The realme GT Master Edition is a unique smartphone with excellent features to up your mobile photography skills. It also has a new suitcase design in vegan leather textured back, designed by the famous Japanese industrial designer–Naoto Fukasawa. You probably heard him from his works on the Realme 6i, Realme X, and other master edition realme smartphones.
The realme GT Master Edition truly has a stunning design, plus it has a better grip. But the real deal is the quality of its 64MP OmniVision primary shooter. We really wonder how it will perform in the streets, so we tried its latest street photography mode and we took a walk from Alabang Town Center, Muntinlupa, to the Festival Mall and Landmark to capture every view along the way. In its latest street photography mode with a classic Kodak film effects filter, we captured different vibes.
Table of Contents
Street Photography Mode
A quick introduction first to the new Street Photography Mode. It has fast zooming, with different levels of zooms including ultrawide, main cam, 1x, 2x, and 5x and the great thing, it is labeled in millimeters. The 50mm is the best zoom option for us, as it captures more focused zoomed-in images. It is basically equivalent to 2x zoom and it’s the best options to emphasize the story in just a click. Flexibility is what realme GT Master Edition also has and shooting ultrawide or 16mm gives the widest FOV possible while maintaining subtle distortions.
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The millimeter labels are quite helpful especially for those who are familiar with the focal length. The haptic feedback also adds a feel to the camera app while you point and shoot. The mode also lets you shoot in raw, which will enable much wider data to edit in post. Lastly, it has manual focus as well as Instant Focus to capture the brief moments. Those are all in the new Street Mode feature on the camera app. The vibe of becoming a street photographer is now on the realme GT Master Edition.
Quality of Street Filters
The company said that the Street Photography Mode is fast and real. And yes, we felt the speed when we tried to shoot outdoors. The new filters are great, it has a street, black and white plus, dramatic and more. The filters add a vibe to the photo to make it look filmy.
The Street filter gives a deeper contrast and blacks but it adds more details to the images. The highlights are calm, and the sharpness is visible even when compressed to 16MP by the Quad-Bayer technology. The colors of the street filter are true to life with calm colors. Moreover, the exposure balance is excellent and the level of details is impressive with no visible noise and grains.
We also like the B&W plus filter as it certainly adds drama to the scene. The blacks are intentionally deep, and we like how it gave depth to the photo–it is balanced and detailed. It is because of the different shades of blacks and whites. B&W Plus is also a great filter at night. Blacks are deep so the viewers will instantly focus on the subject with lights, and that’s a great way to tell a story.
The Dramatic filter is also great as it adds a warmer vibe to the photo while the contrast is still profound. It is actually not in a yellow-ish filter as the colors are still preserved. We like how lonely and moody the photo turned out to be. All of those filters give the feel of the film camera, which is quite reminiscing.
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NightScape Mode
Heading to the nighttime shots, we know that shooting at night is different compared to daylight as there are limited light sources. The sensor might capture dark images, but we saw an improvement in the overall exposure and sharpness with its Pro Nightscape Mode. The blacks don’t look soft and noisy, highlights are toned down, and the white balance was already fixed.
Take note that it is also a handheld shot, and it doesn’t introduce blurriness because of the Dynamic Image Snapshot(DIS), an underlying technology that enables you to capture sharp photos even when your hands are shaking. It’s on the realme GT Master Edition and we felt that at night as the shutter is very slow to compensate to the exposure triangle. But most of the photos didn’t introduce blurry images. If blur happens, this is due to faster moving objects that even entry-level DSLR cameras will have a hard time doing.
Dynamic image snapshot is also visible in the morning. Even in a tricycle at a bumpy road, and there are fast-moving subjects, zooming at a max distance will not output in any blurry images. Indeed it compensates for the shutter speed for fast-moving subjects.
Portrait Mode
Now Inside the portrait mode, there are a few great and helpful features for street photography. The natural portrait mode looks natural and sharp with good color balance and exposure. Even at night, the skin tone is quite natural and clean. Other types of filters are the Dynamic Bokeh & Neon Portrait.
Dynamic bokeh is great at daylight to capture motion blur while focusing on the subject, while the neon portrait is the thing at nighttime photography. It is somehow a gimmicky feature, but it has excellent quality as well.
The Neon Portrait will capture a more bokehlicious photo with the right highlights, giving them a more natural feeling. It has an enhanced bokeh background, more luminance, and saturation in the highlights and it is an excellent mode when capturing neon lights and other burst lights in the background.
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Shoot in RAW
You can edit the raw files through color correction software like Adobe Lightroom. Shooting in raw is very helpful in a situation where it captures unbalanced photos. It’s a better choice if you want the filter, at the same time, you have the raw file to edit the unfiltered picture.
As said earlier, the realme GT Master Edition enables you to capture in RAW. You can lift the shadows or lower highlights from the DNG files to show additional details without breaking the image quality. Details are still preserved, and it is an excellent feature on all cameras.
The file size, however, is relatively more extensive compared to the compressed jpg. And each DNG file size is equivalent to 31MB. You need to be aware of your storage capacity but then the details that it can give are impressive. Take note that when shooting in raw, you cannot zoom in or use other lenses. That’s the limitation when shooting on the phone. Still, being a mobile photographer is something many of you want when using a phone with a great set of camera specs and features as You can do a lot more.
Price and Verdict
Overall, the realme GT Master Edition price starts at P18,990 (8GB/128GB) and it has higher storage with a price tag of P21,990(8GB/256GB). It is available in official realme stores on Lazada, Shopee, and in physical stores throughout the country. It is a great value for money and a great mobile street photography companion thanks to the Street Mode, Street Filters, and fast shooting capability. We pulled out the Photowalk and street walk, and our model did great. The shots didn’t introduce blurry images, and I can say that even on busy streets, realme GT Master Edition performs enough as things should be.
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