Sony Xperia Z5 camera review

Sure,
these must be some pretty special sausages because a security guy "reprimanded" me about taking shots of dried sausages ..well
http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/0627397243/photos/3397884/z5
an older one
http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/0627397243/photos/3397880/z5

Thanks for these. Unfortunately I'm still not convinced. They seem very clear towards the middle but soft / out of focus / smeared towards the edges. Hmmm?

Yes, they wrote the same thing about the Z2 and mine turned out to have a plastic back anyway, after I walked around with it for 6 months believing it was glass.

There is a distinct possibility, that they ship different versions to different regions. Some may have glass, others may have plastic / polycarbonate or whatever it is.

Certainly, glass could both be a good thing or a bad thing - less easy to scratch but could shatter.

I tend to put a protective foil on both sides and call it a day. :)

Your Xperia device might have been a clone. It should be fairly easy to check, refer to relevant xda forums or ask Sony.

Joe, did you look at the samples taken at ISO40?
Flagship phones from other brands do much better and even the One Plus 2 does and that phone now costs 30% less than the Z5.
But you have to look for yourself to see it. There are more than enough samples in this review.

Joe, do some Googling. I had Sony XH50V, some pictures at ISO100-200 are like paintings at %100 magnification. Sony MUST produce 8-10MP sensors, then I'd reconsider them.

Uh, that camera's nearly 3 years old. A LOT has happened since then, especially with Sony sensors.

I can't remark on these photos,no didn't take em, the ones my Z3v spits out are pretty awesome, but you have to use certain techniques. I imagine the same applies to the Z5 straight out of the phone they're a mess.

@solarsky Look at gsmarena blind shootout tests. People voted for pictures without knowing the manufacturer. Lumia 950XL came out last in both day-time and night-time pictures. They compared LG V10, Note 5, iPhone 6s Plus and Lumia 950XL.

Well, get Microsoft to send me one and I'll get on the review right now. It's not always as easy as you think...working on it though...

@Lars Rhem Ich hab selbst schon längst ein Lumia 950 XL. Frag doch mal Bekannte ;-)

Ich weiss auch, dass man das Ding schon lange kaufen kann, aber leider hat keiner meiner Bekannten eins. Es ist eben um einiges einfacher, die Geräte zu testen, die man auf dem Schreibtisch liegen hat. Bei den Herstellern, die da Schwierigkeiten machen, dauert es dann halt leider etwas länger. Ausserdem arbeite ich im Normalfall ca. 2 Wochen an einer Review, so lange geben selbst die besten Freunde ihr Smartphone nicht her :)

THe faster aperture also helps keep the shutter speed up. Since you can't freeze movement with flash on a phone, you tend to get a lot of motion blur as the light drops. An extra stop means twice the shutter speed and half the motion blur problem.

I'm surprised to see even f/1.7 lenses today. The f/1.8 lens on the Note 5 is edge to edge sharp. I wonder if we can even go faster. Could we have a f/1.0 lens (or faster) some day, and still keep the edge to edge sharpness, with it bulking up the phone? If we can shoot something about 3 feet away and have a little bit of background blur, it would be nice.

The sensor seems capable, but the destructive noise reduction and oversharpening makes the camera worthless. Other companies like samsung and apple leave their images intact. And those images look good, even when they are taken with a smartphone.

@ bubblyboo ...... nice product ...... and not that expensive considering. I wonder how much 200GB would cost on an Iphone ...... 2000$?

Interesting, in Canada good fast Internet service costs 70$ minimum per month for 75GB from Bell.ca. That is 840$/year. Generously, the average Canadian wage is 50K a year and that has a huge bimodal skew. Other unlimited plans are so slow in most areas that "unlimited" is actually very limited.

I use Bell LTE and admit it provides fast and very reliable service, albeit at a cost. Before the CRTC ruling in 2014, I paid 75$ /month for cell service and 6GB of LTE data. This works well for me mostly. After the CRTC ruling I would have to pay an extra 2000$ over 2 years to get the same service. Obviously Bell and Rogers was making a killing on all the dirty tricks the CRTC ruled against.
As you can see, in Canada, data is actually quite expensive and far from unlimited. Especially true considering a HD movie sucks 3GB per hour.

iPhone 6s+ is water resistant but not water proof. There is also Galaxy S6 Active that's waterproof as long as you haven't drop it yet.

