How much of a professional camera is the Sony Xperia 1 V?

Sony wants to set new standards with the Xperia 1 V’s camera. For the first time, the smartphone features a new type of stacked sensor. It’s supposed to provide more dynamic range and better noise performance. In short, it should deliver better images. In addition, Sony has packed many manual settings into its camera apps. After all, having a bunch of buttons looks professional.

The message Sony’s marketing seems to want to send is that this phone is like a professional camera. Is there any truth to that? I tested how close the Xperia comes to a Sony Alpha 7RV and whether it outperforms other smartphones. If you want to know how it performs outside of photography, check out my colleague Michelle Brändle’s general review:

Hardware: optical zoom, fixed apertures

The specifications of the Sony Xperia 1 V sound good: three cameras with focal lengths of 16, 24 and 85-125 millimetres. The latter actually offers optical zoom thanks to periscope technology. The final resolution of the pictures is twelve megapixels, with the main camera capturing the image in 48 megapixels and then downsampling it. This is called pixel binning. In addition, there are the usual bells and whistles like night mode and portrait mode as well as the aforementioned stacked sensor in the main camera.

At 1/1.35 inches, it’s not particularly large. The sensors of the wide-angle camera (1/2.5 inches) and the telephoto camera (1/2.5 inches) are even smaller. To put these sizes in relation to a «proper» camera: the area of a full-frame sensor is about ten times larger than the largest sensor of the Xperia. Today’s smartphones try to compensate for this gigantic physical disadvantage with all kinds of digital image processing.

There’s another difference that’s even more important: lenses from large cameras have a variable aperture, meaning they can let in more or less light. Whether I shoot with aperture f/2 or f/11 also has an effect on the depth of field. The Xperia’s apertures are fixed: f/1.9 at 24 mm, f/2.2 at 16 mm and f/2.3-2.8 at 85-125 mm. This means that the cameras on the Xperia control their exposure exclusively via shutter speed and ISO.

Operation: what’s all this stuff good for?

There’s a separate app for photos and videos on the Sony Xperia 1 V. Photo Pro starts in Basic Mode. It’s intended for quick snapshots and for people who don’t want to deal with settings in depth. I can only choose different colour profiles and adjust the white balance. Tapping on the Bokeh button takes me to Portrait Mode with artificial blur. Basic Mode captures images in JPG format only. RAW format is reserved for the advanced modes.

These share the names I'm familiar with from big cameras: Auto, Program Mode, Shutter Priority and Manual. I still don’t understand why I need three different automatic modes. Auto is in principle almost the same as Basic Mode, but with a different user interface. Ironically, I can actually adjust less in Auto Mode, because the white balance is fixed at AWB (Auto White Balance). It’s only with Program Mode that the button is no longer greyed out and I can select the ISO manually.

I find the two other modes useless in a smartphone like the Xperia. Shutter Priority and Manual are of little use, because the aperture is fixed. In other words, I can’t make a creative decision about depth of field like I can with a big camera. Or rather, I can only do so using the digitally generated bokeh effect, which is again only available in Basic Mode.

The only useful application of the manual modes that I can think of is long exposures. If I want to blur flowing water, for example, I can choose an exposure time of several seconds. However, this only works when it’s very dark; the Xperia doesn’t have a built-in ND filter – and, again, it has a fixed aperture. Apart from this special case, the buttons in the manual modes lead to exactly the same goal as the Basic Mode settings. What I can do is make the image brighter or darker as well as change the colour profile and white balance.

I find the Video Pro app to be more sensibly designed. It has only one mode, which is always semi-automatic. I can select gamma curves in the menu, adjust the frame rate and choose the shutter speed. The latter makes sense for videos; as a rule of thumb, it should be twice the frame rate to achieve a natural look. Like long exposure times, this only works in just the right lighting conditions. At the risk of repeating myself, there are no ND filters and no variable aperture.

Image quality: frustration when shooting, joy when computing

Back to photography. In practice, I mostly use Program Mode and shoot images in RAW format. At the beginning, I’m disappointed with the Xperia 1 V: In bright light, the display is too dark and the preview looks bad. For comparison, I pull out my Apple iPhone 14 Pro – and it’s like night and day. On the iPhone, I feel like every snap is a masterpiece.

When I look at the pictures of the Xperia in the shade afterwards, they look better than expected. But the real aha moment comes on the computer screen. All of a sudden, the Xperia’s pictures look more natural than the iPhone’s. With the latter, even RAW shots have an exaggerated HDR look due to Apple’s embedded colour profile. It’s about the same effect as if I were to lighten the shadows to the maximum and darken the highlights to the maximum in a normal colour profile.

Mind you, this all applies to the RAW format only. Depending on the shot, JPGs snapped with the Xperia’s Basic Mode are similarly over-sharpened as on the iPhone. In high-contrast scenes, highlights burn out without HDR mode. This leads me to believe the Xperia’s hardware offers no advantages. But while Apple pushes its aggressive image processing algorithms on me at every turn, Sony delivers images more similar to what I know from big cameras, at least in RAW format.

