The Vivo X100 Pro takes some of the best macro photographs we have ever seen from a phone camera. Perhaps it is time that brands looking to deliver super macro photography started moving from the ultrawide path to the telephoto one.
Macro is one of the most exciting photography modes, allowing you to get extreme close-up shots of beings and objects. However, it can also be extremely challenging, as one has to get very close to the subject (often to within a few centimeters of it) to get a clear shot with a lot of details, giving one a whole new perspective of the world around us by letting us see things that are otherwise not visible to the naked eye – the patterns on the wings of a dragonfly, the pollen on the feet of a bee, the threads that make up a fabric, an ant balancing a tiny cube of sugar, and so on. Professional photographers generally have dedicated lenses for the purpose, called (duh!) macro lenses. Macro on mobile phones – possible, but living on hope
As in all things photographic, macro photography has made its way to mobile phones too. But as there is very little scope for attaching lenses to phones (options exist, but are not easy to use), phone cameras generally give the task of macro photography to one of the (three or four) cameras on their backs. Budget and mid-segment devices often have a dedicated macro camera.
Still, as this is generally of inferior quality and comes with a low megapixel count (often 2 or 5 megapixels), image quality is not the greatest. When it comes to flagships like the iPhone, Galaxy S series, and the Pixel series of phones, macro photography is generally entrusted to the ultrawide camera as this is the camera with the shortest focal length and, therefore, lets you get very close to the subject you wish to capture. In fact, many flagship phones automatically switch to the ultrawide sensor when they sense you are getting very close to your subject – what some refer to as an auto macro mode.
While smartphones can and have produced some wonderful macro snaps, they tend to be rather limited in this regard. Dedicated but low-quality sensors do not deliver great images. Although most ultrawide sensors can deliver good images, they involve getting very close to the subject and often do not have good autofocus (many ultrawide sensors are actually fixed focus as their primary objective is to capture a large landscape) and have very little in terms of innovative use.
Macro photography in phones is literally a journey of hope: the hope of getting very close to a subject without its moving or noticing, hoping that the phone itself does not cast a shadow on the image, hoping that the phone stays steady enough (again a big challenge) for a clear shot, and hoping for the best as you hit the shutter or capture button.
