What the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra camera is capable of: a big test with disappointing conclusions

Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra Is one of the most interesting smartphones of 2021. On paper, this is a real uncompromising uberflagman with a lot of advantages. However, the main emphasis in it is placed on cameras, which is easy to understand from the huge photo module in the back. This size is a payment for equipping with top-end sensors.

Camera characteristics

• Wide angle: Samsung GN2 50MP 1 / 1.12 ″, f / 2.0 aperture, 1.4μm pixels, Dual Pixel PDAF, Laser AF, OIS.
• Ultra wide angle: Sony IMX586 48MP 1 / 2.0 ″, f / 2.2 aperture, 128 ° angle, 0.8μm pixels, PDAF.
• Telephoto: Sony IMX586 48 MP, 1 / 2.0 ″, f / 4.1 aperture, 0.8μm pixels, PDAF, optical zoom × 5, OIS.

Xiaomi has deliberately sacrificed the usability and lightness of the device in favor of the shooting capabilities. This approach was once used by Nokia in the Lumia 1020, which received a large 41-megapixel sensor. Then this bet played out - the smartphone became one of the leaders in terms of photography in 2013–2014. Now, with the Mi 11 Ultra, things are not so simple.

We have studied in detail the capabilities of the main camera of the flagship Xiaomi and are ready to tell you how good it is.

Shooting with the main camera

The 50MP main sensor measures 1 / 1.12 Vidicon inches. This is one of the largest sensors in smartphones, which in theory ensures that a lot of light is captured.

In the daytime, outdoors or indoors with good lighting, everything is fine - the camera does just fine. And this, of course, is not surprising - in simple conditions, even the middle peasants are decently shooting today.

With automatic settings, the Mi 11 Ultra takes photos at 12.5 megapixels, but you can also activate the full 50 megapixels. Such shooting requires a little more time for post-processing, so it is not very convenient to use it on the go. Such pictures weigh 30-50 MB against the standard 5-15 MB.

Good quality can be achieved at night and in conditions of minimal lighting, but often the photo still “floats”. The post-processing system greedily clings to lamps and lanterns, making the frame over-illuminated, which noticeably suffers details. This becomes clear only after a detailed study of the picture on a smartphone display or on a large screen - an unpleasant surprise.

Manual mode "Night" allows you to twist the exposure even more, making the picture completely unnatural. Although someone may like such an embellishment of reality.

Wide angle shooting

"Shirik" at 48 megapixels, supplemented by phase focus, shoots at an angle of 128 °. And he's really good.

In the settings of the camera app there is an option for correcting wide-angle distortion, which is useful when shooting landscapes. It flattens the horizon and prevents objects from stretching in the frame. In terms of quality, such images are slightly inferior to those from the main camera, but they still look very good.

Night mode is also available for wide-angle photography, but getting a good handheld photo with it is not easy. Better to trust the automatic mode, although it does not guarantee the absence of marriage.

Zoom capabilities

The zoom in the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra is commendable. In sunny weather, you can look very far with it.

By default, the camera application allows you to select one of four zoom modes:

• × 2 - apparently, this is a crop from shooting at a resolution of 50 megapixels;
• × 5 - full optical zoom;
• × 10 - high quality hybrid zoom;
• × 120 is an almost useless program zoom that can only come in handy during the day and with a tripod.

If desired, you can use the manual zoom using the slider, but the image quality in this case will be lower than with fixed values.

In night mode, only the × 5 optical zoom is available, but getting a good photo with it is not easy either. When stitching frames, sometimes artifacts or "phantom lines" of objects appear, as if one image was not very accurately superimposed on another. And this is not to mention the "noise" of the image.

Macro photography

For macro photography, the Mi 11 Ultra uses a wide-angle camera and a special Macro mode, which is activated in the camera settings. Although he is here, rather, "for show."

Despite the presence of focusing in this module, pictures are sometimes very blurred at the edges. If you need to shoot something small, it is much easier and more efficient to take a photo using the optical zoom.

Portrait photography

With portraits, and indeed with photographing people, the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra is also not going smoothly. The picture is often yellow, and the background is not blurred evenly enough. But it should be understood that there is no camera for measuring the depth of field in the smartphone, so you have to rely only on the software part.

What is noteworthy is that when shooting with the main camera in portrait mode, you cannot activate the second screen. It can work as a viewfinder only in normal shooting mode, and there is already minimal blur, as in the photo below.

Advanced features

The Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra has a "Pro" mode that offers manual settings, illuminated focus areas, exposure check and RAW (DNG format) shooting. The latter will allow you to stretch the frame in a graphics editor on a PC, for example, in Lightroom or Photoshop. But for the entire time of testing the cameras, I wanted to use them only a couple of times, when the smartphone underexposed frames in backlight.

There is also a popular mode for taking pictures of the moon. It is called "Supermoon" and allows you to take a picture of a celestial body even without a large zoom, as is done by devices from other brands.

The problem is that only the Moon itself always remains in the frame, and everything else is artificially darkened - this is how algorithms work. Therefore, it will not work to photograph a satellite, for example, against the background of a night city.

There is also much more available in the camera application: many different modes for video recording, panoramic and slow-motion shooting, cinema effects. But all this is also in other Xiaomi smartphones, so we will not dwell on them in detail.

What is the bottom line

As a result, Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra pleasantly surprises with wide-angle shooting and excellent zoom up to × 10. This, perhaps, is all.

On the whole, things are going well with the photo "on the machine", but there is absolutely no "wow effect". The smartphone inherits all the same diseases as most of the inexpensive flagships. But it is necessary to evaluate the Mi 11 Ultra precisely taking into account the current price, which at the time of this review exceeds 100,000 rubles for the global version.

Such a price tag and a huge block of cameras by modern standards initially caused high expectations. From such a "monster" you expect perfect handheld photos - on the go, at night, at dusk, in a room with dim light, and so on. But, unfortunately, with really cool sensors, the Mi 11 Ultra shoots far from perfect. It does not give confidence that only one or even two frames per scene will be enough.

We would be happy to blame everything on software flaws, which will soon be eliminated. But the smartphone came out almost six months ago, so I don't want to recommend it with a reserve for the future, especially when there is a much more affordable and balanced one. Xiaomi Mi 11. You need a little more - there is a Mi 11 Pro with the same 50-megapixel main sensor as the Mi 11 Ultra, but so far the Pro model can only be bought in a modification for the Chinese market.

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