[ASUS ZenFone 8] Tom100%:
Asus vs GCam vs Nikon. DSLR quality from the Z8?

Modern smartphones cameras have tiny imaging sensors yet take amazingly good pictures. The Zenfone 8’s imaging sensor is only 7.5 x 5.5mm and is crammed with almost 64,000,000 light sensitive cells. It requires a serious amount of “computational photography” processing to create pictures that exceed the actual capability of the camera’s tiny sensor.

About 20 years ago I bought one of the first cellphones that had a built in camera, the Nokia 7650. The photos were only 640 x 480 pixels but looked good on the phones 176 x 208 pixels display! Todays phones take high quality HDR pictures that look good on large screens, so I thought it would be fun to compare a picture taken with my Zenphone 8 and Nikon DSLR. This has an 24MP sensor that’s 10x the size of the Z8’s.

Z8 compared to DSLR

The DSLR has fewer megapixels but they are larger and gather much more light which results in higher quality pictures without the need for the intense processing necessary in smartphone cameras.

I took all of the attached shots during a 10 minute period to try to keep the lighting reasonably consistent and used the Z8’s stock camera and the Wichaya V1.6 GCam mod to shoot both Jpegs and DNGs. I shot only RAW files (NEFs) with the Nikon.

I edited the Asus DNG, Gcam DNG and the Nikon RAW files to reasonably match the Asus stock camera’s Jpegs to give some consistence to the comparisons.

I expected the Nikon would come out on top, but I wasn’t certain because of the outstanding results I’ve had with the Z8. The Nikon won, but the edited 64MP Gcam DNG came a close second. In some ares the Asus and GCam shots were actually better than the Nikon’s.

Notes

I’ve kept the comparisons the same size - I was impressed that the 16MP Asus Jpg that even when enlarged to 130% compares quite well with the edited 24MP Nikon RAW seen at 100%. But enlarging the Asus Jpeg makes the usual over-sharpening of fine foliage details more obvious.

The 16MP GCam at 130% is also impressive but is under exposed and lacks shadow detail that’s usual for Wichaya’s GCam.

The large 64MP Asus and GCam Jpgs both lack shadow detail, but at least the Asus isn’t over-sharpened and is actually a bit softer than the GCam.

The best results were obtained with the edited GCam 64MP DNG. I’ve shown how it compares to the edited Nikon RAW in two comparative enlargements. A very impressive result.

Of course in different circumstances the results will vary, but this test in daylight with deep shade and sunlit highlights shows the astonishing capability that computational photography has with tiny sensors.

I did this test for my own amusement and out of my interest in computational photography, but for most normal snaps it probably makes little difference whether you prefer the normal 16MP Asus or GCam Jpegs.

Computational Photography and Mainstream Cameras

Mainstream camera manufacturers don’t seem in a hurry to introduce computational photography into their mirrorless cameras because this would narrow the gap between expensive professional and cheaper consumer equipment. But eventually they will have to give in and this could revolutionise the amateur and professional photography scene. Can’t wait!