The HTC Butterfly S, as you might have known by now, has landed in our office and we had promptly unboxed it for a quick look. One of the highlights of the Butterfly S is that it has the same 4 MP UltraPixel camera from the HTC One that the company famously proclaimed as one of the best. We had some tests done that proved otherwise, but it was still an impressive direction that HTC had taken. They went against the Megapixel race by introducing larger pixels for the 1/3″ sensor, but cut down the pixel count by half. You get a 2 micron pixel size after the size cut down and effectively, coupled with a f2.0 lens, it directly means great low light performance. There’s one small caveat though, the Butterfly S is not equipped with an OIS unit, so that makes things less interesting for low light, making us think how it can actually handle those conditions.
And that’s exactly what we are going to see right now. How does the camera perform in various lighting conditions? Check out our camera samples after the break.
Daylight
Quick thoughts on Daylight photos – Lack of detail, Over sharpened and inaccurate representation of colour in bright scenes, metering too harsh on photos facing the sun. Overall, we feel it’s the same as the HTC One.
HDR
These are arguably tough conditions for any small-ish sensor, but HDR improves it greatly, especially when it works. And that’s exactly what has happened here. The HDR mode is great and highly recommended even for normal photo taking.
Macro
The f2.0 lens ensures you get a smooth bokeh in most macro shots, and it is undeniably more detailed than the unimpressive long shots we posted above. Macro shots usually have less details for the sensor and the algorithms to worry about and we are happy to see that the usage of compressing code is of lesser use. We think the Butterfly S is best used for Macro shots. And now, the all important low light shots.
Low Light
Some pics in the above gallery are quite good in terms of low light performance, some not so. The metering is extreme in low light scenarios too, so forget about pointing the camera at light sources and don’t expect decently metered shots. The noise is quite high when the light is too low, but the 2.0 micron pixel size ensures that you see more than what actually can, in real. But remember to keep your hands really steady, in severely low light conditions. If only it had OIS.
Video Samples
Full HD
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX-qM6a_Quw
HDR
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PY3YlcwRAo
The video and the audio quality is generally good. We like HDR video too, but it takes a couple of seconds to merge all the exposure, but I guess we can live with that. The HTC Butterfly S can also taken 720p 60 fps video and 764×432 120 fps slow motion video. Unfortunately, the quality of those videos are not as good you’d expect. Do let us know if you still want to see them, we will have them embedded here according to the response.
And that’s it for the camera samples we have right now. The Butterfly S also has the HTC Zoe mode and a neatly arranged user interface, so we will have a video up, explaining these features soon, hang tight and keep checking our YouTube Channel for more coverage of this camera. And obviously, we will have more samples, and more in-depth explanation for the camera performance in our full review, so stay tuned for that too!