot compete with full frame systems in low-light conditions, though. There might be some interesting new generation mirrorless camera bodies and lenses coming out this year, which might change the camera landscape in somewhat interesting ways. So: the jury is still out!

Some links for further reading:

The right camera lens?

Currently in the Canon camp, my only item from their “Lexus” line – of the more high-quality professional L lenses – is the old Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 L USM (pictured). The second picture, the nice crocus close-up, is however not coming from that long tube, but is shot using a smartphone (Huawei Mate 20 Pro). There are professional quality macro lenses that would definitely produce better results on a DSLR camera, but for a hobbyist photographer it is also a question of “good enough”. This is good enough for me.

The current generation of smartphone cameras and optics are definitely strong in the macro, wide angle to normal lens ranges (meaning in traditional terms the 10-70 mm lenses on full frame cameras). Going to telephoto territory (over 70 mm in full frame terms), a good DSLR lens is still the best option – though, the “periscope” lens systems that are currently developed for smartphone cameras suggest that the situation might change in that front also, for hobbyist and everyday photo needs. (See the Chinese Huawei P30 Pro and OPPO’s coming phones’ periscope cameras leading the way here.) The powerful processors and learning, AI algorithms are used in the future camera systems to combine data coming from multiple lenses and sensors for image-stabilized, long-range and macro photography needs – with very handy, seamless zoom experiences.

My old L telephoto lens is non-stabilized f/4 version, so while it is “fast” in terms of focus and zoom, it is not particularly “fast” in terms of aperture (i.e. not being able to shoot in short exposure times with very wide apertures, in low-light conditions). But in daytime, well-lighted conditions, it is a nice companion to the Huawei smartphone camera, even while the aging technology of Canon APS-C system camera is truly from completely different era, as compared to the fine-tuning, editing and wireless capabilities in the smartphone. I will probably next try to set up a wireless SD card & app system for streaming the telephoto images from the old Canon into the Huawei (or e.g. iPad Pro), so that both the wide-angle, macro, normal range and telephoto images could all, in more-or-less handy manner, meet in the same mobile-access photo roll or editing software. Let’s see how this goes!

(Below, also a Great Tit/talitiainen, shot using the Canon 70-200, as a reference. In an APS-C crop body, it gives same field of view as a 112-320 mm in a full frame, if I calculate this correctly.)

Talitiainen (shot with Canon EOS 550D, EF 70-200mm f/4 L USM lens).

Life with Photography: Then and Now

I have kept a diary, too, but I think that the best record of life and times comes from the photographs taken over the years. Much of the last century (pre-2000s) photos of mine are collected in traditional photo albums: I used to love the craft of making photo collages, cutting and combining pieces of photographs, written text and various found materials, such as travel tickets or brochure pieces into travel photo albums. Some albums were more experimental: in pre-digital times it was difficult to know if a shot was technically successful or not, and as I have always mostly worked in colour rather than black-and-white, I used to order the film rolls developed and every frame printed, without seeing the final outcomes. With some out-of-focus, blurred or plain random, accidental shots included into every film spool, I had plenty of materials to build collages that were focused on play with colour, dynamics of composition or some visual motif. This was fun stuff, and while one certainly can do this (and more) e.g. with Photoshop with the digital photos, there is something in cutting and combining physical photos that is not the same as a digital collage.

The first camera of my own was Chinon CE-4, a budget-class Japanese film camera from the turn of 1970s/1980s. It served me well over many years, and with it’s manual and “semi-automatic” (Aperture Priority) exposure system and support for easy double exposures.

Chinon CE-4 (credit:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/pwiwe/463041799/in/pool-camerawiki/ ).

I started transitioning to digital photography first by scanning paper photos and slides into digital versions that could then be used for editing and publishing. Probably among my earliest actual digital cameras was HP PhotoSmart 318, a cheap and almost toy-like device with 2.4-megapixel resolution, 8 MB internal flash memory (plus supported CompactFlash cards), a fixed f/2.8 lens and TTL contrast detection autofocus. I think I was shooting occasionally with this camera already in 2001, at least.

Few years after that I started to use digital photography a bit more in travels at least. I remember getting my first Canon cameras for this purpose. I owned at least a Canon Digital IXUS v3 – this I was using at least already in the first DiGRA conference in Utrecht, in November 2003. Even while still clearly a “point-and-shoot” style (compact) camera, this Canon one was based on metal construction and the photos it produced were a clear step up above the plastic HP device. I started to convert into a believer: the future was in digital photography.

Canon Digital IXUS v3 (credit:
https://fi.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiedosto:Canon_Digital_Ixus_V3.jpg ).

After some saving, I finally invested into my first digital “system camera” (DSLR) in 2005. I remember taking photos in the warm Midsummer night that year with the new Canon EOS 350D, and how magical it felt. The 8.0-megapixel CMOS image sensor and DIGIC II signal processing and control unit (a single-chip system), coupled with some decent Canon lenses meant that it was possible to experiment with multiple shooting modes and get finely-detailed and nuanced night and nature photos with it. This was also time when I both built my own (HTML based) online and offline “digital photo albums”, but also joined the first digital photo community services, such as Flickr.

Canon EOS 550D (credit:
https://www.canon.fi/for_home/product_finder/cameras/digital_slr/eos_550d/ ).

