For as long as there have been cameras, photographers have faced a Goldilocks conundrum. The best-quality cameras are too heavy. The portable ones sacrifice too much performance.
Finally, there's a camera that's just right.
The ambitious new DxO One takes stunning 20.2-megapixel pictures from a device that's half the size of a deck of cards. The secret: It's a pro-level image sensor and bright lens that plugs onto the base of an iPhone, which serves as the viewfinder and central command.
Despite a few compromises, most notably in battery life, the DxO One satisfies mobile photographers' dreams of a pocket-size connected camera that can match many of the pro capabilities of a digital SLR camera. It picks up where the iPhone's shrunken-down 8-megapixel camera stops, allowing you to take portraits with depth, capture luminous night scenes—and have enough detail to make jumbo-sized prints.
So let's talk about the price: $600. That isn't unusual for a camera with these specs, but ranks it among the most expensive non-couture iPhone accessories. Not that sticker shock will abate the lust of avid photographers for this thing. The DxO One is the ultimate big-vacation, retirement-wanderlust, new-baby, like-my-Instagrams-dammit camera. Santa, I've been a very good boy this year.
There's some serious imaging tech inside the DxO One, none of which you have to understand to take beautiful shots. It has a 1-inch image sensor that's six-and-½ times larger than the one built into the iPhone 6, and about the same as in Sony's $800 compact RX100 III. Its fixed 32-mm equivalent lens has an aperture that opens to F1.8, which adds depth to photos and finds light in dark scenes. It also records audio and full-HD video.
Who is DxO, and how'd they manage to squeeze all this into 3.8 ounces? The French company isn't a household name, but is no stranger to high-end photography. It creates image-processing software and an industry measurement for sensor quality. An infusion from unnamed investors gave the company a shot to make a camera that leverages all that expertise.
The DxO One is a first-time product but doesn't feel like one, aside from an occasional tendency for the beta app I tested to freeze. The company tested it in the field with photographers before starting shipping this week, and it shows.
The DxO One was made for occasions like Saturday night's supermoon, which I wanted to experience from an out-of-the-way spot that looks over the Golden Gate Bridge onto San Francisco. Getting to this outlook, called Slacker Hill, requires a vertical hike that isn't conducive to lugging along a heavy DSLR.
Night landscapes are a difficult assignment for any camera. Up there, my iPhone 6 took only a ho-hum shot, showing lots of low-light noise. But with the DxO One and my phone, I was able to capture the rich color of the sky, and the swirl of the fog across the bay.
In the interest of science, I also lugged a Canon T4i DSLR up there. My DxO One shots didn't quite pick up the Canon's range of color, but there was far less distracting noise so I actually prefer the DxO shots (more on that amazing capability in a moment).
A number of engineering feats make the DxO One possible, starting with the idea that our increasingly powerful smartphones can fill in for the processors and preview screens that make up a lot of the bulk on other cameras. The $550 Sony QX 100 and $300 Olympus Air try this too, but they suffer from sluggish wireless performance. DxO solved this by making its camera plug physically into the Lightning port on the bottom of the iPhone, so there's no lag.
A connector plug springs out when you pull the DxO One's lens cap all the way down. Hooked into your iPhone (or iPad) charging port via this little nub, the camera looks like it might be a little flimsy. But its aluminum and plastic body is light enough to hang on except when directly jostled. The camera can also angle up and down about 60 degrees, or flip around entirely to point at you. Because what the world needs now is higher-quality selfies.
When you plug it in, DxO's app pops up with a live preview from the camera. Tap on the phone screen where you want to focus in fully automatic mode, or use the app to adjust most of the manual controls available on an SLR camera, including aperture, shutter speed, ISO and focus. The DxO One saves your pictures on its own micro-SD card in JPEG and RAW for later precision editing, and can simultaneously save a JPEG to your iPhone for immediate Instagramming.
Because it's so light, subtle shaking in your hand could introduce blur. I noticed a soft focus in some of my shots, a problem I learned to avoid by setting the shutter on a 2-second delay (I also used a tiny iPhone tripod in the Golden Gate experiment).
I hit the field with the DxO One over the past week and experimented with it as if on a DSLR. Here are examples of shots my iPhone alone just couldn't manage:
Portraits: With control over the aperture (either manual or in portrait mode), I could blur out the scene behind my subject when shooting with the DxO One. This depth-of-field effect was particularly useful in a marina, where I wanted to suggest location but not worry about my subject competing with a bunch of boats. Portraits from an iPhone alone look flatter and more jumbled.
Action: The DxO One was able to stop the motion of a leaping dog when I increased my shutter speed. But there's room for improvement: It takes more than four seconds between shots, so I missed some pooch acrobatics. DxO says a coming software update will allow it to take bursts of eight photos per second.
Night: This is where the DxO One shines, picking up an incredible amount of city sparkle in landscapes and finding the right colors in low-light restaurant food shots. The camera's sensor is smaller than most DSLRs', but for night photography it makes up for it with a "SuperRAW" mode that combines four images into one beautiful shot. (You have to open these files with DxO software on a computer to process them.)
Video: Like an iPhone 6, the DxO One captures full HD video, but it produces a greater dynamic range. While recording, you can tap on the phone screen to shift the focus or exposure. There's no way to manually adjust aperture and ISO on video today, but DxO says that's also on its road map.
I should be clear about where the DxO One didn't really make a difference: Well-lit landscapes. The iPhone 6 already does a fantastic job with these, including a high-dynamic range (HDR) mode that automatically balances scenes with lots of lights and darks. (DxO doesn't have an HDR mode now, but it's working on it.)
And the tiny DxO One does, of course, bear a few compromises. Unlike a DSLR, you can't swap the DxO One's lenses to go telephoto or extra-wide—at least not yet. They built threads onto its front for potential future lens attachments.
The biggest downside to the DxO One is its battery, which is sealed and can't be swapped out for a spare. In my tests, the camera lasted for just about two hours of heavy use. DxO says it should be able to take about 200 photos, and it shuts off automatically to save power. Still, I ended up traveling with a power brick to give it a boost on the go.
The battery challenges don't overshadow the incredible leap forward made by the DxO One. Even as phone makers like Apple pour resources into making their cameras better, the sheer size of the DxO One's lens and sensor make it hard to top in the near future. Mobile photography and pro-level photography are no longer a contradiction.
Write to Geoffrey A. Fowler at geoffrey.fowler@wsj.com
Source: DxO One Review: Finally, an iPhone Camera Good Enough for a Pro
No comments:
Post a Comment