Foolin with focus mode!

My good friends and I have been showing off some of Xperia's biggest stars today by testing out the "focus mode". We managed to get our hands on the Xperia SP, Z, Z1 Compact and even an Xperia ION to show you what Sony camera phones are really capable of.

Enjoy.

 Xperia Z

Credit goes to Sonya for this picture. Taken during her frolics in the beautiful city of Ely. The camera does a near perfect job of focusing on the flower and does an even better job of blurring the background. 

Xperia Z

I spent some time fooling around with a friends Godzilla toy and a back drop of New York City. I used Focus Mode to keep our beloved King Of The Monsters central to the image and blurred out the background, as it is actually a piece of art work used for my friends living room which has some washed out lines going down the picture (fashion, ay?)

Xperia Z

 I used a dimming effect on Instagram to keep things dark and again, dim out some of the unwanted effects on the picture I had to use. I think the effect gives the picture a real monster feel.

Xperia Z

 Fooling around with a friends Dr Who toys, I managed to get a great shot of a so called "weeping angel". The touch focus managed to handle her left hand and face quite well, not to mention getting her wings in the shot too. It struggled to get the hand going in for the grab but did a nice job of blurring the background and the tardis.

Xperia Z

Like with the Godzilla picture above, a simple filter made this shot look incredibly creepy and terrifying.  

Xperia Z1 Compact

My good friend Apaar does a sensational job with the Xperia Z1 Compact here. I really don't need to explain this photo as its beauty speaks for itself. It really makes me want to get my hands on the new 20.7 mega pixel camera. 

 Here is another one from Apaar's Xperia Z1 Compact. This was taken without HDR, as you can see from the sharp detail and deep blacks. You will see that the focus mode has done a sensational job in low light conditions.
Thank you critics!

Another Apaar classic here, taken on the Xperia Arc. This being a moving image shot, it handles the focus on not only the pen and fingers, but also manages to focus on text, which sometimes can be tricky.

Xperia ION

This picture here was taken on the Xperia Ion. An old phone (by mobile phone standards) yet stills shows the capabilities of Sony camera phones back then.

 Xperia SP

I tried something unconventional here and tried to get focus on two main objects in a photo, rather than going for a real close up. It has done quite well here by slightly blurring the background. Naturally, if it had blurred out the background too much in the photo it would have been ruined and taken the objects out of context. It has done a great job making sure the two items in the front were perfectly focused as the centre piece of the picture.

Xperia SP

Light blurring in the background and massively sharp picture of the street sign in front.

Xperia SP.

Again, fooling around with the Xperia SP, I managed (in the end) to get a respectable focus mode shot of my son playing with his penguin toys. It did take some work, and even though it struggled again to get the front image (the penguin) in focus, it handled everything else perfectly.

The Xperia SP for me was the one which struggled most, which is surprising really as it has the latest Exmor RS sensor and is one of the newer  phones we tested. That being said, it does have a very small sensor and a lower megapixel count (7 in photo-shoot mode) compared to its bigger brother the Z and Z1 Compact, so this could be a contributing factor.

We managed to get decent shots in the end, after a lot of fiddling, but in comparison to the others, the SP was not quite up to scratch.

Conclusion:

Overall I have been incredibly impressed with all cameras on our Xperia devices, especially the photos by Apaar with the Xperia Z1 Compact. Sony are often criticised for their cameras sounding better on paper than they actually perform in the field. If you spend a little time tweaking the many settings and effects that Sony pack in to their cameras then you are almost always going to get high quality pictures. Especially if you take advantage of the numerous free photo editing software available on the Play Store.

Either way, it just goes to show what you can accomplish with a camera phone now days, especially a Sony.  There are some impressive technologies like the Exmor RS sensor, the Bionz image processor and the award winning G Lens in most Sony phones now means the possibilities are endless. 

Thanks to Sonya and Apaar for contributing to my post.