Main and wide-angle camera: good RAW images in daylight

For a RAW file to be any good, a reasonable dynamic range and good noise performance are necessary. Otherwise, you won’t be able to get much out of an image with high contrasts. In this case, I prefer digital tricks like the iPhone’s. In daylight, the Sony Xperia 1 V’s main camera delivers. The RAW shots have enough latitude for me to keep the bright sky while brightening the shadows.

For reference, I take the same picture with my Sony Alpha 7RV – which costs 4,500 francs and has a full-frame sensor with 61 megapixels. As expected, the Alpha has more dynamic range reserves. There’s more texture in both the highlights and shadows in the files. I’m hardly pushing the limits of this advantage in my test scene, though. The detail is better because of the higher resolution. Even so, the main and wide-angle cameras of the Sony Xperia 1 V do very well at low ISO.

As soon as the light fades, things become more difficult. The image noise becomes a problem by ISO 800. The dynamic range also shrinks. In this situation, the big professional camera pulls ahead. Xperia’s Night Mode, which works about as well as the iPhone’s, swoops in to help. The smartphone digitally stabilises the long exposure and puts various noise filters to work. The result is a smooth image that looks good from a distance. What’s the price you pay for it? Artefacts and less detail.

Other smartphones tend to use even shorter focal lengths for their wide-angle cameras. The iPhone 14 Pro, for example, currently has a focal length of 13 millimetres in 35 mm format. That fits more into the picture, but the distortion is correspondingly strong. I personally prefer the 16 millimetres of the Xperia 1 V. The sensor isn’t quite as good as in the main camera. It creates a bit more noise. The difference isn’t big, though, which makes the wide-angle lens a good addition.

Telephoto and front camera: not so hot

Not so when it comes to the telephoto camera with its periscope zoom; it may be innovative, but it’s not good. Even at 85 millimetres, photos aren’t sharp, and at 125 millimetres, they’re totally hazy – even in daylight. For this reason, I’d only use the telephoto camera in an emergency. Even the equally mediocre 70-millimetre lens of my iPhone takes better pictures. As for my big camera, it’s in a whole other league. This is where the limitations of smartphones become crystal clear.

The front camera is okay. Selfies don’t look bad. However, the quality is worse than that of the main or wide-angle camera.

Video: the new benchmark

The biggest surprise of the Sony Xperia 1 V is the video quality. Until now, the iPhone 14 Pro was considered the benchmark for smartphone filming. However, I say the Xperia now holds this title.

Unlike Apple, Sony doesn’t over-sharpen the video recordings. On the big screen, artefacts and the HDR look known from photos become evident in videos filmed on the iPhone. The iPhone videos look artificial. It’s only in ProRes format that this no longer happens – but then the files are insanely large. The Xperia also delivers natural yet detailed videos in the handy H.264 codec. I’m blown away!

Here’s a test shot with comparisons to the iPhone 14 Pro and the Sony Alpha 7RV. The Sony Alpha 7RV does a better job filtering out the wind noise than the two smartphones.

To be clear, a smartphone is no substitute for a professional camera, not even for filming. Already in daylight, the Alpha already plays in a different league in terms of quality. When the light starts to fade, the difference grows. In addition, due to the small sensor and short focal length, no smartphone will deliver a natural bokeh effect. Despite these limitations, I could still mix the Xperia’s 4K shots with those filmed with my big Sony camera. This is aided by the Xperia’s very good S-Cinetone for mobile colour profile, which comes close to the normal S-Cinetone profile.

The lowdown: the Sony Xperia 1 V falls between two stools

The main and wide-angle cameras of the Sony Xperia 1 V are good. When I take pictures in RAW format and then develop them on the computer, the results are among the best you can get from a phone. The images look natural and have a lot of dynamic range. Compared to other smartphones, the videos are excellent, thanks to a good colour profile, few digital artefacts and a sensible codec.

The question is, how many people use RAW images on a phone? Because all praise aside, Sony hasn’t performed any miracles. The manual modes look nice, but are ultimately a waste because of the fixed aperture. And due to the combination of a small sensor and short focal length, there’s hardly any natural bokeh effect to speak of. In low light, the image noise gets out of hand. As for images taken with the telephoto camera, I find them completely unusable. With that, the Xperia only comes close to a full-fledged camera in very specific situations. Namely, if you want to take pictures or record videos in daylight at 16 or 24 millimetres, without bokeh. For everything else, you’ll still need a big sensor and a big lens.

If you only want to use the smartphone for snapshots, the advantage of the Sony Xperia 1 V over the competition melts away. Its JPGs are similarly overdrawn and don’t offer much dynamic range. The result is no better or worse than what I get with the Apple iPhone 14 Pro or Google Pixel 7 Pro. In terms of photography, the Sony flagship falls between two stools. For spontaneous snaps, it hardly offers any advantages over other phones. For ambitious applications, it’s at most an expensive addition to a proper camera.