In addition to technology, one of my other major hobbies is repairing old vehicles. The majority of the time, this second major hobby doesn’t ever get to cross over and apply to Pocketables content, but today I decided to figure out a way to make it work. I needed to test the camera from the Motorola DROID RAZR MAXX HD on something, so I decided to bring it out to the wooded area where my garage is, and take some pictures of my two Nissan Z31s to gauge the camera’s performance.
I’ve never been the best judge of camera quality myself, as in general if a picture looks “good enough,” I am fine with it. As such, for the majority of this post, I’ll let the pictures do the talking, and give a short summary of what I think about the camera towards the end. Consider yourself warned – these are large images, and there are a lot of them, so proceed with caution if you have limited bandwidth. (Clicking on the images will open them full-sized.)
Sunset, HDR off, default settings
Sunset, HDR on, default settings
Panorama, sun behind trees
Panorama, sun opposite trees
HDR off, default settings
HDR on, default settings
Single sample from multi-shot setting.
Semi-closeup, default settings, bright light
Close up, bright light, default settings
Five foot distance, cloudy, default settings
Closeup, cloudy, default settings
Angled shot, cloudy, default settings
Side shot, cloudy, default settings
Dark shot, with flash, default settings
Dark closeup, with flash, default settings
Dark shot, with flash, default settings
Dark shot, no flash, default settings
Twilight level shot, no flash, default settings
Twilight level shot, flash, default settings
Indoor (in car) shot, no flash, default settings
In car shot, flash, default settings
In car shot, flash, default settings
Daylight shot, default settings
Hopefully the images above have given you a better idea as to how well the DROID RAZR MAXX HD camera performs in different lighting situations and at different distances, as I feel the images can say much more than I could. Overall, my impression of Motorola’s camera software was that it was quite fast and fairly simple, and the shutter speed was actually very good. There was little waiting between pictures, and even when the camera has to focus, it does so fairly fast.
I’m not a professional photographer, and no smartphone will ever make me one, but I am quit happy with the performance of the 8MP camera on the RAZR MAXX HD in most scenarios. Like most cellphone cameras, it suffers a bit in darker situations with no flash, but in bright situations it does quite well. As a whole, it is quite good for a cellphone camera, and certainly an upgrade over my Samsung Galaxy Nexus.
