24 Hours Series

24 Hours in Taipei with the Redmi 4 Prime

Published

January 12, 2017

Chay Lazaro

24 Hours is a series on GadgetMatch.com where we showcase our travels through a smartphone camera’s perspective. It’s also a documented guide on things to see and do in a city in case you happen to plan a trip there.

For someone whose priority in taking photos is to make sure they look good on Instagram, I rarely tinker with a phone camera’s manual settings to achieve more professional-looking shots. After all, Instagram is all about capturing life’s moments as they happen. Especially when you’re exploring a new city, there’s really not enough time to adjust your exposure and ISO, let alone fit everything you want to do in such a short period of time.

I took one of our favorite budget phones, the Xiaomi Redmi 4 Prime, to a New Year’s Eve celebration in Taipei to see how the phone fares.

New Year’s Eve at Taipei 101

We watched the fireworks show at one of the hotels beside Taipei 101, and boy was it amazing! Although it was shorter than I expected, and navigating the crowd was quite difficult even hours before the countdown, the way it was designed to mix with lights coming out of the skyscraper’s windows left me in awe and wanting more.

Taipei 101, as millennials used to say in 2016, was lit af that night. I didn’t expect much from a phone that costs less than $200, so I was quite surprised at how the Redmi 4 Prime was able to capture these shots.

Spirited Away in Jiufen

This famous tea house in Jiufen, a 90-minute bus ride from Taipei, is said to be the inspiration for the bath house in the Studio Ghibli film Spirited Away.

It’s picturesque no matter the time of day. I’ve been here at night on a previous trip, but seeing it against Taiwan’s blue skies is quite an experience, too. I turned HDR on to achieve said blue skies without making the tea house too dark.

It worked well on portraits, too!

Yehliu Geopark

Around 40 minutes away from Jiufen is Yehliu Geopark. I’ve seen plenty of gloomy photos taken here in the past, so I’d say we’re pretty #blessed to have great weather when we went there.

Sleeplessness did not stop us from taking photos that day. Here’s a selfie!

I’m still blown away by how this photo turned out! Props to my friend for looking like a professional model, but wow. Who’d believe an inexpensive phone can take a photo like this? The best part was we didn’t have to do multiple takes under that sunlight. I tapped the shutter way too early in the first shot, but nailed this fashion spread material on the second try.

teamLab exhibit at Huashan 1914 Creative Park

Huashan 1914 Creative Park is one of those things I wish we had in Manila. It’s a former winery restored and converted into an art space and is a good place to hang out with your friends, or even a date. Wink.

Of the six times I’ve been to Taipei, I visited Huashan three times, but never really paid so much attention to the exhibits and events. That day though, we were lucky enough to chance upon teamLab’s exhibit that I kept seeing on Instagram when my friends went to Tokyo a few months ago.

The exhibit was an immersive digital art jungle for kids and adults alike. While it was a lot of fun, it was here where I saw the Redmi 4 Prime struggle for the first time, since all the sections in the exhibit were dark so one can fully experience the colors and lights in the kaleidoscopic universe teamLab made. The phone had a hard time taking clear and sharp photos, especially with so much movement going on everywhere.

We tried to take a selfie inside, but with the help of my friend’s LuMee case.

We enjoyed the exhibit so much that we stayed there for almost three hours, but that was also partly because it became difficult to properly document the experience with the Redmi 4 Prime.

Chiang Kai-shek memorial

Our last stop was the Chiang Kai-shek memorial just a few hours before our flight. The results weren’t the best.

To say that I’m not a fan of how this turned out is an understatement.

Verdict

The Redmi 4 Prime set the bar so high during the day and left me disappointed come night time. The amazing photos it took made me proud and wonder how such a cheap device can make something look so good. But when it didn’t, reality hit me and reminded me that I needed to manage my expectations considering how much the phone costs.

Photos taken in daylight were consistently great, but those in low light were a hit or miss. When the trip is best enjoyed during daytime, say, the beach, the Redmi 4 Prime would be good for it. But for cities like Taipei, where some of the most exciting activities (read: night market) happen at night, you might want to look elsewhere.