Lars and Pelasdf, thanks for your suggestions.

You mean the OOF part? Show me another camera phone that does that better. One that also shows better results with details within the focal plane. If you scale down a 1020 image to the resolution of the sony, it will show more detail. (and that's obvious, because of it's larger sensor). I'm not saying drop your dslr's and go shoot with a Lumia because no camera phone is great. But to me the pureview lumia's are still unmatched compared to other camera phones. And if a phone is the only thing you have at hand to snap a photo, it better be a Lumia.

Note 5 and S6 Edge in Pro Mode. I have 1020 and Note 5, they're better than my Lumia. You can check a good post here ... http://smartcam.club/node/3306. Wait for my personal compare between 1020 and Note 5 in Pro mode. ok ?

Jostian I have a 808 too, for me ... the best in town until nowdays ! No OOF like my 1020.

Take a look !

Z5c...... http://f-picture.net/lfp/i008....
808 pureview...... http://f-picture.net/lfp/s017....

Z5c......http://f-picture.net/lfp/s018.radikal...
808 puereview.......http://f-picture.net/lfp/s019.radikal...

Sorry ! Here the links
Z5
http://f-picture.net/lfp/i008.radikal.ru/1602/d2/a6f88e6c00d3.jpg/htm
808
http://f-picture.net/lfp/s017.radikal.ru/i404/1602/77/42018f8463a2.jpg/htm

Z5
http://f-picture.net/lfp/s018.radikal.ru/i502/1602/ba/72317fe5e949.jpg/htm
808
http://f-picture.net/lfp/s019.radikal.ru/i605/1602/68/0637974c3cb7.jpg/htm

Sony is a shame !

Yes the 808 is even better, i know. Though because of symbian you get a camera where you can call with (sort of). If you talk about IQ only, that's probably the best way to go, otherwise a 1020 and 1520 that will probably run windows 10 mobile soon will be a really good compromise. Again, compared to this sony or many other of the current flagship phone models.

Hi Jostian, look how 950 XL and S6 Edge Plus are really close ... https://www.flickr.com/photos/smartcamclub/sets/72157664454370225

Who's the best Lumia 1020 or Note 5 ??? https://www.flickr.com/photos/135916561@N06/

then the natural question Mr. Rehm is which aspect ratio gives which resolution?

It's 23Mp in 4:3 and just over 20MP in 16:9 but this being a multi aspect ratio sensor it actually has almost 25MP in total.

Actually Z5's focal length (35mm equivalent) is very much 24mm in 4:3 aspect ratio. In 16:9, it's about 23mm. So the field of view is much wider than any other phone. The lens is in ultra wide-angle category.

This is the main reason i purchased a Z5 Premium. I love ultra wide-angles. Being able to carry a high quality ultra wide-angle in my jeans front pocket is amazing. Image quality overall is very good.

Only problem i have is with the camera software. The camera app is very limited and UI is unintuitive. What's worse, 3rd party camera apps do not function properly on this phone because of Sony's bugs in camera software. I hope Sony will fix the software soon.

The image quality is excellent at base ISO 40 when subject is in focus and shutter speed is fast enough. Don't look at first photo at ISO800 - no smartphone would do significantly better.

The problem here is that out-of-focus and unsharp areas at the edges get some ridiculous over-sharpening coupled with aggressive noise reduction, so these are smeared.

However, if you look at any daylight photo, everything that is in focus is very sharp and clean, and that is at 23MP, which is quite an achievement. This is also how DxO measured IQ - whole test chart is in focus.

So, the image quality should be fine, as long as you don't do close focus, so background is also within depth of field.
But, I agree - processing is very poor otherwise.

to me the over-processing destroys detail, at 100% even the low iso shots are fuzzy, look at the train shots at 100%, just smeary...

That's what I see too. No detail, just smearing and artifacts all over.