Xiaomi’s newest flagship Android cellphone 14 Extremely is lastly right here, and it’s the second iteration of Xiaomi’s collaboration with German pictures model Leica.
I examined the Xiaomi 13 Professional final 12 months, which together with the 13 Extremely, featured the primary Leica lens on a Xiaomi cellphone. So, with the brand new 14 Extremely, what has modified (photographically clever)?
Xiaomi Extremely expertise
Whereas I solely bought to expertise the Xiaomi 13 Professional final 12 months, the brand new Xiaomi 14 Extremely’s chassis is undoubtedly a tier above its Professional vary.
The Xiaomi 14 Extremely, which I had, got here with a matte black aluminum body and curiously, a nano-tech vegan leather-based again.
The cellphone simply seems critical and stealthy, and it is vitally snug to carry onto. The nano-tech vegan leather-based again is good to the contact, and it’s not one thing you will discover on some other main cellphone producers (suppose Samsung, Apple and Google).
The Xiaomi 14 Extremely has a pleasant heft to it, and that’s principally due to the massive array of lens in the back of the cellphone.
The cellphone comes with 4 lenses inside a round digital camera bump, and the primary digital camera now has a brand new Sony LYT-900 1-inch sensor.
This time, I additionally had the chance to check out the Xiaomi Pictures Equipment, and deck out the Xiaomi 14 Extremely with a digital camera grip for a extra compact camera-like expertise.
The digital camera grip is available in two components: a leather-based case and the grip itself, and it was straightforward to assemble them onto the cellphone.
The grip comes with a video document button, a shutter button in addition to a dial. The buttons are tactile and it feels nearly like a compact digital camera.
It additionally has a 1500mAh battery in it, and in accordance with Xiaomi, it may possibly lengthen the battery lifetime of the Xiaomi 14 Extremely by 23%.
If you’re after a compact digital camera expertise, this package is completely for you. In any other case, the package does make the cellphone rather a lot bulkier, and eradicating the leather-based case while you don’t need to use the package was fairly cumbersome.
Nevertheless, the most effective half concerning the package is the power so as to add a 67mm filter adapter ring onto the leather-based case. Which means that if you’re an avid photographer with your individual gear, now you can use your individual photographic filters on a cellphone!
Taking pictures photographs on the Extremely 14 with the primary digital camera
For a begin, I hooked up my very own diffusion filter onto the Xiaomi Extremely 14 with the package, and the photographs from the Xiaomi Extremely 14 now look slightly dreamier and ethereal due to how the filter softens the highlights within the photographs.
I additionally tried attaching a variable impartial density filter to aim some long-exposure photographs in the course of the day. A impartial density filter primarily reduces the quantity of sunshine getting into the digital camera, and it’s akin to including a pair of sun shades in entrance of the digital camera lens.
Nevertheless, the primary digital camera’s minimal aperture is f4.0, and the lens can not additional scale back the quantity of sunshine getting into it.
My variable impartial density filter was not sturdy sufficient to succeed in a shutter pace longer than one second on a cloudy afternoon, so you’ll need a a lot stronger impartial density filter if you’re to do lengthy exposures with the Xiaomi 14 Extremely in the course of the day.
Talking of the primary digital camera, the lens continues to be a large angle 23mm lens, and the efficiency of the brand new 1-inch sensor, so far as I can inform, is similar to final 12 months’s Xiaomi 13 Professional.
The photographs are sharp, and you’ll nonetheless get some blurry out-of-focus background bokeh for those who get your compositions proper.
The satan is, nonetheless, within the particulars. The brand new sensor is ready to seize higher particulars in low mild conditions, and it’s evident within the match-up in opposition to my very own Google Pixel 8 Professional within the comparability under.
I examined each telephones utilizing their default night time mode respectively. Regardless of the Xiaomi 14 Extremely defaulting to a a lot larger ISO or sensor sensitivity of 5000, the Xiaomi picture has noticeably extra particulars within the brighter parts of the picture, whereas the Pixel 8 Professional utterly blows out any sort of particulars.
This isn’t a shocking consequence contemplating the Xiaomi 14 Extremely most important digital camera has a considerably bigger sensor than the Pixel 8 Professional’s, and consequently a greater dynamic vary.
Xiaomi 14 Extremely’s different cameras
The Xiaomi 14 Extremely additionally comes with three different lenses: an ultra-wide 12mm lens, a telephoto 75mm lens, and one other telephoto 120mm lens.
I’m typically not a fan of ultra-wide angle lenses, however it may possibly create distinctive views and it’s helpful while you want it (to shoot a big crowd, for instance).
The 75mm telephoto lens contains a floating lens, and it is vitally much like the one I attempted final 12 months on the Xiaomi 13 Professional.
I had probably the most enjoyable with the 120mm lens although, and it’s helpful to have a lens that may zoom into one thing fairly distant.
Telephoto lenses additionally are inclined to compress the picture, making issues within the background seem nearer than they really are, and it makes for fascinating compositions.
It additionally has the power to shoot macro pictures together with the ultra-wide 12mm lens, and I might advocate this cellphone to anybody who enjoys taking pictures excessive close-ups of absolutely anything.
Leica colors and enhancing RAW photographs
There are two most important photographic kinds or digital camera color profiles you’ll be able to select on the digital camera app, and they’re Leica Genuine and Leica Vibrant.
These are clearly impressed by Leica’s personal color profiles, and primarily based alone comparisons I did final 12 months, the Leica color profiles on the Xiaomi Extremely 14 are the identical because the Xiaomi Professional 13, which have been similar to a Leica M11.
The digital camera app additionally provides an enormous vary of digital camera filters which can be principally movie simulations, and I’m going to name it: Leica has among the finest black and white filters/profiles/no matter you need to name it on the market.
The black and white photographs straight out of the digital camera app are attractive, and I used to be already raving about them on the Xiaomi 13 Professional final 12 months.
At this level, I truthfully suppose each Leica and Xiaomi have perfected black and white on a cellphone digital camera.
The Xiaomi Extremely 14 additionally provides 16 bit UltraRAW, and if that sounds an excessive amount of, it simply implies that the Extremely 14 provides RAW photographs which comprise extra colors.
RAW photographs are primarily simply knowledge straight from the digital camera sensor, and it’s a must to use apps like Adobe Lightroom to course of them (and edit them), earlier than exporting them into usable photograph information to your personal use.
The RAW information are very malleable once I fiddled with them on Adobe Lightroom, and you’ll get well quite a lot of particulars within the RAW information even when it seems like you will have misplaced them while you have been taking the precise shot.
Conclusion
The Xiaomi 14 Extremely is clearly designed for pictures fanatics, and it’s particularly evident with the Xiaomi Pictures Equipment.
I truthfully suppose it has hit the mark, and whereas the likes of iPhones and Pixels stand in Xiaomi’s means, the Xiaomi 14 Extremely along with the Xiaomi Pictures Equipment are providing one thing that different telephones simply don’t.
If you would like a compact digital camera expertise in your cellphone, you’re all about enhancing your photographs to style, otherwise you simply merely like black and white pictures, then sure, the Xiaomi 14 Extremely is a good cellphone for you.
Jay is a content material creator who likes to hoard classic photographic lenses, and loses too usually in Dota 2 and Magic: The Gathering after work.