Bucket Tech: OPPO Reno7 5G smartphone: The imaging expert

With the introduction of the OPPO Reno 7 5G Smart phone to the market not too long ago, we take a closer look into the camera and processing imagery system to give you a more detail outlook one what the device is capable of doing. With smart phone cameras ever evolving, its great to see the strides being made into getting better quality pictures from a device that fits in the palm of your hand. The OPPO Reno 7 5G offers the consumer pictures that capture DSLR like quality images and videos, which is frankly amazing and great to see how far camera technology has come and is going. Here are some of the highlights from this device.

Highlights:

Portrait Mode: OPPO Reno7 5G puts DSLR-like lens quality in a smartphone package

Digital Retouching: Take control of your own beauty with a variety of retouching effects in video

Bokeh Flair: Create jaw-dropping bokeh effects with delicately blurred backgrounds in photos and videos

AI Highlight Video: Ultra Night and Live HDR Algorithms automatically adjust light settings for crystal clear videos at night or with bright backlight

AI Color Portrait Video: Bring out the colour of life by making backgrounds black and white

Dual-View Video: Add a new dimension to storytelling by recording from both the front and back cameras simultaneously

“OPPO knows that high-quality photo and video capabilities are a priority in today’s smartphones,” said Bradley Young, Head of Training at OPPO South Africa. “The Reno7 5G delivers extremely high performance imaging through a range of advanced technologies and clever features. We’re thrilled to introduce this device in South Africa and offer local creators an affordable but premium tool to express their creativity.”

The Portrait Expert

The Reno7 5G’s Portrait Mode gives users total control over background bokeh lights and depth of field settings to allow high-quality photos with styles similar to those captured with expensive, large aperture DSLR camera lenses.

OPPO’s AI algorithms mimic the optical properties of professional cameras to create bokeh light spots of different size, colours, and brightness according to distance and depth of field. Portrait Mode on Reno7 5G offers 25 levels of adjustable aperture sizes, from F0.95 to F16, allowing precise adjustment of the level of bokeh in the background. Bokeh flare settings are available in both Portrait Photo and Video modes.

Portrait Modes also include additional image enhancement options to deliver professional quality, color and clarity. These include detection and preservation of skin textures and skin tones, as well as an entire palette of retouching effects for perfect portrait images. OPPO’s facial recognition algorithms can identify up to 193 key facial feature points in video and apply individual retouching effects to give subjects a clean natural look. On the front camera, a total of eight retouching options can be chosen from the Retouching panel and adjusted on a scale of 1-100.

Game changing video

Powered by a 64MP AI triple camera setup and OPPO’s advanced AI capabilities, Reno7 5G can capture rich, creative content through multiple video styles. A suite of powerful features and effects takes video quality to new heights:

Whether shooting at night or with a bright backlight, AI Highlight Video automatically detects ambient lighting and adjust settings to give you clearer, brighter, and more vivid portrait videos without any need for manual adjustment. The feature detects backlight in a scene and applies OPPO’s Live HDR algorithm to increase the dynamic range of each frame – automatically boosting the brightness in darker areas and reducing over-exposed backgrounds for crisp, natural video regardless of a scene’s lighting quality.

AI Color Portrait Video applies a monochrome, black and white filter to the background of videos leaving the subject in vibrant original colour with just a tap of the screen.

Two unique perspectives at the same time gives storytelling a unique new dimension. With Dual-View Video, users can record videos from both the front and rear cameras simultaneously in three customisable split-screen layouts.

Focus Tracking: Double-tap an object in video mode and the Reno7 5G’s camera identifies the selected subject and automatically tracks it consistently and steadily.

Bucket Tech: Nokia Lumia 1020

41 megapixel camera, let that sink in for a bit. Most DSLR camera's have 24 megapixels, that's a little more than HALF of 41! and they managed to put it in a PHONE! Like anyone I was skeptical at first, "ooo phone with such a big camera, bet the pictures are still shit though", boy did I shut my mouth after taking the first picture. I cannot begin to tell you the quality of the pictures that I was taking and that was just in normal point and shoot mode!

Sure there's more to this phone than just the camera and just my luck, the day I received it was the same day my phone decided to go through its mid life crisis. So I had enough of its shit, tossed it aside and used the Lumia 1020 as my primary phone which was probably a good thing since I could see first hand how the phone performs. Like the Lumia 925, the phone comes loaded with Microsoft Windows Phone 8 which is up gradable to WP8 Black. In fact, the phone isn't that different from the 925 as it is practically the same phone with a big ass camera! 

The user interface is dead simple to use, the app store is straight forward and within a matter of minutes all my favourite apps were installed and ready to use on my phone. Nokia has made some changes with some of their apps, fusing the camera apps into one which makes a major difference. The contacts feature allows you to access all the info of the contact you select, whether its their contact numbers, latest facebook update or their last tweet. It's pretty cool how everything is integrated into one. The music player is also another nifty app which does so much more than just play your mp3's, it can search for other music by the artist, tell you where their are playing next and buy music. Nokia HERE has more info loaded onto it as they have people populating maps on a daily basis, added new places, reviews and pictures. 

The phone size is relatively the same size as any other smart phone on the market, (130.4 x 71.4 x 10.4)  the only snag is the camera protruding a bit but its not a major inconvenience as the phone is milled quite well to accommodate it but again like the 925 is a bit too smooth so you can easily have it slip out of your hand, it also makes taking pics with one hand kinda tricky but seems the guys at Nokia HQ either heard me but also had the same problem as the phone also came with "the grip". Its essentially a cover the phone snaps into that makes it more user friendly with one hand as it is shaped like a camera and gives you a better grip. The plus side to the grip is that it has a battery pack in it so it charges your phone while connected.

The camera settings offer the auto function which for novices its great as it adjusts the light, white balance and everything else for you in a jiffy, it also has a flash focus which focuses the lens with use of its Xenon * LED flash (that shit is bright!) so you don't have a picture with the flash ruining it. Yes I know most cameras have this feature but add to the fact it has a 41 megapixel camera and almost every picture you take is close to perfect. Night shots are incredible, want to get a pic of the night sky? Turn off the flash, have it on night more and snap, no more worrying about steady hands and worrying about movement. 

The big worry about the 41 megapixel camera was the picture sizing, with the rate social media is growing, how can one share such a large file over these mediums? Your data bundle would deplete faster than it gets loaded at the beginning of the month. Nokia were sharp though, when a picture is taken, it saves it in 22 formats, normal and high resolution. The normal pic is the same size as you normal phone pic which is a few hundred kilobytes but the High Res can range from 10mb up wards. The is a way to take RAW pictures with the phone which means the picture will be full 41 megapixel but with the internal memory being just 32gigs, this could pose a problem since that's all the memory you have. 

Coming back to the camera, some friends of mine actually managed to snap Orion's Belt! With a camera phone! That is unbelievable! One can divulge deeper into the settings of the camera set up where one can make detailed adjustments to the lens and balance settings. It has additional apps to the camera, like panoramic lense and city view. 

Overall, there isn't much difference from this phone to the Lumia 925 apart from one glaring you in the face. Yes it really is that tremendous and there's no words to describe what Nokia have done here, one can simply stand and applaud. It truly is a wonderful piece of technology and whoever has it will know this ....and they'll also take the best Instragram pictures form all their friends! 

Some pics I took with my test unit.