[irp posts=”8339″ name=”Xiaomi Redmi 4 Prime review”]

24 Hours Series

vivo V27: Studio lights in your pocket

Meet the new Aura Light Portrait System

Published

April 14, 2023

Chay Lazaro

It’s spring 2023 and vivo is back with the V series. The vivo V27 comes with a new feature called Aura Light Portrait System, which takes its main camera to another level. Like its predecessor it’s got a color-changing back, making it a fashionable choice for different users.

Stylish color-changing design

We have the V27 in Emerald Green, which starts off with a lighter tint that looks like jade. When exposed to UV light, it changes into a darker shade of green. This is achieved thanks to the Emerald Glass processing technique. The phone also comes in Magic Blue, Flowing Gold, and Noble Black.

Chay is wearing light colors so the Emerald Green model matches her outfit better. It makes a nice, subtle pop of color, and goes with her pastel-y mint green purse and boots.

It’s also worth pointing out the 3D curved screen and this curved back on the V27 make it feel extremely thin and light.

Studio lights in your pocket

As mentioned earlier, the vivo V27 features the Aura Light Portrait System for great portraits even in low light. It’s a combination of the IMX677V sensor, which Sony designed with vivo specifically for this phone, algorithm optimizations, and the Aura Light. Its outer ring is matte and sandblasted, softening the light coming out of it.

The Aura Light, combined with the large sensor, and algorithm optimizations work together to take great portraits even in low light.

Lunch and coffee

The day before was a very long day so we figured we should get food and coffee. We found this dimly lit restaurant in Soho called Cafe Select. I think it’s a German restaurant because we had some schnitzel and there’s German decor everywhere.

We also specifically asked for the corner booth to test out the V27’s low light capabilities. Despite the lack of light sources, it’s impressive that the V27 managed to produce an accurate cutout of me even when I kept moving with the Bokeh Portrait video mode on.

There’s no natural light in this restaurant so it’s also the perfect place to take portraits and test out the Aura Light Portrait System. It’s like a portable ring light that you can use to take clearer portraits. Take a look at some examples.

On video mode, you can also use LUTs. We had fun using the Nostalgia filter to film a short video in the restaurant, which perfectly matches the vintage vibe of its interiors.

High definition selfies

The vivo V27 would not be a V-series smartphone if it didn’t have an amazing selfie camera. On the V27, we got a 50MP HD selfie camera with autofocus.

It’s worth noting that the phone feels so light in the hand. It’s so easy to take one-handed selfies. I also love how subtle the color change is on the Emerald Green model.

The V27 offers three levels of selfie filters that help hide blemishes and enhance your features — None, Natural, and Classic.

The 50MP front camera means clear selfie details. Most other smartphones have inferior selfie cameras compared to its rear counterparts, but not the V27. As you can see in the example below, zooming in on my eyes show that you can clearly see the strands of my eyebrows.

Walking the High Line & shopping

To test its video stabilization and macro camera, we continued to walk the High Line. Both features produced very impressive results.

Another feature we tried is MicroMovie. It’s perfect for creators like me. It comes with a whole bunch of templates that you can use for TikTok or Instagram Reels. I filmed a daily vlog with it and had so much fun.

While we were shopping, I noticed too that the V27 changed colors after being indoors for a bit. It turned into a beautiful white marble-like finish that fades into mint green at the bottom.

After the sun has set, it’s time to take more low-light portraits and OOTD. Our friends Alex and Leslie even joined us for a quick photo shoot. New York City comes to life at night, and with a 1/1.56-inch sensor and Super Night Mode, the vivo V27 can easily capture the hustle and bustle of the city streets.

More than just a camera smartphone

The vivo V27 is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 7200 and comes with either an 8GB or 12GB of RAM.

With Extended RAM the phone borrows memory from your internal storage and gives you an additional 8GB RAM. This way you get either 16GB or 20GB available RAM.