Gadgetory

a mobile photographers welcome back to another real camera review where if we try to review our smartphone cameras in the same way that we might test a standalone camera today we're taking a look at the cameras on the moto z2 force we'll get part of the conclusion out right now for those of you who are too impatient or somehow can't figure out how to skip to the end of a video but this is a well-rounded and competent smartphone shooter this year Motorola opting for a dual-camera sensor introduces a lot of really fun features to the mix I'm happy to see that adding these features has not gotten in the way of a very streamlined and consumer friendly app with that summary out of the way if you're watching this video you probably do care how this performs in a variety of real-world situations so let's kick this off with exposure saturation and white balance these dual sensors work in tandem for every photo you take one is color the other is black-and-white and that really helps with clarity and contrast the z2 relies on a really slick form of spot metering which we'll talk about a little bit more when we get to the autofocus section largely wherever you drop that auto focus indicator you're going to expose properly for the subject that you're trying to capture and I'm really happy to see that this phone doesn't mind delivering a dark background if there's a high contrast situation like a white flower and direct sunlight while most smartphone cameras tend to overexpose and the z2 isn't an exception to that rule it does manage to walk a nicer balance between these i popping vivid images and really capturing the subject that you're trying to focus for after dropping the focus it was a coin flip whether or not I felt I needed to adjust the exposure further now what might get in your way is the saturation we're not over exposing images but we are really pumping that color on almost all phones this is usually fine for blues greens Browns other earth tones but once we start trekking into warmer colors we can start to clip yellows and reds but happily the white balance is mostly on point for most of our setups we're dealing with really warm California sunlight and the v2 is playing with that color information in a really pleasing way subjects in shade can sometimes present a challenge but this phone is preventing the overall output from looking too icy you can shift photos and videos over to the black and white sensor a native black and white image is produced and that is a cool effect it's a nice high-quality image though I don't know that it's so much better than taking a really high-quality contrasting color image and then just shifting it to black and white in editing I'm a big fan of getting up close to a subject I really like macro shots pushing the camera to its softest creamiest bouquet and here the z2 is a somewhat mediocre performer the minimum focusing distance is a little further away than what I'd like and these image sensors are a little on the smaller side closer to an iPhone or an LG g6 so we don't have the nicest softest natural bouquet from the lens and sensor and that's where software is going to come in is the premiere feature for this dual camera shooter is that these are matched fields of view and this produces by not Killer image data that the phone can take to artificially blur the backgrounds of your shots this is a first-generation concept for Motorola and unfortunately it kind of shows the software effect is pretty aggressive and no one's going to confuse this kind of processing for natural lens depth of field blur off of say an interchangeable lens camera we're not dealing with a lot of resolution so zoom performance is about what you would expect for a 12 megapixel shooter at the far end of that zoom we're blown up the image a lot so there's a lot of image degradation though I really like that the zoom action is a swipe up through the camera interface we're going to be talking about the app later but there's a lot of lumia inspiration on how Motorola laid this software out low light and night shots came out better than what I was expecting this phone doesn't have hardware image stabilization it's all software processing like a lot of phones in this space minus the pixel you do have to hold on to your shot just a little bit longer as the camera is sampling image information but when you do you end up with some really clear and crisp exposures a blind rear camera selfie in really low light conditions was not difficult to pull off and the z2 is just fast enough to pull out some good candid creeper shots discreetly it's at night and in other high contrast lighting situations that we can see there is a little bit of lens flaring but nothing overly destructive to the frame but the main Achilles heel you'll probably want to disable HDR when shooting at night it's really hard keeping the phone stable for a series of exposures to layer up all that information and speaking of high dynamic range this is a good it's somewhat inconsistent performer I've got a bunch of shots where this one does a terrific job of reining in highlights and boosting shadow detail to make sure you've got information across the whole picture but I would say it was about one out of five test shots where this would just become a shadow brightening mode and we would start clipping highlights one of the most difficult experiences to unpack on the Moto z2 force is the focusing system it functions unlike any other phone that I've used in the past you slide this little indicator around on your screen and then that becomes an auto focus target I really like how that functions because you can set this in place and then as you move the phone around that auto focus target stays put but the phone doesn't feel like it ever completely locks if you move significantly even though the indicators staying put it will be refocusing based on that target location and because this target indicator responds to sliding around on your screen it can sometimes make an exposure adjustment a little bit more difficult if you don't perfectly nail the exposure slider you might slide your auto focus