The New Age of Selfie Photography

Smartphone cameras have completely dominated the field of modern-day photography for many reasons. Firstly, it's the camera you always have on you. Second, it makes sharing photos so much easier. And finally - one of the biggest reasons why smartphone cameras are preferred over any other consumer camera is the ability to take selfies.

Love it or hate it, it's now dominating social media as the most popular form of photography. It's also the biggest reason why photo-based social media platforms are gaining popularity faster than the traditional ones. With all this in mind, it makes perfect sense to give more attention to the front camera, doesn't it?

That's exactly what major smartphone manufacturers are doing. One of the more recent and prominent example is Vivo, which has added a number of new-age innovations to its front camera technology, that makes selfie shooting a delight with results that are striking every time.

Take the new Vivo X21 for example. Its front camera comes with the revolutionary Dual Pixel Sensors that offer a larger photographic area as compared to the traditional sensors, allowing the camera to capture more details, better light, and crisper colours with every shot. Thanks to this, the 12-megapixel front camera on the Vivo X21 can focus a lot faster, and can capture gorgeous depth of field for a classic bokeh effect without the need of dual-front cameras.

Besides this, there's no denying the important role artificial intelligence (AI) is playing in improving all aspects of our lives. Having AI in any major function gives the technology an ability to analyse and make appropriate decisions for getting the best results. So while it's great to have this tech in phone assistants, chat bots, and even home automation, why not use this in our smartphone cameras as well? AI helps optimise the camera's settings according to the shooting conditions, with minimum inputs from the user. Sounds like science fiction? With Vivo X21, that's a reality.

The Vivo X21 uses AI in a number of ways to optimise its selfie capabilities. Firstly, there's AI scene recognition. It's common sense how the lighting vastly differs when you're shooting at a beach, indoors, under tree cover, and any other situation. It's not easy for most front cameras to adjust their settings to give you the best shot under all these varied conditions, which is why you have to adjust for a picture that's just good enough, instead of the photographic masterpiece you were expecting. Disappointing, isn't it?

Vivo X21's AI Scene Recognition algorithm has learned from almost a million photos to detect and optimise the front camera settings for a great picture every time. It automatically adjusts the exposure, brightness, sharpness, and saturation so you don't get images with burnt out skin tones at the beach, or bland colours when taking food shots, or dull images when shooting in low light. The X21 is capable of identifying 18 tags and 140 scenarios such as portraits, food and plants, and it optimises the photography settings and effects in every shot.

It's not only about the setting. When shooting selfies, you are of course the highest priority in the shot. Vivo identifies that and uses its AI Face Beauty to identify you, your skin tone, your surroundings and more to shoot a selfie that makes you look the best that you can in that setting, while optimising the background and lighting to compliment you - the main subject. Unlike many other beautification modes, which are mostly female-focussed, Vivo's AI Face Beauty identifies your gender as well and optimises its facial enhancement settings accordingly. With men, it works wonderfully with rugged skin textures and facial hair as well.

Ever been in the situation where the sun is right behind you and your face in the selfie turns out looking dark and dull, or even like a silhouette? We all hate it when that happens, which is why Vivo's AI-driven HDR technology is such a boon. Vivo's AI HDR is developed based on the company's immense research in how HDR works. Instead of taking a single shot, the AI HDR takes multiple shots of a single frame with varied exposure levels. This gives you an image that looks perfectly exposed with all details intact.

Whether you're into selfies, or not, Vivo does offer some pretty incredible options that make selfies and general photography fun in the X21. With the power of AI behind each shot, there's no room for human error. This gives you the best results you can get every time. It's pretty impressive for a phone that also has other state-of-the art technology including an in-display fingerprint scanner, AI Game Mode, and hi-fi audio capabilities. At an age when phones come with more hype than actual capabilities, the Vivo X21 comes as a breath of fresh air.