Has Oppo Improved the N5’s Camera?
When I first got my hands on the Oppo Find N5 I must admit I was a bit disapointed by the camera. The rumors were indeed true and literally each sensor on the back of this lovely device was physically smaller than the sensors on the OnePlus Open/Oppo Find N3. In many ways, the camera had been downgraded. That being said, it is totally fair to point out how insanely important processing on our modern phones. Google’s Pixel Folds have used pretty lackluster hardware so far and yet the resolve some of the most consistent and reliable images of any foldable.
It seems to me as though Oppo is trying to overcompensate for the downgraded sensors by pushing their processing to an extreme that can sometimes look extremely artificial. To me, the Find N5’s images often look far too bright and too sharp. It almost looks like they took the clarity slider on some phones and turned it all the way up. Some people will love how the images just POP, but to me they look very overprocessed.
Now that Oppo has delivered a couple updates that both claim to improve camera performance, I thought I’d supply some side-by-sides to see if any of that had changed.
Is It Better?
As I’ve used the Find N5 over the last month, I must admit my immediate shock at the level of processing has diminished. One aspect of this is that I had set the exposure down just a tad (more on that later), but some of it is simply me getting used to the way it looks.
Now, as I look at these images with stock settings next to the OnePlus Open and the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, the shock mostly has returned. In the first three images, note how little natural blur their is to the background. This is due to the Find N5 using a smaller sensor at f/1.9 vs the Open using f/1.7. Even the Pixel uses f/1.7, but with a smaller sensor, the Open looks far more cinematic to me.
The detail on the plant itself has that “clarity slider too far up” look to me that makes the image look overly processed more or less just like it did at launch.
Adjust the Exposure
If you dive into the camera settings on the Find N5, you’ll find an option to preserve settings. What I have taken to doing is setting the exposure at the top to -0.3 and having that be the default setting. This makes the images look a bit more natural to me as I do prefer shadows to appear in my photos if they were there in real life.
It’s not perfect, but it does help.
Macro Blur
We also have gotten a new setting for the Macro mode that allows users to determine how much bokeh they want in their shot. The Full Clarity option that appears when Macro Mode is turned on will bring just a bit more of the shot into focus.
This tele-macro mode is by far my favorite thing about the Find N5’s camera, so seeing it get a bit more flexibility is great to see.
Power Button?
One bizarre change spotted by a member of the channel discord server (AlfaBirb) is the addition of the ability to launch the camera with a double press of the power button. Prior, you could turn on an option that would allow you to double press a volume key to get to the camera, but I have found that to be very unreliable. Now, users can find the more traditonal option in a super strange place. Head over to your settings and look for connection and sharing. From there, go to NFC and then click access card. I know. Look for the gear icon in the top right and then head to double-press power button. There has to be an easier way to get to this, but search turns up nothing and I can’t find it anywhere else.
Bizarre.
Verdict
While the Find N5 still leans into a processing style that I subjectively do not like, it’s still a solid camera and that’s despite the downgrades to the hardware. The updates to the camera don’t seem to have had much of an effect on the processing, at least so far as I can tell from the side-by-sides.