Vodafone Smart V8 – Camera

The 16-megapixel sensor on the Smart V8 is seriously good for the money. In bright conditions it can take some excellent photos. It has quite a wide angle, which means you can cram a lot into your shots. In ideal lighting, it’s very good – although it struggles with any kind of range. Try to shoot from the shade of some trees out into a field, or similar, and either your trees will be under-exposed, or your field blown out. It takes careful composition to get things right.

<sup>The buildings in the background are a little over-exposed, while the bus and people are too dark – but it’s not a complete write-off

Shady shots are generally quite good</sup>

^{It’s possible to achieve a bokeh effect if you get close enough to your subject}

^{Sometimes, the light will work with you and produce moody shots}

<sup>Without HDR, this shot is horribly blown-out in its lighter areas

Even with HDR, lighting problems remain, but it’s much better</sup>

You can cheat by using HDR Mode, but this slows down the shooting process and you’ll need to keep your hands pretty still. But it does a good job.

In low light things are less impressive, but not awful. There’s some noise in low-light images, although it’s often quite well disguised with some clever processing.

The front-facing camera is excellent, offering up natural skin tones – although, again, brightly lit backgrounds do tend to get lost.