1 of 24Andrew Lanxon/CNET
The Xiaomi 15 Ultra offers a lot to justify its flagship status and high price. From its powerful processor to its vibrant display, it's great to use, but it's the camera setup that's the main reason to consider this phone over rivals offerings.
I've been testing the 15 Ultra since I got it at the end of January and I've taken over 1,000 photos with it. From my home city of Edinburgh, to Barcelona and up into frozen, wintry Sweden, I've used it a variety of conditions and I've really come to understand the camera.
Here then is a selection of my favorite Images I've taken with the Xiaomi 15 Ultra.
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We start, of course, with a photo of my beautiful orange cat Toulouse. I love this shot as it's so moody, with deep shadows and a highlight that perfectly emphasizes his face.
I think the camera has done a great job here. I often find that phone cameras try and brighten shadowy areas to an unrealistic extent, eliminating any kind of drama in the scene. But here, the strong contrast has remained and the picture is all the better for it.
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Taken with the main camera's auto mode, this shot is bright, vibrant and packed with detail.
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The exposure is spot on here as well, capturing the sunlight filtering through the blossoms and retaining a nice soft blue tone to sky behind.
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There are various filters you can choose from, but my favorite is the high contrast black and white one. It gives a punchy look that's perfect for street photography like this.
I took this using the main camera, and I love this moment that I've been able to capture. Using a phone for street photography can be amazing since it allows you to remain essentially unseen.
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The ultra-wide camera works well in this context, too. Here, I was able to capture the street performer further away, while using the nearby crowd like a frame.
Again, the high contrast black and white tone works really well.
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It also looks great when using the 4.5x optical zoom lens.
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This shot works just as well in color, and I really like how I've been able to freeze the laughing faces of the strangers who have been forced to hold hands as part of the performance.
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Taken with the telephoto lens, I like the natural depth of field around these onlookers.
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The large image sensor and wide f/1.6 aperture allows the phone to take great-looking pictures when the light starts to fade.
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The bright sun and shadowy foreground makes this a very difficult image for any camera to capture, but I like the balance that the 15 Ultra has struck here. The sky is perfectly exposed and there's just enough detail in the shadows to see what's going on, without anything looking unnatural.
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I took this shot using the telephoto camera in Pro mode in order to have manual control of the white balance. By default, the camera tends to err on the cool side, which I often didn't like and I really didn't prefer when shooting vibrant sunsets like this.
By manually warming up the white balance, I've been able to capture a much better-looking image with beautiful orange tones in the sky.
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The warmer tones look great.
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Up in the Arctic, I particularly like how the camera has captured these ray nacreous or "mother of pearl" clouds in the sky.
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Once again, I used the manual white balance for this night-time scene in order to get the tones just right.
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The ultra-wide lens did a great job capturing this evening scene in Stockholm.
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I find the black and white mode works well at night, too. Here it's captured a moody shot of this person taking a break with their phone before performing flamenco dancing at the restaurant where I was eating.
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I shot this using the ultra-wide lens in DNG raw so I could apply a more cinematic look to the image in Adobe Lightroom. I think Toulouse looks great, and the image is packed with detail.
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CNET's Abrar Al-Heeti looks great here, with spot-on exposure and a lovely out-of-focus background thanks to the phone's effective Portrait mode.
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More black and white street photography. The 15 Ultra is great for this.
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A moody black and white selfie, because that's just what I'm into.
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I wanted a vintage feel for this shot of old Land Rovers, so I took the image in raw and made edits in Lightroom later.
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Using the telephoto zoom lens here allowed me to get closer up on these engineers who appear to be looking for something in the water. Have they dropped something? Have they seen an otter? Who knows!
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I underexposed this image when I took it in order to keep the bright sky under control. But, I shot it in raw and so was able to rescue a huge amount of shadow detail in Lightroom, as well as apply some other color and exposure adjustments.
The result is a well-balanced scene with beautiful sunset tones. I'm really impressed with how much scope there is to work with raw files from the 15 Ultra.
