[Xperia Z5 General] Zratul:
My Z5 camera review and samples

Hi guys, it's been a while I have been following this thread but never had the chance to post my own experience.

Notice : Sorry for the URLs in plain text, I still don't have enough posts to be authorized to post links.

Story

I have bought the Xperia Z5 in October through the French Sony Store and asked my parents to bring it to me as I live in Japan now.

But my phone was plagged by the nasty left side blur and I even had the bottom right corner blurry too. It was really a shame and gave my phone to my parents when they went back to France in order to file a Sony Support inquiry.

Sony France then gave me a new Z5 and I was forced to wait until January for a friend of mine visiting Japan to bring back again my new phone.

Since then I have been trying to shoot with my Z5 as my "Notepad Camera". For the information, photography is a hobby of mine. I currently have a Nikon D7000 DSLR and I use mainly 2 lenses, a 16-85 and a 35mm f1.8. I don't consider myself as a pro but it's been 5 years I take pictures so I have the basics.

Of course having a DSLR always on me is impossible and with the new smartphones, I thought it could be the nice moment to try shooting more on the go. I previously had a Nexus 5. To be honest I really liked the photo rendering/processing when shooting with the Nexuses exclusive HDR+ mode developped by Google (which is very different from the classic HDR : www.googleresearch.blogspot.jp/2014/10/hdr-low-light-and-high-dynamic-range.html).

The downsides were the focus (it was very a hit or miss on the N5), the focus speed and the necessity for the HDR+ shot to be still for 1-2 seconds.

I chose a Sony because I liked the phone (waterproof, SD card) and this year Nexuses were disappointing in terms of form factor/specs.

Sample Shots

To jump immediately into the topic, here is the link of an album with shots from my Xperia Z5 : www.goo.gl/photos/ziUdDL7ebSqcbZTx6

You will see pictures with a lot of different situations, lighting. Of course I have kind of cherry-picked the pictures, but some have still some problems which are interesting to show.

All have been shot with Superior Auto Mode 8MP (some are 4:3 and some are 16:9) with the latest software updates.

Impressions on the hardware/software

First on the hardware side, I really like the dedicated shutter button to focus/shoot and the long press as a shortcut to launch the Camera app. I also like the possibility to have a leanyard on this phone, it is really helpful for me to secure my phone. The screen is nice and the SD Card slot is a killer feature as my 64GB card allowed me to expand the memory storage without being ripped off like other manufacturers. So taking a lot of pictures of videos is not a problem. The waterproofing is also a nice thing to have.

On the software side, I regret that sometimes the Camera app takes several seconds to launch. It's totally random, I don't know why it isn't consistent. It doesn't happen that much but it could screw a quick shot.

The new Camera app is much much better than the old one, more simple, quicker to switch modes. The only thing I still hate is that in Manual mode, it's impossible to turn on/off the HDR mode with a quick toggle, still have to go in the settings...

I regret the lack of RAW support. I don't mind not having lighting histogram and stuff if I knew I could post process my pictures later.

The Manual mode... is not a manual mode, it's more like a P mode. It's nice but I really want a full PASM. With my DSLR I use the A mode 95% of the time (I choose the Aperture and the Camera chooses the shutter speed), I also want to be able to choose the ISO myself. A real M mode could also enable long exposure shots and stuff.

I also don't like the fact than just after a shot, the preview seems blurry even if the shot is good. We don't know for sure at that moment if the focus was done correctly, it's quite of annoying.

I don't talk about the LOLmodes like AR and stuff. I only focused on the classic Photo part.

Impressions about the pictures quality

If you take a close look at my shots, you'll notice a bunch of things:

Even if I consider my new Z5 to be free of the major blur problem, there is still some blur in several situations.

First the corners and the edges. I think it's safe to assume that this is a "problem" since the Xperia Z1. Sony chose an ultra-wide G-lens which is sometimes nice but bring some softness to the edges. The softness itself is quite normal for a lens especially when wide, even DSLR lenses have always to some degree corners softer than the central area.

The real problem is when you combine this softness and the Sony post-processing and it's particularly visible when you have vegetation like trees, leaves in the corners. Sometimes it can look ok, sometimes it becomes really messy.

Still most of the times it isn't that problematic, Sony made the choice to have a super wide lens and while I tend to prefer more sharper edge-to-edge lenses (like the iPhone 6 or the Galaxy S6), it's really useful sometimes. When we wanted to take some of those huge temples, I remember my friend with its Iphone 6 forced to step several meters back while I could take the shot with my Z5. Just beware of vegetation or complicated visual pattern around the corners.

Another occasion when the blur can occur is when you are taking a picture of a huge subject like a wall, building, not parallel to your lens. You can have the center quite sharp and some blur on other parts. Again it doesn't happen every time but it seems that a combination of the softness in the edges and the location of the focus point exacerbates some problems. The thing that is puzzling me is that it can happen when I'm in conditions of hyperfocal distance, when I'm supposed to have all objects focused (because I'm far enough of the subject). I really need to do some research about this.

To a more positive note, I tend to like the general looking and feeling of the shots taken by the Xperia Z5. It's less eye-catchy than the HDR+ shots from my N5 but it's more natural, most of the time the pictures are correctly balanced in terms of lighting and tint and even in 8MP mode, they are quite detailed and can be very sharp in good lighting conditions. I still think that Sony is a little bit too aggressive with its sharpening algorithm which can create a mess with trees and leaves but otherwise it's quite nice.

The other problem I have met is the quite poor performance in low-light, the ISO tends to ramp up and you'll end up with highly noised pictures. It's fine for low-res and social networks but 100% crops are quite messy. Here, Sony pays for the lack of OIS combined to a super dense sensor. 23MP packed in a 1/2.3 sensor when the Nexus 6P for example has twice less pixels with the same sensor size, no wonder the Nexus 6P can still take great pictures in low light (even without OIS) as it catches more light.

Again I'm more a fan of the "less MP but good light sensibility" clan. 23MP is good on paper and on specs sheets and even if Sony uses the oversampling method, I still think that a good big sensor with large pixels (between 8 and 12) would be better for smartphones.

It's shame because since the Z1, while all smartphones had like 1/3 sensors, the Xperia Z line with its 1/2.3 sensor could have make some magic if they didn't try to pack all of those pixels. Now we can see that more and more smartphones have 1/2.3 or 1/2.6 sensors and are more balanced with the pixels count.

In the end, the Xperia Z5 camera is very puzzling for me lol. It was interesting to try to "tame" it. It has clearly its faults: a lens that could be sharper edge to edge, maybe too many pixels on that sensor, lack of OIS maybe. Of course they are choices but I think they are not the best ones for smartphones.

But it is very good with the adequate conditions. Colors reproduction, sharpness (although it will be always softer on the edges), lighting... The hardware in itself is also great (shutter button, waterproofing, SD card, leanyard).

But the thing is that the camera could be even better with just some software adjustments. Give us more control or at least support the full Camera2API, we want to play with the aperture, iso and stuff. We want RAW and while some post processing choices made by Sony are not bad (I suspect most of them are tailored for the oversampling mode), some are too aggressive.

I don't know if my next smartphone (in 2-3 years) will be a Sony but meanwhile I intend to continue to use my Z5 as my notepad camera. It's not the best smartphone camera, it's less all-around than say iPhone 6 or Galaxy S6 but it can take really terrific pictures nonetheless.

I know that not everyone is in my situation and just want a easy point and shoot but there is some challenge for me now to try to tame and understand that camera. I just ask Sony to at least give us more possibilities on the software side in order to eliminate some frustration to let us focus more on creativity :)