the first thing you need to know about Google's new pixel9 Pro is that heang it looks nice and it feels nice too I'm going to get into all the photo features in a moment but first I just want to talk about how different the pixel9 pro feels in your hand instead of the more rounded out design of pixel's past Google squared off the metal rails for both The Oblong camera bar and the phone's frame which does make it look more like an iPhone but also makes for a device that is slightly easier to hold and
in the case of my ability to film it easier to stand up to well some of the time this slight Hardware change actually makes for a better camera experience as well but simply the phone is just easier to hold and therefore easier to take photos and videos with but of course this is Google so we know that 90% of what's new in this phone is going to be software so here's what's new on that front I only had a few hours to test the pixel 9 proos triple rear camera system that features a 50 megap
wide a 48 mapel 5times tep photo and a 48 map Ultra wide and the very first thing I wanted to test was switching between these lenses while filming video the pixel 8 Pro was notoriously bad at keeping consistent colors across lenses while filming there's of course far more testing I need to do but in my short time with the pixel9 pro the color shifting issue has been greatly reduced and another issue with the pixel 8 Pro's camera was the visible framing shifts that happened during these lens changes as well without applying video boost which sends
video files to the cloud to be processed the shift is still slightly there but if you run the clip through video boost those jumps are smoothed right over video boost also now allows video to be upred to 8K and it can pull 30 megapixel stills from video I didn't have time to test this so you'll have to wait for the full review now to the flashiest feature coming to the pixel9 pros camera a feature called add me the idea behind it is that a person taking a group photo doesn't get to be in it so
Google created software that can combine multiple photos to add them in when when person a opens the ad me feature on the pixel9 pro the camera system begins scanning the scene for people and creates a depth math of where everyone is which is why you are instructed to move camera to scan area then after the first photo is taken person a swaps with person B who was just in the group photo person B is then instructed to align the frame with the shot the person a took and take another photo the software then saves all
of these photos including the one with person a stitched into the photo they took of the several we tried it it worked about 50% of the time and while I think this is a great idea especially as someone who is always taking the photos it takes time to complete which makes it feel awful lot like a barart trick one that you'll use a few times and absolutely impress your friends with then ultimately just continue to flip the camera around and take a selfie instead especially considering the front-facing camera is now 42 megapixels up from just
10.5 megapixels on the pixel 8 Pro oh my God I look sweaty hey the other software tricks coming to the pixel9 pro are text prompting and autof framing features in Magic editor magic editor is Google's name for its AI photo editing tools and it previously allowed you to move subjects erase objects change the sky or select different facial expressions on people in a photo but now Google is adding the ability to prompt change via text for example you can select an area you'd like to change like the background of a photo and then type in
the alteration you'd like to see there's also a new feature called autof frame that can reframe a photo in order to make it more visually appealing based on photography principles such as the rule of thirds again I didn't get a ton of time to play with this but I do love text prompting and it allows you to have far more control over what sort of AI changes the system is making so I'm really stoked to test more of that but the biggest change in this camera system is that Google has actually entirely redesigned the HDR
Plus image Pipeline and an image pipeline is responsible for the signature look of a camera it does everything from Analyze skin tones to adding sharpness to small objects like tree leaves and deciding how much contrast everything in the scene should have so I'm going to be really excited to put the pixel 9 Pro next to the pixel 8 Pro to see if there's a noticeable difference here so that's the pixel 9 Pros camera and this year the Pro System actually comes in two sizes there's a 6.2 in pixel9 Pro that's going to be $1,000 and
there's a 6.8 in pixel9 Pro XL that's it's going to be $1,100 and when I finally get my hands on one I'm going to be most interested in testing out the video capabilities it's something that Google has always struggled with but with video boost they've been able to write a lot of their wrongs like the jarring lens switches and color changes I'm ready to put that to the test let me know what else you want me to be testing out when I dive deeper into this camera system I appreciate you so much bud I hope
you're well and I'll see you in the next one mandatory Becca dog shot yeah look at the good friends oh they look hot those are some hot dogs sheesh
