Oppo’s new Find X9 Pro has arrived this week as one of the most ambitious camera phones of the year. It’s the first from the company to feature a 200-megapixel Hasselblad telephoto camera, co-engineered with the revered Swedish camera maker. It’s built around a 1/1.56-inch sensor, f/2.1, an optically stabilized periscope lens, and can achieve up to 13.2x zoom or up to 120x with a little AI-assistance.
The telephoto is accompanied by a 50 MP main camera with a fast f/1.5 aperture, a 50MP ultra-wide sensor, as well as a dedicated True Color camera that measures spectral light to improve color consistency across all the lenses. And if all that wasn’t enough, in good light, the cameras can also default to full-resolution 50MP images across all lenses, as well as a dedicated 200 MP Hi-Res mode on the telephoto, and can record live motion photos in 4K quality.
In most phones, these specs would be more than enough to make any photographer's mouth water. But Oppo has thrown in one more little treat – an optional Hasselblad co-engineered teleconverter lens. This lens clips onto the back of the X9 Pro using a special case and extends the telephoto camera’s reach by 3.28x, or 230mm in full frame equivalence, and up to whopping 920mm using lossless zoom.
It won’t deny that the lens looks a little outlandish sticking out of the rear of the phone as I’ve been walking around, but for the results – it’s been worth it. So much so that I am actually a little hooked on using it. As a photographer who for years has had to carry around bulky kit and several lenses, the fact that I can carry around just my phone and a small cigar-sized lens, but get incredibly good photos throughout a 15mm to 920mm zoom range is unbelievable.
I won’t get ahead of myself; professional photographers don’t need to panic (yet at least). In terms of image quality, subject separation, and bokeh, it's not ready to replace a dedicated professional large sensor camera and a wide-aperture telephoto lens. But the results from the X9 are incredibly sharp – and dare I say it, some of the least phone-like images I have seen yet.
This, however, is a setup that will surely make bridge cameras and a lot of compact cameras downright obsolete. I would personally struggle to understand why anyone would choose a large, bulky bridge camera over the more svelte option of the X9 Pro with camera-rivalling image quality, and also the added benefit of being, you know, a phone.
I won't pour one out for the bridge camera just yet, but if more companies jump on the camera adapter train, its days might well be numbered!
You can take a look below at some of the sample images I have captured over the last few weeks with the Oppo Find X9 Pro and the Hasselblad telephoto adapter and judge for yourself.
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