It’s arguably the most picturesque city in the world. Renowned for its unique architecture, beauty, art, history and culture, Paris was the host city for the unveiling of Huawei’s newest flagship release the P30 and P30 Pro. Whilst on-site for the announcements, we left our DSLR at home for the duration of the trip and travelled the city armed only with the P30 Pro to put its bold camera claims to the test and well, we might be leaving the DSLR, and any other smart phone for that matter, at home from now on.
How do you top October’s Huawei Mate 20 Pro which was well received for its triple camera system? You feature four cameras. The P30 Pro has the Leica Quad Camera System in two, neat strips on the top-right of the camera. They are barely raised and the aesthetic is smooth and clean. The Pro features a SuperZoom Lens and 20 MP Ultra Wide Angle Lens, a 40 MP Super Sensing Camera and a TOF (Time-of-Flight) Camera that helps with perspective and distance and is particularly useful in Portrait Mode to make subjects stand-out in front of backgrounds.
The systems complement and work together to successfully stun with the series’ greatest attribute – the 10x Hybrid Zoom. The SuperZoom Lens is supported by the colour saturation of the 40 MP main camera and stability of the OIS to let you zoom in with clarity and detail that shocked us. The Pro even boasts a 50x Digital Zoom that still impresses. As you will see below, whilst Ultra Wide will become one of your favorite modes to use because of how much of a scene you can capture, it does suffer from stretching and blurring on the sides as well as over-exposure of the whites.
The following examples have been resized for use in the article but for uncompressed originals you can head HERE.
The Louvre
Why bother trying to battle packs of tourists around artworks when you can take clear photos from the back of the room?
Palace of Versailles
Eiffel Tower
Digital Zoom
Portrait Mode
40MP RAW
40MP RAW photos taken with the “Pro” mode come out at 70MB .dng files. Whilst massive, they are stunning with the dynamic range and information they capture and it makes extensive and professional editing a possibility. I mean, even the RAW files my Canon 5D Mk IV captures are around 15MB a file. Shadows and highlights are more faithful to the original scene in the RAW versions. These RAW files have naturally been compressed to be used in this article but I have made them available HERE with the other uncompressed imagery that is featured in this piece.
Video Test – 1080p, 1080p 60fps, 4KUHD
As you can see from recording the same scene in different video modes, Hybrid Zoom appears to become disabled when filming in 60fps and there is no stabilisation in SuperWide.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQFS4R5GkL0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hlfz-HjfZIo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0-5Ku2xsoE
Huawei P30 (from $1099 AUD) and P30 Pro (from $1599 AUD) will be released in Australia on Tuesday 16th April. Pre-orders (at https://www.huaweipromotions.com.au/) are now open and come with a complimentary Sonos One.
