Huawei P30 Pro NIGHT Camera Comparison vs Galaxy S10 Plus vs Pixel 3
The Huawei P30 Pro promises to rewrite the rules of photography and it has an arsenal of four rear cameras for that, but as impressive as that sounds on paper, how do those cameras actually perform in real life?
And since most smartphones perform fairly well during the day, we focused on the one area where smartphones still struggle: night photos.
The view from Montmartre
In this first shot, we headed to Montmartre, the artistic district where Picasso and the likes lived and gathered. The place offered us a beautiful panoramic view of night-time Paris, a view that we really hoped to get a good shot of. But it was really dark and the scene was a big challenge for a smartphone camera.
In our view, the Huawei P30 Pro did best here. It captured the brightest photo, with the most detail. The Pixel’s Night Sight did well, but not quite as good, and the Galaxy was nowhere nearly as good as the other two.
A cozy cafe
Some phones see better at night
The famous Basilique du Sacré Cœur de Montmartre, a temple on top of the Montmartre hill, is not only a place for God-loving folks, but also a gather spot for youngsters and the cast iron walls are adorned with locks of newly-weds. In the dark, it was hard to see the signs, so we turned to the phones to help us capture this.
The Huawei P30 Pro and the Pixel 3 stood out with great photos, it’s really hard to pick the better one here, while the Galaxy S10 Plus did not really do a good job.
They serve snails in these places!
Les escargot, that’s the name of a popular snail dish in France, but while we did not get to try these out yet, we capture this photo of a restaurant that serves them.
The Huawei’s night mode captured the most memorable photo here. The image is clearly way oversharpened, but also has the best exposure and we like it the most. The Pixel is not far behind, while the Galaxy again is not quite as good as the other two.
Periscope Camera at night
The P30 Pro comes with a brand new Periscope camera that kicks in at 5x zoom and works in combination with the main sensor to go to 10x ‘hybrid’ zoom.
How does that work at night? Here are a few shots where we compare it to the digital zoom on the Galaxy S10 Plus.
1X
5X
10X
Final Words
So… does the Huawei P30 Pro rewrite the rules of photography? It’s hard to tell, but we can clearly see that its Night mode, despite the inconvenience of having to stand for several seconds to capture an image, is worth it. It can an impressive amount of light and captures memorable images that you often cannot get on other phones.
The Night Sight mode on the Google Pixel also works well, but often times, the P30 Pro was able to gather more light and capture a better-looking photo.
Finally, the Galaxy is not quite that great at night.
And this rounds up our quick first look at the cameras on the P30 Pro. Stay tuned for more photos, videos and a full-on review of the Huawei P30 Pro coming soon.