How I fell in love with the Pixel 9 Pro Fold camera

Last weekAt the very beginning of the testing period, I was in Berlin with the Google Pixel 9 Pro Foldand I wanted to write something about the camera before it. I decided to do it by indulging in my photography hobby.

When I travel, I like to take pictures of cars, and the Pixel 9 Pro Fold was meant to be my companion. I hope it’s up to the task, because other phones were waiting in the wings if it let me down.

Car spotting in Berlin

Even though the Pixel 9 Pro Fold has Pro in its name, it doesn’t have the same camera as the Pixel 9 Pro, or even the Pixel 9. It has a 48-megapixel main camera, a 10.5-megapixel wide-angle camera, and a 10.8-megapixel telephoto camera with 5x optical zoom. It’s essentially the same camera setup as the Google Pixel Fold, and on a technical level, it’s not as impressive as the much cheaper (but much less foldable) Pixel 9 Pro, or even the Pixel 8 Pro.

But will it do what I wanted it to do while I was in Berlin? I was in town for the IFA 2024 tech show and was staying near the Kurfürstendamm (or Ku’damm for short), which is central, elegant, and full of lovely places to grab a coffee and eat. It’s also full of expensive designer stores, luxury watch boutiques, and all the cars that accompany those who shop there. Over the years that I lived in the area, I always enjoyed a bit of car spotting, often to the chagrin of my colleagues.

I am a car enthusiast, so when I am in new places I enjoy seeing cars that I don’t usually see at home. What makes Kurfürstendamm enjoyable for me is the variety of cars you see driving and parked, from supercars to modern classics in fantastic condition.

A good car spotting camera needs to take colorful, contrasting, dynamic photos in all lighting conditions to highlight the metal. It really needs a telephoto lens so you don’t have to get up close to the vehicle just before taking a photo, while still being more incognito. It also needs a solid editing suite and a large screen to make changes. The Pixel 9 Pro Fold should be a great choice, so how does it fare?

Using the Pixel 9 Pro Fold Camera

Over the course of a few days in Berlin, I took about 50 photos of different cars with the Pixel 9 Pro Fold — and I loved the results, whether I used the main wide-angle lens, the 5x telephoto lens, or even the 2x non-optical zoom. I was also impressed with the speed of the camera, and while I didn’t take many photos of cars in motion (more on that in a moment), I never missed a shot because the camera or app was too slow.

Why didn’t I take photos of cars in motion? I was going to try out Google’s Action Pan mode, which adds a cool motion blur effect to moving objects, since I liked it on the Pixel 9 and Pixel 8. However, oddly enough, Action Pan isn’t available in the Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s camera app. However, its sister mode, Action Pan, Long Exposure, is. There’s no obvious technical reason why it’s not included, and in this case, it was pretty frustrating. Perhaps it’ll come in a future software update.

What about cars? It will come as no surprise that two leading car brands dominate the Ku’damm landscape: Mercedes Benz and Porsche. Porsches of all types are so common that I stopped taking pictures of 911s because I would have spent most of my time capturing them if I hadn’t.

I didn’t do the same with Mercedes because despite seeing so many of them, these models were often very unusual places for me, much like the Ku’Dammers. Love their high-performance Mercedes. That said, the other day, the first five cars I considered photographing were all AMG GT models of various types, giving you an idea of ​​how common this particular car was in the area.

Cars and photos

I also didn’t want to focus solely on supercars, I wanted to illustrate the variety of cars I saw, which I think speaks to the interesting car culture that I assume exists in and around Berlin. The Mustang convertible was a surprise, and although I didn’t take any photos because most were on the move when I saw them, the number of Aston Martins and Jaguars, both new and old, showed that it wasn’t just about German cars. Ferraris were noticeable in their absence, and the few I did see were easily outshone by the Lamborghinis and Bentleys. It was great to see all these cars out and about, especially during the week.

The beautiful weather during my stay no doubt helped people get their cars out of the garage that might otherwise have been safely parked, and it also helped my photos, as did the city backdrop. I tried to include the Ku’damm and its side streets in the photos, but there were times when I was a little too a lot of that got in the way, and that’s where the Pixel 9 Pro Fold became the best companion for my car-spotting adventures on the road. For starters, opening up the phone to view and edit photos on the big screen is amazing, and there’s simply no way to compare it to a phone that doesn’t fold. Only editing on a laptop or tablet can compare to it, and I can’t carry either of those around in my pocket.

With the screen open, I was able to make full use of Google Photos’ Magic Editor mode, and wow, didn’t it produce some impressive things. My favorite is the wide-angle shot of the Mustang, which was interrupted by a road sign and a few rental scooters that litter the streets of Berlin when I took it.

Amazingly, after a few careful movements, the Magic Editor removed them all without a trace. If I hadn’t pointed it out and shown the before photo, I don’t think you would have ever noticed. It also turned a photo I probably would have thrown out into one I really like. I did the same to the background of a photo of a beautiful R129 SL, then removed the parked cars on either side of the white S-Class and was amazed at the clean, seamless result.

Not interested in cars?

This isn’t our review of the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold or its camera, so all the photos you see here were edited on the device using the tools available in Google Photos. Magic Editor has become incredibly adept at removing small distractions and perfectly reproducing backgrounds, and cleaning up photos took just a few moments.

But I wanted to edit the photos just because they looked great to begin with, which meant I could tweak them to my own taste rather than using tools to try and achieve an acceptable baseline. I managed to create a collection of photos that I’m really happy with, which capture Berlin’s obvious love of very powerful cars.

When I first came up with the idea of ​​using car spotting as the basis for my Pixel 9 Pro Fold story while in Berlin, I was a little apprehensive. I take these photos for myself and for fun, so I didn’t want that to change. If the Pixel 9 Pro Fold was intrusive or didn’t take the photos I wanted, it would become an effort and effectively Workstripped of all the pleasure of photographing cars.

That wasn’t because the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is a joy to hold and use. It’s not annoyingly heavy, the software works flawlessly, and I never once wanted to reach for the Pixel 9 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max that I also had with me to take a photo. My occasional hobby of taking pictures of cool cars I spot was enjoyed just as much, if not more, than usual with the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, the camera, and Magic Editor at the ready.

If you’ve never taken a photo of a car and are wondering if all this is important to you, all the same principles and camera performance of the Pixel 9 Pro Fold and Google Photos apply to anything you shoot. I love the open screen when I want to see my shots after I’ve taken them, and the telephoto lens lets me capture my subject in a more visually exciting way from a distance. The suite of editing tools helped me easily create photos I wish were possible in real life.

No matter what you want to shoot, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is a great companion. My first few days with the phone and its camera left me impressed, and it looks like this is the start of a very positive review.