Vivo V40 Pro hands-on: five ZEISS-powered focal lengths for portrait photography

Note: This feature was first published on 27 September 2024.

Do lens collaborations on smartphone cameras make a difference to the phones that have them?

We’ve had the chance to carry the Vivo V40 Pro with us during our factory visit in Germany, which was a great opportunity to understand better the new ZEISS optimisations for this phone that has yet to release its sales information in Singapore.

ZEISS-powered lenses, for the first time on Vivo’s V-series

Here’s a quick introduction to the Vivo V40 Pro. As the smartphone that targets selfie and livestreaming users, Vivo has brought back its massive LED fill light that graced its predecessors. However, the V40 series improved it further by making it better focused, 3x brighter than before, and 50x softer than standard smartphone flash.

The real addition, however, is the Vivo V40 series' ZEISS lenses. Vivo V40 Pro gets a 50MP ZEISS OIS main camera (Sony IMX921), a 50MP ZEISS telephoto camera, and a 50MP ultra-wide camera. While Vivo has been partnering with ZEISS since the Vivo X60 series, this is actually the first time Vivo has brought the partnership over to its midrange V-series instead.

The combination of lenses bestows two important perks to the Vivo V40 Pro. First, it is optimised for portrait photography at five specific focal lengths that are commonly used for said photography style: 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm, and 100mm, which we will demonstrate through photo samples below.

Secondly, is that ZEISS also brought on up to seven ZEISS Style bokehs for a unique background fill in your portraitures. They are all classic ZEISS bokehs that take after the names of lenses that offer said styles, which includes Biotar, B-speed, Sonnar, Planar, Distagon, and two more cinematic bokehs from their higher-end lenses bokehs called Cine-flare and Cinematic.

To read more about ZEISS’s collaboration with Vivo, don’t forget to check out our visit to ZEISS’s headquarters in Germany.

More about the Vivo V40 Pro can be found in our original reporting here.

Photo Samples and comments

The first series of photos checks the Vivo V40 Pro’s standard photography prowess at various focal lengths, noted in the caption below each image.

These first batch of photos were taken during the evening, facing away from the sun, without using any of the special modes (like Portrait). All settings (shutter speed, ISO) were automatic, and EV (exposure) was locked at neutral.

From the get-go, the Vivo V40 Pro can clearly pass most hygiene factors in smartphone photography, with excellent detail recreation and contrast. However, it has fairly aggressive colourisation, which you can see when you compare photos taken from different lenses (the first main camera photo is followed by a shot from the ultra-wide lens, which is followed by two photos from the telephoto).

We liked how it could pick up on things like litter on the pebbled pavements, to the frames of windows in these quaint houses. We believe the ultra-wide is the weakest link out of all its cameras, and that's because of the lack of focus once you go beyond the focal point of the image (centre).

The next set of photos examines the performance of the black-and-white filter, which you can find as an option under Portrait Mode.

Black-and-white photography is one of the most challenging types of photography because it heavily relies on light to "paint" your picture and bring out its mood. Some purists may consider it cheating if photographers use a coloured camera sensor to take B&W photos.

That said, the Vivo V40 Pro does an excellent job with B&W photography, capturing details and nuance in the lake's ripples, the girl's wool top, and the musician's electric accordion. The phone's digitisation plays a heavy role in translating the intended mood (since there's only a toggle for B&W and no other settings unless you edit in post).

In all three shots, it's also clear how you can tell which direction the sun is facing, and how it approaches out-of-focus areas with a grey midrange that's not unlike real or highly-skilled B&W photography. The kicker? None of these are edited or manipulated, and our skill is questionable at best, which is what makes the Vivo V40 Pro's technical competency feels impressive to the untrained eye.

The next batch of photos concerns non-human subjects. Remember to check the caption to see what settings were employed.

Before I get a bunch of hate mail and angry comments, please note that the last photo has the focal point on the pet dog, so these photos are defined as non-human subjects.

All in all, Portrait Mode does really well when you give the Vivo V40 Pro enough time to focus and capture the surroundings. The middle photo with two birds proved difficult as they were quickly hurrying to another destination, whereas the other samples had nearly still subjects in amazing lighting conditions.

But we know most phone brands train their portraiture algorithms on people, so here are some additional portraits samples of human subjects in good lighting conditions.

The only thing to note is that these four Portrait Mode photos were taken 0-4 hours after the "golden hour" (sunrise), which grants excellent lighting conditions for most photography styles.

Most smartphone portraitures (especially midrange ones) sometimes have flaws, like bad artificial bokeh or completely ignoring details outside the subjects' faces. In our samples, it's clear that the Vivo V40 Pro does not neglect the little details.

Despite the focus on beautifying our subjects' eyes and visages, the camera also retained an amazing amount of detail in each individual's hair, the wrinkles in their palms, and the texture of their clothes. The pink cotton top has a slight moire effect, but that's forgivable for a midrange smartphone.

The man's phone is more impressive in his hand, which shows that the Vivo V40 Pro can recreate artificial foreground bokeh. This is usually neglected even in high-end smartphones.

So, how does Portrait Mode perform in less-than-optimal or even low-light conditions?

In these samples, none of the subjects were illuminated by a direct source of light. They were either taken under shade (first two), indoors (next two), or at night with Vivo V40 Pro's ring light (last two).

While it's expected that less-optimal lighting can compromise the quality of photos taken, the Vivo V40 Pro still fares well despite the challenging conditions posed. Most impressive are the indoor shots, since the building's insides were entirely filtered through natural afternoon light (no electrical light fixtures). The Vivo V40 Pro tries its best to work with whatever light data and information it can capture first, before applying digital enhancements to bring out the rest of the image.

That last statement is most true if you look at the first two alleyway shots and the last two night shots. In the second alleyway shot, it's clear that the Vivo V40 Pro was able to see the black jacket's cotton texture, but that was forgone entirely when we placed our subject slightly further away for a full-body photo.

For the night shot, the camera struggled the most in getting the lighting correct, giving an overly orange tint to the subject despite shooting in the same location with the same focal length.

Parting words

We find the Vivo V40 Pro's imaging prowess pretty advanced for a phone of its class (midrange). Usually, many of the perks and optimisations you saw would be something unique to flagship-grade handsets, but the Vivo V40 Pro can offer most of them in a typical midrange-to-budget-flagship category. This makes it an excellent pick if you have a hard budget to stick to but still want some of the best portrait photography money can buy.

The Vivo V40 Pro official price for Singapore is not announced yet, and we'll update once we have it.

Update: The Vivo V40 (12GB RAM, 256GB storage) retails at S$649 on Lazada, Shopee, TikTok, and Vivo's authorised retailers. Two colours are available: Stellar Silver and Sunglow Peach.

Vivo V40 Pro is not officially sold in Singapore.

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