On a recent trip to Gothenburg, Sweden, I had several eye-opening experiences with my photography. The biggest? I left my compact camera behind and relied entirely on my phone.
I’ve recently written that I was impressed by the performance of the Oppo Find X8 Ultra, in particular the image quality, and the response to the images once I had shared them was overwhelmingly positive.
The Hasselblad imaging system was a major reason I trusted the phone over a dedicated camera for this trip. But there was another reason that I later discovered: stealth.
Stealth is a powerful tool for any photographer. Wildlife and bird photographers rely on it, of course, but in recent years it’s become just as important in street photography. Candid images capture genuine moments that aren’t staged, showing the world as it is rather than how we want it to appear.
I used that to my advantage at the Gothenburg Museum of Art (Göteborgs konstmuseum), where I explored an incredible exhibition titled Apocalypse (an exhibition I can't recommend highly enough).
Using a phone enabled me to move quietly, freely, photographing the exhibits without worrying about being stopped by security or drawing attention from other visitors in the frame. With a phone in hand I looked like any other tourist, not a photographer pulling out a chunky stills camera. It was freeing.
Of course, stealth alone wouldn’t have mattered if the phone couldn’t handle the museum’s biggest challenge: extremely low light conditions.
This is where the Oppo Find X8 Ultra impressed me most, especially shooting in black-and-white to match the mood of the subject matter (although on reflection, I realize that I also shot with a higher contrast style in mind, so perhaps not ideal for showcasing the best of the phone's capabilities, but nevertheless it did what I wanted it to).
Despite its small sensor, the X8 Ultra delivered exceptional dynamic range and detail in the dim conditions of the gallery. Its low-light performance is genuinely impressive.
There’s a reason DxOMark ranks it as the number one camera phone on the market, noting, "The OPPO Find X8 Ultra ranks at the top of our database for detail preservation. Across a wide range of conditions, it consistently delivers a high level of detail with natural, realistic rendering, particularly noticeable in portrait shots.
"Compared to other leading flagship devices, it outperforms competitors in challenging lighting environments, such as low light or night scenes, where it retains fine textures and minimizes detail loss more effectively."
ABOVE: A gallery of images taken at the Apocolypse exhibition
After this experience, the Oppo Find X8 Ultra might be my camera of the year so far. It’s fun to use, and its image quality and feature set challenge those of my compact camera.
Over the next few weeks, I thought it might be fun to put it through even more real-world tests: street photography, landscapes, portraits. If it keeps performing like this, I might just cash in on the compact camera craze and sell mine.
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