Complete camera review: Asus Zenfone Selfie

So I'm publishing this blog not because I want to be a blogger or reviewer or anything like that..(maybe in the future i would like that).. it is because I have this phone and would like to write about it.

So I got this phone on 15 May 2016.
I have 32GB model with 3GB RAM.

This blog is about camera performance of the phone and all modes and performance of manual mode.
So without wasting any of your valuable time, let's begin.

 REAR CAMERA:

    The camera is 13MP with f/2.0 and dual toned flash. The camera is pretty awesome. It takes very awesome photos.   However there is some noise is low light conditions. I will show you how to remove noise using manual camera mode int it. Just stay tuned. Here are some sample shots.

What you must notice in these photos are the level of details. Far shots are very good too but close up shots are just amazing. 
Asus has pixelmaster 2.0 technology camera, and it comes with different modes.

These are:

1. Auto Mode
2. Manual
3. HDR
4. Beautification
5. Super Resolution
6. QR Code
7. Low Light
8. Night
9. Depth of field
10. Effect
11. GIF Animation
12. Panaroma
13. Miniature
14. Time Rewind
15. Smart Remove
16. All Smiles
17. Slow Motion
18. Time Lapse
19. Panosphere

Among all these I find manual camera to be most interesting. HDR mode is also good, but the rest are of no use in long term. (Not talking about auto mode.)
I will talk about performance of the manual camera, first let me cover up all other modes.

HDR is pretty decent but everybody who knows how HDR works must already know that you need to eliminate the shake to take a good HDR mode picture.
(To know more about  HDR photography in phone, stay tuned with the blog.)

Beautification Mode is also good. It give you various unique options like chin thinning, eye size increase, blush, skin color, etc.

Super Resolution mode take many photos at a time and combines them to make a big super resolution photograph. The details get incresed in the photo, so is the photo size.

Low light has unique techonolgy of combining multiple pixels to give you photos in extremely low light, but that drops your photos to 3M resolution, so it is prestty useless.

Depth of field give you option to blur the background behind your subject inn photo but it is not what you expect. doesn't do its job well.

Panaroma is already you know.

Miniature is good at the beginning but you fill find it useless most of the time as most of the editing in photo can be done afterwords. 

Time Rewind is useless too, you will never use it. It gives you the option to take multiple burst shot and deciding which photo is good. pretty useless if you know what you are shooting.

Slow motion of this phone is not good. It is like taking multiple photos and combining them to view a slideshow. By the way, slow motion is expected to be good in those phones only which can record 60fps videos or more. this phone records only 30fps which is good for normal videos but not good for slow motion.

Time Lapse is good in everyphone. 

Panosphere was awesome, but it is not able to record details as we would expect. Photos are overlapped at each other. I thought it would give panorama like effect like combining photos at detailed level, but it was not upto the mark. So useless it is too.

Manual Camera Mode:
 So let us come to manual camera mode.
If you want to know how to take good photos in manual mode of your camera, here is my another post on
Using Manual mode in your android camera.
 Here i will talk about the performace of the manual mode.


Now here are some shots taken in auto mode and manual mode.

 See this, The light was coming from other room and there was no light source near this.I took a shot from auto mode, it was a dark room with very low light. So the photo came good but not bright enough. So I increased the exposure time to 2sec in manual mode and ISO50 and took the shot. See the result?

Now here is another photo. It was complete darkness on the street.I took the photo in auto mode and it was dark and dull. SO i opened up manual mode and set exposure to 4sec on ISO50. There you go, another dark object lightened up.

And the camera allows you to take up shots up to 32sec exposure. So you can get pretty decent photos even in the candle light. Just you need are a still hands. I use a self made tripod to take photos of long exposure. It is not a tripod actually, just a stand for my phone, cause shaking camera even a little bit in long exposure shots will surely ruin your photo.

I will post a blog on how to make it, just stay tuned.

One thing more. The lowest ISO on this phone is ISO50, which is pretty good. Most phones only give you option on shooting in minimum ISO100, so its a bonus.

So if you want to take good photos in manual mode, some tips are:
   1. Use ISO50, the minimum. It will give you best details, and  least noise.
   2. Keep practicing on what exposure time you should use to best take your photos. More the light,    less exposure time, lesser the light, more exposure time. But make your you use a firm base for you phone when taking shot with long exposure, cause even a little shake will ruin your photograph.

Video Recording in phone is upto 1080p. It is also very good. Videos can also be shot in manual mode. so you can adjust focus and white balance and ISO too while recording. So it is pretty good.





Oh, I almost forgot to write about the front camera.

FRONT CAMERA

So the front camera is of 13MP f/2.2 with a dual tones flash. Awesome isn't it?

The camera takes  up pretty good photo. Awesome selfies, if you are selfie lover.

The front camera has slightly different options. 

Various options are like rear camera, except:

Selfie panaroma which is just like panaroma but covering short distance for taking selfie of a large group of people.

Manual mode in front camera gives you maximum exposure time of 0.5 second. Nothing to worry as for long exposure shots, back camera is better.

So this was a complete review of the Asus Zenfone Selfie. It has pretty good camera, and if you want a phone with good camera, this is an amazing phone.

If you have any doubt or question or anything you wanna say, just ask in comments. I will love to hear from you people.