50MP main camera with a great 2x digital zoom
The Realme P3 Ultra offers a fairly big 50MP main camera sensor paired with OIS and aided by an 8MP ultrawide camera. The main unit is a significant upgrade over last year’s Realme P2 Pro, and we are happy to see a no-nonsense approach with just two actually useful cameras – main and ultrawide.
Wide (main): 50 MP Sony IMX896, 24mm f/1.8, 1/1.56″, 1.0µm, OIS, multi-directional PDAF; 4K@30fps, 1080p@60fps
Ultrawide: 8 MP, 16mm f/2.2, 1/4.0″, 112° FoV, fixed focus; 1080p@30fps.
Front camera: 16 MP Sony, 23mm f/2.4, 1080p@30fps
The selfie unit is 16MP and it’s also an upgrade over the last Realme P2 Pro generation.
Unfortunately, we weren’t able to retrieve the full details about the camera sensors used here.
Daylight photos
Main camera
The main camera produces very good stills. They are rich in color, offer a wide dynamic range, and have sharpness and level of detail that are more than decent. Some may even say that the colors are a bit too saturated.
Of course, you can’t expect perfect-looking snaps from a midrange device. Here, we saw a tendency to oversharpen smaller details. The camera also often dials up the contrast for no apparent reason, resulting in borderline clipped highlights. And if you look at how grass is rendered in the shadows, it often looks like it has been artificially restored after noise suppression.
Main camera daylight photos
The main camera has a surprisingly short minimum focusing distance, so even if you don’t get a dedicated macro camera here, you can still take some good-looking close-ups.
Main camera close-ups
The 50MP camera mode is hard to recommend as the photos look very soft.
50MP main camera photos
Also, you can take a look at how the phone handles real people. We’ve got shots in Photo mode and Portrait mode side by side.
People photos: Photo mode • Portrait mode
2x crop zoom
The 2x crop zoom stills are pretty impressive. There’s minimal loss in quality, and the camera is consistent indoors, too. Of course, this camera mode inherits the flaws that we mentioned in the previous section, but it’s a great implementation nevertheless. We rarely see such great 2x digital zoom shots in the midrange.
2x crop zoom daylight photos
And here are photos of people too.
People photos: Photo mode • Portrait mode
Ultrawide camera
The ultrawide camera takes surprisingly good pictures, definitely above average from what you can expect from this tiny 8MP sensor. The photos are decently sharp, especially of close subjects, but have limited dynamic range compared to the main camera stills. Colors are also slightly less saturated.
Ultrawide daylight photos
Selfies
The selfie camera takes decent shots. They are clean, relatively sharp, but the colors could use some boost. The subject’s skin in more challenging lighting conditions looks pale, and the contrast gets low. However, there’s noticeable artificial sharpening and in more challenging lighting conditions, the selfies start to look overprocessed.
Selfies
Low-light photos
Main camera
When the light’s low, the software will almost always opt for the automatic Night mode. The photos we took look really nice. Color saturation seems more conservative compared to the daylight photos. And there is hardly any noise.
However, the exposures tend to be quite bright, and the shadows are unrealistically bright. Also, upon closer examination, some details in the scenes appear artificially rendered.
Main camera low-light photos
2x crop zoom
The 2x photos are surprisingly good, but the oversharpening artifacts are hard to overlook.
2x crop zoom low-light photos
Ultrawide camera
The low-light conditions really challenge the ultrawide camera. Still, the dynamic range and sharpness are commendable for this sort of camera hardware. There’s also no apparent noise, and the colors and contrast look just right.
Ultrawide low-light photos
Video recording
The handset supports 4K video recording at up to 60fps with its main camera and 1080p@30fps with the ultrawide. The selfie, on the other hand, maxes out at 1080p at 30fps. All footage is electronically stabilized.
You can check out the playlist below, which includes multiple video samples.
The daylight footage with the main camera is pretty solid. It leaves nothing to complain about, and even the 2x zoom video is somewhat decent. The low-light clip is also pretty clean, sharp, with well-balanced shadows and highlights. The colors are more conservative once again.
The ultrawide has its drawbacks, though. It has a limited dynamic range, is a bit noisy in homogeneous areas and unsurprisingly soft. It’s only 1080p after all.
The EIS video test shows excellent stabilization even in 4K.