{"id":1233434,"date":"2022-10-25T00:05:12","date_gmt":"2022-10-25T00:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/10\/25\/google-pixel-7-pros-camera-has-a-fatal-really-dumb-totally-avoidable-flaw\/"},"modified":"2022-10-25T00:05:12","modified_gmt":"2022-10-25T00:05:12","slug":"google-pixel-7-pros-camera-has-a-fatal-really-dumb-totally-avoidable-flaw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/10\/25\/google-pixel-7-pros-camera-has-a-fatal-really-dumb-totally-avoidable-flaw\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Pixel 7 Pro’s camera has a fatal, really dumb, totally avoidable flaw \u2022"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A lot has been written about how incredible Google Pixel 7 Pro\u2019s camera is. The camera itself gets no beef from me. Last week at Disrupt, Brian and I were gawking in amazement at how well the 5x optical zoom lens does, for example. We had plenty of opportunities to contrast and compare. During Disrupt, I was shooting with about $6,000 worth of camera equipment and as my files were downloading from my mirrorless camera\u2019s SD cards, I snapped this photo:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Photo taken at Disrupt using the Google Pixel 7 Pro\u2019s 5x optical zoom lens. Image Credits:<\/strong> Haje Kamps \/ <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Granted, my dedicated Sony A7r3 with a 70-200 f\/2.8 lens is still capable of taking better photos; a giant hunking piece of glass and a full-frame sensor is hard to beat:<\/p>\n

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Photo taken at Disrupt with a Sony A7r3 camera and a Sony 70-200mm f\/2.8 zoom lens. Image Credits:<\/strong> Haje Kamps \/ <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

But let\u2019s be clear \u2014 for the purposes of shooting pictures for the web, in good light, the Pixel 7 Pro gives it a pretty serious run for its money, at a fraction of the cost.<\/p>\n

As soon as I saw the design of the Pixel 7 Pro (and, for that matter, the 7, which has the same stupid gaffe), however, I spotted a pretty fantastically stupid design flaw. That beautiful metal front surrounding the lenses does a great job for marketing purposes. If I point my Pixel 7 Pro at you, there\u2019s no way you\u2019ll mistake it for an iPhone, a Pixel 6 or any other camera on the market. Well done, Google\u2019s industrial designers, for creating an eminently recognizable phone. No doubt, it\u2019ll be a conversation starter for a lot of folks.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The problem with adding any light or reflective surfaces, however, is that it becomes exponentially harder to take photos through reflective surfaces: windows, primarily. As a photographer, I wouldn\u2019t generally recommend that you shoot through glass, but let\u2019s be honest; sometimes we\u2019re in a car, on a plane or in a building, and we might want to shoot a time-lapse or a photo or two. It\u2019s a pretty common use case for most photography applications, which makes it all the harder to grok why Google went out of its way to make that experience worse.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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This really is a Camera Design 101 choice of epic stupidity. Image Credits:<\/strong> Haje Kamps \/ <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I have a number of friends who have vinyl cutters, and the solution is simple: a small strip of matte black vinyl covering up the high-gloss reflective surface on the front of the phone.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I might be the only person in the world who cares about this, so it feels silly even to complain, but damn it, Google Pixel is positioning itself as the best camera phone out there, and this is such a fantastically n00b mistake that I\u2019m truly flabbergasted at how the hardware giant could make such a dumb misstep, after getting it right for so long.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I imagine there will soon be an aftermarket niche for stickers covering up the chrome, and I hope Google doesn\u2019t made a mistake this silly again in the future.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A lot has been written about how incredible Google Pixel 7 Pro\u2019s camera is. The camera itself gets no beef from me. Last week at Disrupt, Brian and I were gawking in amazement at how well the 5x optical zoom lens does, for example. We had plenty of opportunities to contrast and compare. During Disrupt, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1233436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1233434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrity-gossip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1233434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233434\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1233434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1233434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1233434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}