[Xperia Z5 Compact General] czbo:
just got Z5 Compact US version, camera first impressions

Hi, I am new here. I recently bought the US version of Xperia Z5 Compact (February 2016). Upgrading from Motorola Atrix HD (8MP), the camera on the Z5 Compact is quite a bit superior in every way. Before I decided to buy this phone, I read a bunch of online reviews and discussions around its camera. The reason I wanted to buy this phone was because I wanted a small (sub 5 inch screen), Android smartphone with good quality camera so I can take photos of daily life pictures such as my kids, house, car, etc. The camera on the Atrix HD was noticeably bad compare to my wife's iPhone or iPhone 4. A close alternative was the Samsung S6 but it was not compact and Samsung's retail channel is more mobile-carrier-centric and getting one unlocked from the start seems not as straight-forward as getting the unlocked retail US version of the Sony from Amazon.

Since the Z5 Compact came out in September 2015, there have been online discussions about its images being blurry on the left edge and/or corner and sometimes on the right edge. Some say it's a software issue, some say it's a hardware/lens issue. Some say it's a manufacturing quality control issue that can be repaired by replacing the camera sensor module (but I would be concerned about how well the tech re-seals the back glass to remain water-proof...). The complaints seem to be concentrated in the time frame of September 2015 to November 2015, and seems to be more in the UK region. Here I want to share my experience and thoughts with the phone's camera so far.

When I first turn on the phone and started setting it up, I noticed among the legal notices, it says something to the effect that images produced by the camera may have some minor distortions including device to device variations and this does not constitute a defect. I wonder if they added this part due to the complaints and warranty claims indicated by the online discussions.

The test images I took is with the updated Camera UI version 2.0 using the stock firmware (Lollipop). I tried Superior Auto and Manual Mode 8MP and 20MP and 23MP to get different aspect ratios. I also took a short 10 second video to compare the images from video vs. photo modes. For the most part I agree with what a lot of people already stated online: color rendering is accurate, heavy image processing for noise reduction which results in a dreamy, watercolor/painting kind of image when you zoom in to 100% to check the details. I think this is on purpose by design; they even have a "soft skin" mode that made me smile and think: "yep, this is a Japanese product". The camera has a relatively wide angle view by design, and the fact that they chose to not let the lens protrude the back of the phone like the Samsung Galaxy S6, and a relatively large image sensor for the thickness of the device, I think, resulted in the optics near the edges of the lens/image sensor degrade/blur/distort and it becomes most obvious when you take a landscape scenery where the center of the image is in focus and sharp, and the edges look more blurry. See my test image below where I have a 100% crop of the center and the left and right edges of the picture. The edges are noticeably more blurry. This is slightly more pronounced when taking photos in 16:9 aspect ratio. Some people say, how come there is no blur when I take video? As shown in my test picture below, when you take video in HD mode, the view in the black box is what you see, so you never see the wide angle view that you would get in photo mode, and the blurry edges are outside the video field of view. So I guess one solution to the blurry edge issue is to take photos in 4:3 aspect ratio, and/or crop the image to a smaller field of view with post-processing.

Yes, the lack of manual exposure and shutter speed control is disappointing. Regarding low light performance, like others have pointed out, the Z5 Compact prefers higher ISO and faster shutter speed, which results in more image sensor noise. An alternative is to manually set ISO to 50 or 100 or whatever the lowest that is acceptable, and make sure you hold the camera very steady. Camera App loading speed can be a little slow if it is not already in memory, otherwise it loads very fast. Seems fine to me. Yes, RAW file or some options to get a less processed picture, or some options regarding the JPEG compression strength would be welcome.

Some people have asked about the phone's production lot number: mine is 16W01 (first week of 2016) and it's the US version E5803.

[IMG="Z5 Compact test image"]https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-IQ3Ef64Jyec/VuSNhPaE81I/AAAAAAAABSc/m2BVmwGNAewpU6OwDlWW4jjMIXtQbKfpQCCo/s960-Ic42/landscape%2Bupsidedown.jpg[/IMG]