Remember the Huawei P30 Pro and its supposedly awesome camera? Well, we never actually got the chance to test out the camera at a live concert. The company actually used the Blue concert in Malaysia to illustrate how great the P30 Pro’s camera is, and with Snow Patrol in town recently, we figured we’d do the same..except this time, it would be unpaid and unbiased.
The stage was set, and with one of my colleagues recently purchasing the P30 Pro for a mad discount during the height of the trade ban paranoia and our friends at U Mobile graciously hooking us up with tickets, I was good to go.
Upon reaching the KL LIVE, I made it a point to stand all the way in the back because well, you know, 50x zoom and all. The venue itself was packed anyway so I wouldn’t have been able to head to the front even if I wanted to. Could the P30 Pro really take concert photography to the next level? Let’s see!
So all five of these photos were taken from ALL THE WAY IN THE BACK. While there’s some noise in one or two of them, the picture quality is quite impressive. However, I don’t know if my colleague bought a defective unit or something but I had some problems with the focus and the camera’s AI. It was almost human in the sense that it had moods. Sometimes, it would detect “Stage Performance”, other times, it would just be out of focus and i’d have to manually adjust it.
I figured I should probably take some alternative angles, so i headed on upstairs to get a look at the view from there.
So it was pretty much the same story upstairs, though the ultra wide angle did give me a pretty good shot of the event. One thing I noticed about the camera is that the shots are still very crisp even when zoomed in. Anything past 5x zoom however, and you’re going to have a problem. All this levels of Zoom and they still couldn’t zoom in on the problem: Shakiness
I did test out the famed 50x zoom as well and it turned out pretty okay though it took me forever to get a good shot given how shaky it is at that level of zoom. I don’t see any sort of practical use for this feature other than for participating in voyeuristic activity, so voyeurs out there.. this one is for you.
One thing that really took me by surprise was how good the video capabilities of the phone are. I shot a couple of videos and while it had the same problems with the focus every now and then, it’s a vast improvement on the P20 Pro. Check it out for yourself below.
All in all, the camera performed just as expected. Can it replace your DLSR? Not just yet, but it does have enough quality to give you the freedom of carrying just one device without having to worry about lousy “phone camera” quality photos/videos.
