u/Tiny-Requirement-307

Hi all,

I'm a hobbyist photographer who started over a year ago, I do paid studio portrait work very occasionally. I started photography as a means of recording my life, and found I loved how it got me going out to places I never would have gone before. I also have always shot JPG+RAW and probably RAW edit 70% of my keepers.

Up until recently I was using Lightroom CC and had no real complaints with it besides the software occasionally stuttering and lagging, my workflow looked like this:

Take photos > plug SD into computer > upload direct to CC > cull, edit, cull again > download and post finished edits > download full album of keepers and store it on a 5 tb hard drive > copy the backup to google drive.

It was pretty easy, but I have filled my Lightroom CC 1tb storage almost 40% already. I started aggressively culling halfway through the year, but my plan was to just offload the albums I don't need once storage becomes an issue since I have google drive and hard drive backups.

I didn't realize tone curves were available on CC, I know its kind of dumb to have missed that, and outdated info online all said its only on classic, so I went down the classic rabbit hole, bought an SSD, and started trying to use it but found the file management is atrocious, its so much work that I don't even feel like I enjoy this. It feels like a job trying to migrate and manage the files. Every single editing feature that I saw online and learned on classic over the last 2 weeks turns out to just be available on CC too so the editing is literally identical. Does that mean people are on CC purely for organization? I personally find the organization is way more work, which means I'm spending less time shooting and way more time sitting at my desk angry.

I know a lot of people use classic so its just a learning curve just like anything else, but now that I know CC and classic have the same editing functionality, I am wondering what you more experienced folks think about CC vs classic as a hobbyist. I probably take 100-500 photos per shoot (which is photo walks, or vacations) then cull out 80-90% of them. I don't really do or want to do pro paid work or bird photography where I'm shooting thousands of shots per shoot.

Is it still worth learning and toughing it out long term, or will I be better suited by just using CC, harddrive offload/backup, and cloud? I know its been asked before but most CC vs classic conversations are directed towards professionals, which in that case I even know enough to recommend classic, but I'm in between, I have a lot of photos for one year (around 15,000), deeply enjoy this hobby, and hope to continue it indefinitely.

Hi all,

I have been eyeing the X9 Ultra to replace my iPhone 16 Pro Max which I’m deeply unsatisfied with. We have an Oppo store in Taiwan so I tried it and wanted to report back since so many prospective buyers seem to not have stores near them and import expensively. I saw the claims of soft images and many people blew it off as user error or not using master mode so I made sure to test extensively. I noticed that almost all of the online reviews are mostly praising it as the best thing ever and come from reviewers who were flown out by Oppo, provided the phone for free, and got to test it in incredibly photogenic and optimal locations, while actual users on this subreddit at least 50% seem to be complaining about overprocessing and bad quality.

Background:

I’m a photographer so I know how the exposure triangle and composition work. I’ve also prior tested the Xiaomi 17 Ultra, Samsung S26 Ultra, and owned both prior iPhones and Samsung Ultra models.

Parameters used: 

Reset all of the sliders (Oppo allows changing settings in camera that some other people may have adjusted), JPG Max, both master mode and normal mode tested. Also tested RAW modes but I don’t think its a useful test given that I wasn’t able to put them into lightroom since I don’t own the phone. 

IMPORTANT NOTE:

I was not able to take the phone outside the store or send RAW files back to my personal phone, so I was only able to test the phone on scenes within the store with artificial or limited lighting, and can’t comment on how the RAW files perform. This is super important as its possible that if you shoot fully in RAW the phone could be great. However, I will note that almost any phone out there can take decent photos in great lighting, the things that phones struggle with are skin tones, low light, color accuracy, the first two of which are a huge issue on Oppo. 

Lenses: 

All the lenses have great color consistency, I wasn’t able to notice much color differences between the lenses so that’s a huge plus since any other phone I’ve ever used you can visibly notice lens changes more. The 70mm lens is by far the biggest standout, it has better subject seperation and is sharp. The 10x is better than competitors but certainly overhyped, its quite soft, difficult to stabilize handheld, and has a ton of AI assist. The Ultrawide is the least notable but also not bad at all. The main lens I have no real comments, its fine.

Overall Image Quality: 

On both master mode and normal mode the images had a lot of problems. On master mode, images are extremely soft, to the point where its shocking. On normal mode, images are over-sharpened by AI. For taking photos of people, the master mode did much better, while normal mode ended up making skin tones look like watercolor paint. When taking photos under well lit areas of photo demo props, the camera still looked like it was producing AI generated photos, there were strong chromatic abberations, and the overall look is unnatural. 

The photos also take a very long time to apply processing. iPhones take about 1-2 seconds to finish processing after shooting, Samsung about 2-4 seconds, while Oppo took anywhere between 3-8 seconds. The initial photos taken on Oppo sometimes are completely blurred out, then after 8 seconds becomes a normal, sharper photo. Keep this in mind that if you look at the photo too soon before the processing is complete then exit it, you might see a horrible photo because it hasn’t finished processing yet. 

