My New Phone for Photography

If you have ever been on a search for a smartphone with a phenomenal camera, you may have come across the Google Pixel phone series. A few photography bloggers have told me that they have heard of this device when searching for an excellent phone camera. To give some context on this phone, Google launched this phone series in 2016 after a small success in the Nexus phone series and previous phones created by other companies. What makes the Google Pixel phones special is that they are the first phone that is completely made by Google without other phone companies. Also, another specialty that these phones have is the camera and this is why I have gotten the Google Pixel 4a.

I just got the Google Pixel 4a, which at the time of writing this, is the newest Google Pixel phone. The “a” part of the name is indicative of the lower price compared to the flagship phones. I ordered this phone for the camera and by the time you will be reading this, I will have been using this phone for about a week and have been getting photos of it and with its excellent camera.

The Design:

I haven’t shown any lightbox photos on this blog before now and I put the phone into a lightbox to get some photos for you.

Above is the back of the phone with the main camera in the top left. This camera is a 12.2 megapixel camera by sony.

This second image is the front camera (selfie camera) of the phone. I don’t have any photos utilizing this camera in this post but if you want to see photos using this camera, please let me know.

Camera Specialties:

This camera has some features from Google’s $800 flagship phone! These features were put into a $350 phone (in US dollars). Okay, so what are these features? Astrophotography and the Night Photography Mode are some of my favorite features of this phone. These features work incredibly! I went outside my house to take some Astro shots and these are my favorite photos from doing that:

These are some examples of Astrophotograhpy on the phone. Taking these photos takes anywhere from 1-4 minutes of photo overlaying through the phones software. Below Is a shot using Night Sight long exposure on the phone. Note, I could barely see a thing when taking this photo and there was a dim light shining onto the deck.

I will do some more of these long exposure shots in a little while so be on the look out if you are interested. I may even do some comparisons to the Nikon camera.

Now, moving on to the macro photography. All of these photos were taken using portrait mode on these different flowers. Using portrait mode on flowers emulates macro shots with software. Here are some of the shots!

These are all of the macro shots. My final photo did not really fit with the two other categories but I thought that I should show the photo anyways. This photo is one of the best representations of the powerful portrait mode on this phone! Here it is:

This is the Google Pixel 4a‘s camera capabilities. All of the photos are the photos that I got directly from the phone. I didn’t edit these photos as I will likely do to future pictures I will show from this phone. Also, as a photographer, I am only covering the camera so if you want to have a review of the rest of the phone, check out two tech videos below from the big tech youtubers and if you want to do some reading, the bottom has a New York Times article on the phone. Also, with the new Pixel 4a 5G and Pixel 5 phones, this phone will be getting some nice updates! I might do another post on the phone if some new camera features come in from these new phones!

Please let me know what you think of this phone camera and especially in comparison to what phone is your favorite for photography! If you are using an older phone and are not quite ready to upgrade, you may want to get lenses like I have in my Mobile Photography Gear post!

Thanks for reading!

-Digital Wonders & Smiles