DXOMARK Insights on Portrait Photography – Shanghai/ China

Purpose of the study 

Building on our research in Paris, DXOMARK conducted an Insights study on smartphone portrait photography in Shanghai, China. The aim of the study was to better understand user preferences, expectations, and challenges when capturing portraits in everyday scenarios. When it comes to smartphone photography, we naturally focused our research on the HDR format, a feature increasingly adopted by manufacturers.

This DXOMARK Insights study on smartphone HDR portrait photography was conducted to evaluate the perceived quality of images captured in HDR formats, rather than their playback qualities on proprietary smartphone screens. We applied the same methodology used in our Insights Portrait study in Paris, with a focus on the visualization of HDR images under standardized conditions.

DXOMARK employed a distinctive methodology to gather comprehensive insights across common but also local use cases, environments and conditions.

A study with a diverse and inclusive panel of consumers and professional users

This exhaustive study comprised a Chinese panel with various skin tones, cultural backgrounds, ages and genders, making it the largest of its kind. It included:

• • 80 regular consumers
  • 10 local professional photographers
  • 49% women / 51% men

Using scientific studies on skin-tone distribution in Shanghai and measuring the skin-tone reflectance of our models, we defined six distinct skin-tone groups and built our panel.

On a various set of portrait pictures, in various lighting environments 

To assess user preferences on portraits, we included a large set of situations and lighting conditions. All pictures were taken by professional photographers to get perfectly comparable shots.

The study involved 7 of the latest flagships popular in China: Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max, Honor Magic6 Pro, Huawei Pura70 Ultra, Oppo FindX7 Ultra, Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, Vivo X100 Pro and Xiaomi 14 Ultra. A full frame mirrorless professional camera was also included for comparison, with images edited by a professional photographer using an HDR pipeline in Photoshop.

400 different scenes were taken with all devices,  varying the number of models, location and lighting conditions.

A robust methodology in assessing consumer preferences  

Based on our 20 years of experience in image quality testing, we have established a scientific and robust methodology to assess user preferences.

Combining various aspects: preference and rejection identified from a two-step survey:

• Pairwise comparison: selecting the best picture from two presented
• Relative rejection: from a set of pictures, identifying the ones that were rejected
• Identifying at every step the reasons for the preference or rejection

Using the JOD (Just Objectional Differences) scale to rank pictures by crossing the results for several comparisons

One key metric to quantify user satisfaction: the Satisfaction Index, which combines

• Pairwise comparison
• Relative rejection
• JOD scale

Ranging from 0 to 100 and qualifying the level of satisfaction for each picture.

To delve deeper, we included a questionnaire asking our panelists to specify why they might reject a particular picture.