Overall, the image quality is probably better than most other smartphones, but the difference is pretty marginal in my opinion. 

Camera App Customizability:

The camera app experience is the best I’ve seen on a phone, the interface is clean, it gives you almost every option you need, it isn’t difficult to use, you can save the settings, master mode allows excellent manual control. The issue isn’t the interface or options, its the processing. 

Phone performance:

I wasn’t going to test the OS or any other features but I did note the phone was overheating badly from just using the camera only. It was not hot when I first picked it up, and within about 8 minutes of using the camera app only it got super hot. my iphone 16 pro max also has bad overheating issues, but noting that this is consistent with what some users of the x9 have said, the heating is a noticable issue. 

Elephant in the room: Vivo X300 Ultra

It turns out there is a Vivo store right next to the Oppo store so I ran the same tests on the Vivo x300 Ultra. I can say with confidence, the x300 Ultra is significantly better in the exact same scenario, but I wouldn’t buy it due to the worse OS compared to Oppo colorOS. Camera wise shooting JPG without considering any other factors I think it’s pretty obvious the Vivo wins, and that’s coming from somebody who wasn’t and will not consider buying a Vivo. 

Vivo had much better color accuracy to the scene(but lower color consistency between lenses), way less AI look on skin tones, static subjects, etc., took less time to process the photos (which might indicate less processing). The bokeh produced was also much more natural and had a less processed look. I’d say character-wise, the Vivo leans into accuracy and maintaining a consistent, flatter color profile, while Oppo looks oversaturated and attempting to be stylized. The Vivo also did not overheat during my use of the camera app. 

As I would not consider Vivo due to the OS, this result was actually disappointing to me, the Vivo performed the way I wanted the Oppo to perform. 

Verdict:

I think its pretty clear the x9 Ultra outperforms most smartphone cameras out there, especially the iPhone, Google Pixels, and Samsung, but the gap is probably like 10-20% better. I would expect that when taking RAWs that gap might widen, however. For the price on the global edition I definitely do not think its worth buying, especially since the x9 Pro basically offers almost the same experience and the 10x lens is honestly not that good. 

If getting your first phone, or upgrading from a much older phone, I still think its great, although the x9 Pro might be better for the price, but if you have a phone from the last 2-3 years I really don’t see any need to upgrade at the current price. The price is honestly ridiculous for a phone that’s marginally better than the x9 pro which has been out for a while and can be picked up at roughly 60% the price of the ultra for 90% of the experience. 

Take it all with a grain of salt since I didn’t get to test it in every condition, didn’t get to edit the RAW files, and only got to use it for about 40 minutes. However, based on a search of this subreddit, I can find a ton of posts complaining about and showing samples of the horrible over-processed photos in tons of different conditions so I’m inclined to think that this is objectively how it is, I went to the store myself to make sure to isolate user error out. As an experienced photographer who did their research, heavily tested master mode, tried auto and manual modes, and analyzed each image taken, I believe my experience aligns with what the negative posts also show. 

To anyone who owns and is enjoying the device, don't let this be seen as an attempt to discredit you. This was my own experience as somebody who wanted to buy the phone badly but saw the negative user reviews and wanted to confirm if it was user error or the product itself.

EDIT:
I forgot to mention image stablization. I think a huge contributor to the lack of sharpness (normal non-master mode sharpness looks artificially added as opposed to natural sharpness produced) could be the OIS system. For non-photographers I can explain briefly, your camera has a shutter speed, depending on the speed the shutter will be open for a duration, if during that duration the camera moves even a tiny bit, it can introduce blur in the photo. Most phones, and oppo unless you switch to master mode and manually control it, use automatic shutter speed based on the scene. An OIS (optical image stablization) system is designed inside both phones and mirrorless cameras to reduce that "camera shake" from handholding a camera during shooting. I don't know the exact specs or whatnot in this case, but I felt that when looking at the pre-processed photos there was frequently a lot of blur and this is especially noticable on the 10x lens. I did not observe this on Vivo, and I do have a more steady hand than most people. I would guess that Oppo's OIS system may be part of the issue here. Phones are typically used handheld without a tripod, so the gimbal system in Vivo might be superior. I also don't notice this issue on my iPhone for reference.

The phone is priced at $1400-1800 USD depending on the country. This is literally more expensive than any other phone on the market, and more expensive than a huge number of actual mirrorless cameras. Therefore, it literally has to be an excellent camera, and on top of that Oppo's x9 Pro already does the phone things as good (and has better battery than the Ultra) and takes good photos at almost half the price since its been on the market for longer. I think this automatically makes a x9 Ultra purchase super difficult to justify. It should be a slam dunk that its objectively the best by a large margin, otherwise getting the x9 pro makes more sense, its 90% of the experience for 60% the price.