indicator off of your subject because of this difference in how autofocus works we weren't able to perform our normal autofocus speed test you'll just have to take my word for it now once you slide that indicator on your subject the auto focus lock is actually really snappy selfie performance is solid if unremarkable solid exposures considering I'm playing in almost direct light decent exposures when I move over to shade and when we're indoors or in low-light conditions that front-facing flash actually does a really good job of acting as a fill light you don't get this harsh spotlight effect on the face it just sort of helps boost all of the light information in each shot respectable 1080p video and some good sound but I don't know that this would be a top pick for those of you who are trying to do some vlogging on the go shifting back to the rear camera is talking about video we capture a very high quality UHD video using software image stabilization a lot of the exposure and saturation performance that we saw with stills is going to be mirrored and video though obviously we don't get quite the same benefit from both sensors working together one of the most important aspects of discussing video is of course image stabilization how well does this phone minimize handshake and twitches and jerkiness and the z2 does a better-than-average job considering there's no hardware to smooth out your shot the thing about software it's still pretty easy to confuse this kind of processing even when trying to hold still I had a number of shots that just had funky twitchy adjustments happening where the phone didn't need to be trying to adjust the scene software stabilization depends on this really sophisticated crop and pan but once we start increasing that shutter speed each individual frame can start to get really blurry and when we're trying to crop and merge blurry frames that's where we can get that hazy image processing effect and this is made worse by one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to smartphone video variable frame rate there's a hard toggle between 30 frames per second video and 24 frames per second video when lighting conditions get dark shifting from 30 frames per second to 24 frames per second means we get a longer shutter speed from one thirtieth of a second to one twenty-fourth of a second and that's great for soaking up a little more light but that also means you have a longer shutter to introduce more blur from moving the phone around looking at some slow-motion footage we've got options for 120 frames per second 1080p and 240 frames per second 720p I'm going to make the recommendation that you just stick with the 1080p slow motion video the frame rate and time reduction on the 720p mode is phenomenal and this is one of the best phones that I've reviewed for not dropping frames but there's so much image compression happening that this just looks kind of blurry and messy where the 1080p does a respectable job of sort of balancing out those two modes and lastly we should talk about the app and performance this phone overall is a screamer every interaction I have with it is snappy and efficient and really the only concern I have with the z2 taking it out into the field is the smaller battery it's pretty easy to drain this thing if you're shooting a lot of photos and a lot of video plus if you're a moto fan that twist of the wrist to launch the camera app is just a fun interaction to have a nice gesture and it seems to work a bit more reliably than say the volume rocker activation on an LG g6 this might be sacrilegious to some and a lot of people are going to say this is just copycat territory but Motorola has come closest to delivering the app layout that I loved on Lumia handsets those old Nokia camera phones keeping the main camera interface beautifully simple but delivering a manual mode with these great sliders that you can swipe through very easily the buttons are large the slider easy targets to hit so this is definitely a step up from some of the other manual modes I criticized like they're really fiddly sliders on an HTC the only place where this app falters is in the one new feature that dual camera sensors can offer and that's in the depth of field mode I don't know what's going on with the image processing here but once you activate this mode your viewfinder becomes a slideshow the frame rate drops like crazy in a way Motorola is just working harder than they need to here and it's not a great experience but I rambled on enough let's wrap this up with the final conclusion on the Moto Z to force camera this phone is lean this phone is quick it gets to the point and for the most part I really enjoyed my time shooting on it I think a lot of people are going to appreciate software that gets out of the user's way and focuses on just the core photography aspect of capturing an image or shooting some video and of course some concerns with video performance especially as we start getting into lower light situations but I don't think people will be overly bothered by image degradation until we really start pushing this phone to its limits the final verdict I don't know that this is a better camera than what we got last year on the g-force it feels like a tangent a way to introduce some more fun features with a few compromises on things like Hardware image stabilization I think most people are going to be pleased good - very good performance across a variety of shooting scenarios and it's just another example of the built-in cameras on Motorola phones doing a pretty handy job of outperforming the Hasselblad moto mod as always folks thanks so much for watching be sure to subscribe to this channel for more real camera reviews really in-depth examinations on what these phones can do as the smartphone is completely replaced the point-and-shoot camera market and helped us out with a share on your favorite social networks for PocketNow i'm juan carlos bag now author of take better photos smartphone photography for noobs available on amazon kindle some gadget guy around the web on twitter and instagram and i will catch you all on the next review