It was five years later, when I again upgraded my Canon system, this time into EOS 550D (“Rebel T2i” in the US, “Kiss X4” in Japan). This again meant considerable leap both in the image quality and also in features that relate both to the speed, “intelligence” and convenience of shooting photos, as well as to the processing options that are available in-camera. The optical characteristics of cameras as such have not radically changed, and there are people who consider some vintage Zeiss, Nikkor or Leica camera lenses as works of art. The benefits of 550D over 350D for me were mostly related to the higher resolution sensor (18.0-megapixel this time) and the ways in which DIGIC 4 processor reduced noise, provided much higher speeds, and even 1080p video (with live view and external microphone input).

Today, in 2019, I am still taking Canon EOS 550D with me in any event or travel where I want to get the best quality photographs. This is mostly due to the lenses than the actual camera body, though. My two current smartphones – Huawei Mate 20 Pro and iPhone 8 Plus – both have cameras that come with both arguably better sensors and much more capable processors than this aging, entry-level “system camera”. iPhone has dual 12.0-megapixel sensors (f/1.8, 28mm/wide, with optical image stabilization; f/2.8, 57mm/telephoto) that both are accompanied by PDAF (a fast autofocus technology based on Phase Detection). The optics in Huawei are developed in collaboration with Leica and come as a seamless combination of three (!) cameras: the first has a very large 40.0-megapixel sensor (f/1.8, 27mm/wide), the second one has 20.0-megapixels (f/2.2, 16mm/ultrawide), and the third 8.0-megapixels (f/2.4, 80mm/telephoto). It is possible to use both optical and digital zoom capabilities in Huawei, make use of efficient optical image stabilization, plus a hybrid technology involving phase detection as well as laser autofocus (a tiny laser transmitter sends a beam into the subject, and with the received information the processor is capable of calculating and adjusting for the correct focus). Huawei also utilizes advanced AI algorithms and its powerful Kirin 980 processor (with two “Neural Processing Units, NPUs) to optimize the camera settings, and apply quickly some in-camera postprocessing to produce “desirable” outcomes. According to available information, Huawei Mate 20 Pro can process and recognize “4,500 images per minute and is able to differentiate between 5,000 different kinds of objects and 1,500 different photography scenarios across 25 categories” (whatever those are).

Huawei Mate 20 Pro, with it’s three cameras (credit: Frans Mäyrä).

But with all that computing power today’s smartphones are not capable (not yet, at least) to outplay the pure optical benefits available to system cameras. This is not so crucial when documenting a birthday party, for example, as the lenses in smartphones are perfectly capable for short distance and wide-angle situations. Proper portraits are somewhat borderline case today: a high-quality system camera lens is capable to “separate” the person from the background and blur the background (create the beautiful “bokeh” effect). But the powerful smartphones like iPhone and Huawei mentioned above come effectively with an AI-assisted Photoshop built into them, and can therefore detect the key object, separate it, and blur the background with algorithms. The results can be rather good (good enough, for many users and use cases), but at the same time it must be said that when a professional photographer aims for something that can be enlarged, printed out full-page in a magazine, or otherwise used in a demanding context, a good lens attached into a system camera will prevail. This relates to basic optical laws: the aperture (hole, where the light comes in) can be much larger in such camera lenses, providing more information for the image sensor, the focal length longer – and the sensor itself can also be much larger, meaning that e.g. fast-moving objects (sports, animal photography) and low-light conditions will benefit. With several small lenses and sensors, the future “smart cameras” can probably provide an ever-improving challenge to more traditional photography equipment, combining, processing data and filling-in such information that is derived from machine learning, but a good lens coupled with a system camera can help creating unique pictures in more traditional manner. Both are needed, and both have a future in photography cultures, I think.

The main everyday benefit of e.g. Huawei Mate 20 Pro vs old-school DSLR such as Canon EOS 550D is the portability. Few people go to school or work with a DSLR hanging in their neck, but a pocket-size camera can always travel with you – and be available when that unique situation, light condition or a rare bird/butterfly presents itself. With the camera technologies improving, the system cameras are also getting smaller and lighter, though. Many professionals still prefer rather large and heavy camera bodies, as the big “grip” and solid buttons/controls provide better ergonomics, and the heavy body is also a proper counterbalance for large and heavy telephoto lenses that many serious nature or sports photographers need for their work, for example. Said that, I am currently thinking that my next system camera will no longer probably be based on the traditional SLR (Single-Lens Reflex) architecture – which, btw, is already over three hundred years old, if the first reflex mirror “camera obscura” systems are taken into an account. The mirrorless interchangeable lens camera systems are maintaining the component-based architecture of body+lenses, but eliminate the moving mirror and reflective prisms of SLR systems, and use electronic viewfinders instead.

I have still my homework to do regarding the differences in how various mirrorless systems are being implemented, but it also looks to my eye that there has been a rather rapid period of technical R&D in this area recently, with Sony in particular leading the way, but the big camera manufacturers like Canon and Nikon now following, releasing their own mirrorless solutions. There is not yet quite as much variety to choose for amateur, small-budget photographers such as myself, with many initial models released into the upper, serious-enthusiast/professionals price range of multiple-thousands. But I’d guess that the sensible budget models will also follow, next, and I am interested to see if it is possible to move into a new decade with a light, yet powerful system that would combine some of the best aspects from the history of photography with the opportunities opened by the new computing technologies.