I have been overwhelmed with all the heavy camera talks and news going on from Photokina week with launching of so many new photography products, and me having spent all of my last weekend at a photography centric event, the Kuala Lumpur Photography Festival (KLPF) 2014, meeting hundreds of people, all three full days discussing, debating and sharing about photography products. For once, this particular weekend, I decided to leave my Olympus gear behind. No that did not mean I am not having my shutter therapy, I still do that faithfully. Instead I chose to shoot with something a lot more basic, and simpler. I turned my mobile phone photography mode on, and shot the entire weekend with just my mobile phone. This allowed me to forget most of the technicalities of carrying an advanced system, went back to basics, and just enjoy myself without thinking too much.
Considering I was already planning to shoot heavily with the mobile phone, I thought why not do a camera review for the phone I am currently using, the OnePlus One. I have searched around the web for information about the camera, not much came up. Therefore, I shall add in my part, reviewing the phone from a photography enthusiast's point of view, how the camera performs, evaluating the image output and see if this OnePlus One camera can deliver.
Do take note that I am not a tech junkie, I will not be discussing about other aspects of the phone, and concentrate solely on the camera and imaging performance of OnePlus One. I have no connections to OnePlus and I bought the phone entirely out of my own pocket (to replace my dying Nexus 4). I will not do technical analysis and you will not find any charts, graphs or numbers in the results. What you will see are plenty of photograph samples, taken in a course of two days at multiple locations. I believe the findings are best discovered by experience, shooting on the field, and I am merely sharing my user experience using the camera on the OnePlus One phone.
OnePlus One in action. Camera App used was Camera FV-5
Taking a closer look at the back camera, 13MP BSI image sensor, with F2 lens, and 27mm equivalent focal length in 35mm format