OnePlus 10 Pro goes on a photo tour: What does a Hasselblad pro think of it?

Starting from last year, phone manufacturer OnePlus surprised the masses by cooperating with one of the most legendary camera companies ever: Hasselblad. Among other things, the Swedish company manufactured special cameras for Apollo 11, the USA's moon mission in 1969. Hence, it was without a doubt that we would also get a Hasseblad camera in the OnePlus 10 Pro.

The OnePlus 10 Pro has been released in China so far, and owners of this new device will benefit from the color metrics and the camera software that was developed in cooperation with Hasselblad. The smartphone even made the cut for the "Hasselblad Natural Color Solution" certification, something which is otherwise achieved only by the manufacturer's own cameras.

• Read our hands-on with the OnePlus 10 Pro

On the one hand, OnePlus achieved this by ensuring a sufficiently large dynamic range, while on the other hand, the OnePlus 10 Pro supports a 10-bit color range in the modern HEIF format. All of these combine to deliver more than enough for professionals.

With David Peskens through the gardens of the world

In order to show off the OnePlus 10 Pro's photo qualities, the manufacturer not only invited me and other tech journalists to Berlin's Gardens of the World, but David Peskens as well. David is a Hasselblad master and uses a Hasselblad 1DX in addition to a Canon EOS 5D Mark II as his tools of choice. Thus, he knows the neutral colors that Hasselblad is known for like the back of his own hand. This, David said in his talk, provides him with the necessary foundation to implement his own ideas when it comes to post-processing.

Among other places, David used the OnePlus 10 Pro on the island of Madeira, which is well-known in Germany primarily as a tax haven. However, he chose Madeira mainly because the climate there is quite humid, and because he liked to photograph landscapes that are covered in clouds and fog for his work. The results here are hard to distinguish from a professional camera, especially in the 12-bit RAW format.

While David did not provide me with his images for this article, you can find a few impressions from the park's tropical house in my image gallery. However, we could only use the OnePlus 10 Pro there with some limitations. Among other things, only the main camera can be utilized, and not with David Pesken's cool Master Filter, which is based on his "When night is falling" series, and also without night or long-term modes. Instead, we were able to switch to Pro mode and take pictures in RAW format.

How good is the camera of the OnePlus 10 Pro?

In the first test, it was mainly the software options that I personally found to be exciting. For example, OnePlus enables the display of a histogram or the fade-in of focus peaking in Pro mode, which ensures that sharp areas are outlined in orange when focusing manually. For camera nerds, it is also these details, that the focus peaking appears in Hasselblad orange and the shutter sounds like a Hasselblad Leaf shutter, that distinguish the smartphone from others.

David Peskens was also surprised by the sharpness of the smartphone, which came out really well in his own pictures. The 12-bit RAW shots also allow him to reproduce color gradients like sunsets without any unsightly staircasing.

Camera smartphones will continue to be a staple in the future and for many years to come. And for professional photographers, it is becoming more and more apparent that not only the quality of smartphone cameras is sufficient, but also the possibilities when it comes to post-processing.

OnePlus gave us admission to the Gardens of the World and the event included a few sandwiches and drinks. We had to return the OnePlus 10 Pro after using it.