The Xiaomi 15T Pro in Munich during Oktoberfest

Out of Camera #10

In Japan, “Oktoberfest” basically means “beer garden” regardless of what month it happens in. Here’s one that happened in Tokyo this past May, for example. I’d always assumed this was yet another example of Japan being liberal with semantics when it comes to foreign loanwords.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I found myself in Munich last month — which was very much September — for the opening days of the one-and-only original Oktoberfest.

My camera for this trip was the Xiaomi 15T Pro. This is ostensibly an upper-mid-range phone, but it doesn’t leave much separation between itself and full-on flagships. Xiaomi has made a point of treating the T-series as its own line this year, offering it as a legitimate alternative to the regular 15 where the differences are more about personal preference than objective tiering.

Here’s the camera hardware we’re dealing with on the 15T Pro:

• 23mm-equivalent lens with a 50-megapixel 1/1.3” sensor and f/1.62 aperture

• 115mm periscope telephoto with a 50-megapixel 1/2.76” sensor and f/3 aperture

• 15mm ultrawide with a 12-megapixel 1/3.06” sensor and f/2.2 aperture

The hardware is the same as the 14T Pro except for the new 5x telephoto camera, which brings a periscope design to the T-series for the first time. It does mean that you miss out on the medium-range optical zoom due to the loss of the 2.6x lens, but the tradeoff is that you should get much better range beyond 5x.

These unedited shots were taken in the built-in Leica Authentic mode, which as ever is accessible from the main Photo screen in the camera app; it’s a one-button toggle between that and Leica Vivid, which looks more conventionally smartphone-ish.