Typically, photos you’ll get will be bright, balanced and well saturated, and only occasionally did I experience inaccurate white balance. Unfortunately, HTC’s camera app won’t automatically take HDR photos for you you’ll need to manually select the mode.Īside from some circumstances in strong lighting, the HTC One M8 really excels in moderate and low light conditions, thanks to the sensor’s large pixel size. There are limitations to HDR, such as the processing time, stability issues from the fact it takes two photos, and the lack of depth information capture, but it’s certainly a viable solution in some scenarios. Shooting in the HDR mode is effective and can significantly improve photos where dynamic range is an issue. Like past HTC cameras, it also struggles with perfect exposure in cloudy environments, which combined with the mediocre dynamic range can make photos look dull in these conditions. When taking wide-angle shots, the OmniVision sensor doesn’t have particularly great dynamic range, so highlights can be blown out and it can be hard to see the detail in darker or shadowed areas. White balance and exposure are sometimes questionable, but not to a disappointing level.Ĭlick here to check out full sized samples from the HTC One (M8) Shots from medium range to macro are the most impressive in strong lighting, thanks to a great level of sharpness at full resolution, accurate color reproduction, few artefacts and reasonable bokeh from the f/2.0 lens. Despite having the same sensor as the M7, the M8 has improved color accuracy and vibrance across the board, which results in photos that look less dull and washed out. Unlike with the M7, the camera captures exactly what you see in the preview, and with essentially no shutter lag. When shooting in ideal conditions, the HTC One M8’s camera is quite capable. Maybe a 1/3” model with 1.5 µm pixels for a resolution of eight megapixels or even a 1/2.3” sensor as seen on the Sony Xperia Z1, but with 2.0 µm or 1.5 µm pixels to deliver seven or 12 megapixels respectively. In an ideal world, HTC would have responded to feedback from the One M7 and swapped out the sensor for something that’s more of a compromise. It also can’t capture 4K video not because of bandwidth constraints, but because the sensor actually isn’t large enough to capture a 3840 x 2160 (8.3 megapixel) frame. It’s also crazy to think that an image from the One M8 won’t fill the entire display on some current laptops, such as the MacBook Pro with Retina display or the Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro. Cropping photos taken on the One M8 will almost immediately highlight the low resolution of images as the lack of intricate detail comes to the surface. This is quite possible with 20-megapixel, 13-megapixel and even eight-megapixel sensors without a huge reduction in quality, but isn’t the case with HTC’s four-megapixel unit. The higher the megapixel count, the better results you generally get from downscaling to social media size (1080p or less).Īnother fact is that some people like to crop images and zoom in on certain areas. One such fact is that small smartphone sensors are almost always lacklustre at full resolution, meaning you need to downscale to achieve an acceptable level of quality. In some respects HTC’s points are valid – the large pixel size really does improve low-light performance – but in other respects they have failed to account for some critical facts. So instead of packing a high megapixel count into the M8 (and M7), they went for a large pixel size to improve low-light photography. HTC’s reasoning for this is that most people take photos on their smartphone and downsize them below four megapixels during the upload process to social media. I’ll get the major complaint about the HTC One M8’s camera out of the way before anything else: it only takes four megapixel images. It’s also paired with an f/2.0 lens, but it has a slightly wider equivalent focal length of 24mm. Unlike both rear sensors, the front camera has a native aspect ratio of 4:3, with a resolution of 4.9 megapixels (2560 x 1920) and 1.12 µm pixels. It’s paired with an f/2.0 lens with an effective 28mm focal length, and a two-tone dual-LED flash.ĭiving through the One M8’s firmware reveals the front-facing camera is Samsung’s S5K5E2 1/5” CMOS sensor. This particular sensor is 1/3” in size, and packs 4.1 megapixels (2688 × 1520) at a 16:9 aspect ratio with a pixel size of 2.0 µm. The main camera sensor on the HTC One M8 is the same ‘Ultrapixel’-branded OmniVision OV4688 unit that was seen on the M7.
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