Shooting Monochrome with the Huawei P9
I've just watched the video that James did with OneMonthTwoCameras about the Pentax k5ii M. It reminded me that although I don't own a monochrome camera, I've been using the Huawei P9 phone quite a bit this last year as it has a 12mp dedicated monochrome sensor and it takes beautiful images. I'm under no illusion it would ever compete or be the same experience as a dedicated mono camera but as my budget doesn't stretch to a Leica, this will need to do. It's great fun though, I've had tremendous enjoyment from using it. Here's some images taken from the phone, they were shot in manual mode and cropped/edited with Darktable (I think... I sometimes use Neo too).
Click on the images, have a peek and let me know your thoughts, are they better than you'd have thought or just as garbage as expected. Leave a comment.
The images are low resolution as there was an upload limit of 5mb and these are all about 10mb or more.
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Quote from Paul Wilkinson on September 2, 2022, 3:39 pmI've just watched the video that James did with OneMonthTwoCameras about the Pentax k5ii M. It reminded me that although I don't own a monochrome camera, I've been using the Huawei P9 phone quite a bit this last year as it has a 12mp dedicated monochrome sensor and it takes beautiful images. I'm under no illusion it would ever compete or be the same experience as a dedicated mono camera but as my budget doesn't stretch to a Leica, this will need to do. It's great fun though, I've had tremendous enjoyment from using it. Here's some images taken from the phone, they were shot in manual mode and cropped/edited with Darktable (I think... I sometimes use Neo too).
Click on the images, have a peek and let me know your thoughts, are they better than you'd have thought or just as garbage as expected. Leave a comment.
The images are low resolution as there was an upload limit of 5mb and these are all about 10mb or more.
Even with compression from uploading and such these look fantastic, Paul! I just read up on this phone and the reasons they ha a separate monochrome sensor. Totally makes sense. I guess the advances in other computational photography outpaced the need for a physical sensor that captured more light, but it's a clever solution nonetheless.
I looked it up and it seems relatively hard to find used, at least in the US. I found many copies of the lite version, but that does not have the same camera setup. Thanks for informing me about this unique camera and sharing great pictures!
Here's another one where I feel the phone is showing off. This is the imaged, again, edited on Neo, slightly sharpened, shadows raised and a little contrast added and the 2nd image is it zoomed in 164%. Personally, I think that's pretty decent for a mobile phone.
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James, I was just rooting around for some other images taken with the P9 and came across this one. It's not a great image by any means, however, it works well for this comparison. You can see it's really underexposed. I put it into Luminar Neo and lifted the shadows and increased the exposure and dropped the highlights a little. With very little work, this jpeg has brightened right up and you can now see the detail that was hidden in the shadows and there's a little degradation in quality but not much. You couldn't print it big but it would be okay as a small one or for sharing online. I was fairly impressed with how this 6-year old, small sensor phone camera did.
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Quote from James Warner on September 2, 2022, 6:05 pmQuote from Paul Wilkinson on September 2, 2022, 3:39 pmI've just watched the video that James did with OneMonthTwoCameras about the Pentax k5ii M. It reminded me that although I don't own a monochrome camera, I've been using the Huawei P9 phone quite a bit this last year as it has a 12mp dedicated monochrome sensor and it takes beautiful images. I'm under no illusion it would ever compete or be the same experience as a dedicated mono camera but as my budget doesn't stretch to a Leica, this will need to do. It's great fun though, I've had tremendous enjoyment from using it. Here's some images taken from the phone, they were shot in manual mode and cropped/edited with Darktable (I think... I sometimes use Neo too).
Click on the images, have a peek and let me know your thoughts, are they better than you'd have thought or just as garbage as expected. Leave a comment.
The images are low resolution as there was an upload limit of 5mb and these are all about 10mb or more.
Even with compression from uploading and such these look fantastic, Paul! I just read up on this phone and the reasons they ha a separate monochrome sensor. Totally makes sense. I guess the advances in other computational photography outpaced the need for a physical sensor that captured more light, but it's a clever solution nonetheless.
I looked it up and it seems relatively hard to find used, at least in the US. I found many copies of the lite version, but that does not have the same camera setup. Thanks for informing me about this unique camera and sharing great pictures!
My pleasure James. I'm glad you like the images. I've taken loads on this little guy. There are other phones in the Huawei family that have the monochrome only sensor too, you've got the P10 Plus, the P20 Pro and the newer P50 Pro. There are a few other phones with a dedicated mono sensor but they are generally 2mp sensors and don't get rated very highly. From memory, I think the P10 and P20 have the same 20mp sensor inside which is the same size as the P9s, but the extra mp does make the difference. The P50 has a 40mp b&w sensor. My wife has the P20 Pro and there's definitely more detail in those images. I do find that the phones produce a slightly soft monochrome image, I often have to apply a little sharpening but I don't apply much. I'll look out some more and post them too. I've a folder somewhere as I'd planned on writing a list for my website but never got around to finishing it. A job for another day! 😁
Edit: The Mate 10 Pro and the Mate RS also have the monochrome sensor. They may be easier to get in the US as I don't think the Mate range got 'Trumped'.
