Over Ten Years of R&D in Imaging leads us to a New Era of Computational Video with the OPPO Find X5 Pro and MariSilicon X
The OPPO Find X5 Pro is the result of a decade of research and development in mobile camera systems. It started in the early days of computer vision algorithm experiments, breaking from the traditional model to work out how a phone camera should “think”.
2014 brought us pixel binning technology, where multiple sensor pixels are combined for better images in low light, while a demosaic technique is used to improve sharpness during the day. From 2014 to 2018 we saw the rise of OIS and computational photography that make capturing crystal clear night photos not just possible but easy.
OPPO’s Find X5 Pro collates this knowledge and takes it to the next level with a particular focus on low-light video, where each frame has detail, clarity and dynamic range comparable with a still night mode photo.
However, to get here OPPO had to solve a bottleneck it found around 2019, by which time OPPO phones used techniques like advanced AI noise reduction, multi-exposure night shooting and face recognition.
These demand a lot of work to be done instantaneously, causing a spike in power consumption. The ultimate solution is also the key to the OPPO Find X5 Pro’s paradigm-shifting photographic power: OPPO MariSilicon X.
This is a self-developed core imaging NPU designed with a laser focus on computational and AI photography workloads. It unlocks the processing power required for the OPPO FInd X5 Pro’s next-generation imaging capabilities.
4K Ultra Night Video
Computational video is the new battleground for phone cameras. OPPO phones have made huge leaps in low-light photo performance in the last four years, but video introduces a fresh set of challenges.
A phone can spend several seconds capturing and collating the data for a single still image. But the OPPO Find X5 Pro needs to generate 30 or 60 images per second for video, handling up to three billion pixels of information every second.
The scale of the challenge is immense, necessitating the paradigm-shifting power of MariSilicon X, which is capable of up to 18 trillion operations per second.
4K Ultra Night Video is the key demonstration of this power in action. It offers low-light video with dynamic range and detail comparable with the OPPO Find X5 Pro’s night photos, bringing light to darkness and restoring subtle gradations that are so often lost.
How? The OPPO Find X5 Pro’s 4K Ultra Night Video employs a combination of AINR, artificial intelligence noise reduction, and 3DNR to maximize the detail and dynamic range of your videos. 3DNR reaches beyond traditional techniques, comparing subsequent frames to best represent the motion of the real world.
DOL-HDR also lets the OPPO Find X5 Pro capture two frames concurrently, for real-time HDR imaging free of ghosting. The power of OPPO’s MariSilicon X imaging NPU has made the impossible possible.
Ultra Night Pro
The OPPO Find X5 Pro also brings revolutionary upgrades to further improve the low-light stills photography performance established in the multi award-winning OPPO Find X3 Pro.
It debuts OPPO’s OPPO’s SLR-level 5-axis OIS. Both lens and sensor elements can compensate for moments in your hand, allowing for flawless image capture.
In action, you see the OPPO Find X5 Pro generate pristine low-light pictures almost three times as quickly as the previous generation of OPPO flagship phones. What you don’t see is the bustling hive of activity that occurs behind the scenes. The OPPO Find X5 Pro camera creates photos out of multiple exposures, like an oil painter building up a masterwork using layer upon layer of fine glazes.
Ultra HDR Photography and video
Night photography and video are proving grounds for the OPPO Find X5 Pro camera. The dream of being able to capture not just stills, but also great video, in any situation has been realized.
However some of the same techniques are a crucial component in a host of other situations.
Picture a bright sunset. The rich and brilliant oranges and reds of the sky sit in stark contrast to the dark foreground. A lesser phone might leave these foreground elements draped in shadow, but the MariSilicon X’s HDR fusion algorithm allows for up to 20 stops of dynamic range.
It brings out every last fine detail without leaving the sky washed out, threatening to obliterate the swathes of color that come to define every great sunset image. OPPO’s Find X5 Pro is ready to capture these moments, where the sky seems alight with color, cascading off the contours of each cloud.
The OPPO Find X5 Pro can achieve the same effect when shooting 4K video too thanks to DOL-HDR, constructing high dynamic range footage free of ghosting artifacts even when your subject is in motion.
OPPO’s Find X5 Pro represents a generation leap for the hardware and software in phone cameras. It brings renewed creative control and a paradigm shift in low-light video. Only one question remains: what would you enjoy most about the OPPO Find X5 Pro camera?