I’m Blown Away by These Photos I Took on the Xiaomi 14 Ultra – CNET [CNET]

Xiaomi’s flagship 14 Ultra impressed me in a number of ways, from its great performance to its vivid display. But it’s the camera that’s the main reason to buy this phone.

It packs a main image sensor that’s much bigger than those found on the iPhone 15 Pro Max or Galaxy S24 Ultra, which together with a wide, variable aperture and Leica-engineered optics, allows this phone to take some of the best images I’ve ever taken on a phone. 

I’ve taken almost 2,000 images with the phone so far as part of my testing, so click through this gallery to see some of my favorite examples. 

While the camera takes great photos in the auto mode, I usually shot in Pro mode in both DNG raw and JPEG, with a high contrast Leica black and white effect applied. 

This is a straight-out-of-camera (SOOC) JPEG and I love the deep contrast and pin-sharp details. 

Another SOOC JPEG with impressive clarity and great shadows.

I do a lot of street photography, usually in black and white, and I loved using the Xiaomi phone just as I would my usual camera. It locks focus quickly and lets me capture moments before they pass me by. 

Shooting in both raw and JPEG means I get a great-looking black and white shot right out of the camera.

I can revert the raw file back to color and process it just like I would a raw image from a standalone camera.

The raw files have impressive dynamic range, too. I was concerned that the bright highlights here might be overexposed.

But I easily pulled them back and adjusted the exposure overall to create the image here. 

The sky looked very blown-out here, and I was sure this image was destined for the recycle bin.

But no, the massive image sensor on the phone provides such a big dynamic range that I was able to rescue all the detail.

This shot, on the other hand, was far too underexposed, with the figures being totally lost in shadow. 

But the raw gave me so much scope to lift those shadows, bringing the roller skater out of the darkness, while still ensuring the bright sky in the background didn’t become overexposed. 

I edited this raw file in Lightroom to drop the shadows to create this moody shot with just a sliver of light catching the figures in the foreground. 

And here I edited the raw using the same color-grading tools I would with my regular camera.

This wide-angle shot contains both very bright skies and shadowy areas inside the bus, but I’ve been able to edit the raw files to create a much more balanced scene. 

I loved capturing this moment of the person shielding their eyes from the sun. 

I used the zoom lens here, shooting in black and white to capture this thoughtful moment.

This person was happy to pose with their dog and I was happy to take their photo. 

The phone has two optical zoom lenses, both of which have 50MP sensors. This was taken with the 3.2x lens and it’s packed with detail. 

With the 5x lens, things still look pin sharp. 

I digitally zoomed in further to 10x and this image still looks amazing. 

The 5x zoom really helped focus my composition here.

And the zoom also let me compress this scene to focus more on the moon over London’s city center.

The ultrawide lens (again, 50MP) has done a solid job here of capturing this difficult, high-contrast scene.

And I love the wide look in black and white here, with great shadows and highlights throughout. 

I didn’t use the zoom lens here, but instead cropped in later on the main lens to focus the scene on this person carrying flowers. Despite cropping into only a small portion of the full image, there’s still loads of detail. 

At night, the camera’s auto mode can take beautiful shots. 

The big sensor and wide aperture helps keep noise levels down. 

But again I prefer switching to pro mode and going with a black and white look. By stopping the aperture down to around f/3, the phone has been able to capture these starbursts around the lights, which is something I’ve only ever been able to achieve on a regular camera with a lens set to around f/11.

I’m seriously impressed with how these night time images look.

This SOOC JPEG is dark and moody and I love it.

The raw file looks pretty decent without any editing.

But a bit of time in Lightroom and I’ve been able to transform it, brighting the scene and adjusting the color balance overall. I’m so impressed at how much information is contained in the raw files — I can edit them in just the same way I would with shots form my regular camera, without worrying about losing information.

Again, this unprocessed raw is a little on the drab side.

But it’s given me a great base to bring the image back to life like this.