Huawei P30 Pro: Good Video Shooter?

Huawei P30 Pro: Good Video Shooter?

The Huawei have been pushing the limits of smartphone camera technology in recent years, accelerating their phones up the DxOMark league tables. DxOMark have positioned themselves as the leading source of independent image quality measurements and ratings for smartphones, cameras and lenses. So their rating carry influence when people are considering their next smartphone.

Their league table rates and ranks the photo and video taking abilities of all major smartphones. Huawei now occupy the top 3 places. However, the final score is a combination of stills capability and video shooting capability combined. For smartphone filmmakers, we are more interested in the video side of things.

Key specs:

• Triple-camera setup
• Primary: 40Mp, 1/1.7-inch quad RYYB sensor; f/1.6-aperture lens, OIS, 27mm-equivalent focal length
• Tele: 8Mp sensor, folded optics with f/3.4 aperture lens, OIS, 125mm-equivalent focal length
• 20Mp super-wide-angle with f/2.2-aperture, 16mm-equivalent lens
• PDAF/Time-of-flight (ToF) autofocus
• LED flash

5X Periscope Zoom

The P30 Pro packs some impressive camera technology, with a 5x periscope zoom camera being one of the biggest upgrades. These changes have put the device in the number one spot on DxOMark with a score of 122.

“The laws of physics make it difficult to fit a longer zoom lens into a thin smartphone body. Even using smaller-than-usual image sensors and clever lens design, manufacturers have only managed so far to achieve 2 or 3x optical zoom factors in conventional high-end smartphones. For the P30 Pro, Huawei uses folded optics to overcome this limitation.” DxOMark.

Huawei P30 Pro – Video

DxOMark scores the P30 Pro a healthy 97 for video, which puts it in 5th position – 1 point less than the P20 Pro. The overall video score is derived from a number of sub-scores: Exposure (85), Color (86), Autofocus (98), Texture (58), Noise (77), Artifacts (85), and Stabilization (94).

If you are intending on using the phone in auto mode, there are some interesting features.

The P30 Pro uses H.264 encoding and records video at 60 frames per second in good light. In low light conditions, when slower shutter speeds are required, the camera switches back to the standard 30 frames per second. Whereas the Pixel 3 record at intermediate frame rates, the Huawei shoots at either 30 or 60 fps only.

“The camera is capable of exposing video scenes well down to impressively low light levels.” DxOMark

But DxOMark say their testers “observed local tone mapping instabilities in most videos, with the brightness of some image areas changing for no obvious reason”. This includes some white balance instabilities and stepping when the system is adapting to a change in illumination.

The autofocus is accurate and quick to react, whilst the subject tracking is also very good.

Something which has been a problem with previous Huawei smartphones is a loss of detail in low light and the P30 Pro suffers from the same issue. There’s even some noise visible in bright light, as well as low light conditions.

DxOMark video test:

This is a pan shot taken by the DxOMark testers. The movement is not as smooth as you would want, with the image seeming to judder slight during a pan. My guess is that this is down to the inbuilt image stabilisation.

For still photography, this stabilisation is perfect. But when you are moving the camera, problems arise.

There seems to be less of a problem in the next test – a tracking shot. However, I think the inbuilt stabilisation causes problems again towards the end of the shot. Although DxOMark say on of the flaws of the phone is that “frame rate changes are noticeable in panning videos”.

I’m not convinced, as I’ve had bad experiences with inbuilt stabilisation in phones when shooting video. I’d like to see a test with inbuilt stabilisation turned off.

However DxOMark say: “Video image stabilization on the P30 Pro is one of the best we have seen, thanks to an efficient combination of optical and electronic image stabilization.”

Uhm.. ok. Well anyway, if you are serious about shooting video turn the inbuilt stabilisation off and use other methods such as a gimbal.

So summing up, the Huawei certainly shoots nice video. But with strong noise in low-light videos and some exposure and white balance instabilities, I would not put this phone as first choice for smartphone filmmakers.

Read Next: The official Mobile Motion Kit List.

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