Expensive smartphones often have the most advanced cameras, which are also getting better and more versatile. With multiple sensors and powerful AI software on board to get the best picture under any circumstance. You often pay for these types of top devices quickly towards a thousand euros or more. Can you also take beautiful photos with a budget phone?
For years it was the subject on which smartphone makers wanted to trump each other: the quality of the cameras and the photography software that could still display things in the pitch dark, for example, or smartphones that could zoom in so far that you could read letters that you could see with the naked eye. couldn’t even see.
These kinds of innovations are usually first introduced in top models. When they are on the market for a while and the technology has developed again, those tricks will also come to phones that cost a little less. That’s why you’d be surprised how good cameras can be on cheaper smartphones.
Even an ultra-wide angle camera
If you look more at a budget device, so a smartphone of less than 300 euros, you can choose Redmi 9 Note Pro, OnePlus Nord CE and Samsung Galaxy M22. Of course you should not expect a high-end experience, but these smartphones can still surprise you. They are well prepared when it comes to cameras: the Redmi even has an ultra-wide angle camera. Unfortunately, you can’t really go by the specifications of a phone to determine whether the camera is good.
A camera can be a lot of megapixels: if the software of the supplier does not handle this properly, your photos will still not look great. It can also happen that a device is, for example, very good at taking photos in clear weather, but quickly gets some ‘noise’ in the photos when the light is not optimal. Those are things that are difficult to capture in specifications. For example, we tested devices worth 500 euros that take significantly less good photos than phones worth 300 euros or less.
Taking photos with a budget device
So the fact that Redmi Note 9 Pro comes with four cameras doesn’t necessarily mean that the photos are great. The device does have a 64-megapixel main camera, an 8-megapixel wide-angle lens and a 5MP macro camera with a 2MP depth sensor.
You can conclude from this that the photos can in principle be good because of all those megapixels and that photos come to life more because of the depth that the 2 megapixel depth sensor can add. A megapixel is a million pixels, and one pixel is a luminous dot. The more pixels there are in a photo, the better the resolution.
The type of cameras actually mainly indicates the possibilities that you have. With a wide-angle lens you can take wide images that fit more, a macro lens captures small details (try photographing an insect with it, for example) and a depth sensor is often used for a so-called bokeh effect, where the background is more blurred than the background. sharp object in the foreground. Perfect for portrait photos.
With the cameras of the Redmi Note 9 Pro there is a good chance that the photos will be beautiful, but the proof really lies in the use: only then you know how good the photos really are. So you may have to search online for phone reviews to see what you can expect in terms of photography skills.
However, it’s not just a question of how to know if budget phones take good photos, it’s also a question of whether they can. They certainly can. You often miss professional photography options such as being able to shoot RAW images or adjust the shutter speed, but many budget devices can handle most everyday home garden and kitchen photos, as you can see in the photos within this article.
Try it yourself
Are you an influencer or do you earn money with the photos you take, then we would recommend a slightly more luxurious device (see also our selection aid for smartphones with the best camera), but if you occasionally want to take a nice photo of your children for a photo book or of your breakfast for social media, then the photos of the average budget smartphone are in principle sufficient.
Check in advance what you can expect from the device you have in mind. For example, by reading reviews here on ComputerTotaal, such as our reviews of the OnePlus Nord CE or Samsung Galaxy A52. This will give you a better idea of ​​what you will be filming later.
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