Gadgetory

we did one of these last year for the galaxy s3 and it seemed only natural to build a video around the 13 megapixel camera on its successor so I'm Michael Fisher this is PocketNow and this is your guided tour of every photo feature on the samsung galaxy s4 so taking great pictures starts with learning the devices camera software we touched on this a little bit in our full galaxy s4 review so check that out if you haven't seen it already also follow us in all the usual social spots to catch all of our galaxy s4 coverage to start with the software on the s4 gives you a few options to jump into the camera the easiest way of course is just to tap on the camera icon on the home screen but what if the phone is locked in default configuration there's no quick jump into the camera on the lockscreen but there is an easy fix hop into settings and under the my device tab tap lock screen here you can set the option to either restore the quick launch shortcuts on the bottom or you can use a dedicated lockscreen widget to jump into the camera by swiping to the left of course it's not quite so simple if you use a secure lock screen the camera interface itself is clean and fairly straightforward on the galaxy s4 starting on the upper left we've got the toggle to switch from the primary camera to the 2 megapixel forward facing shooter on the front next to that is the on/off control for Samsung's new dual shot feature as well as the settings cog of both of which we'll get to in a second on the right in a queue taken from HTC the record button for the camcorder function is always displayed there's no need to switch modes you just need to tap it to start recording and tap it again to stop below that is the shutter release for still photos again always displayed and below that is the mode selector which we'll come back to in the bottom centre is the pull tab for the live filters Samsung provides and on the lower left is the quick jump into the gallery so you can review edit and share photos you've taken finally not displayed but important is the focus area like many smart phones the galaxy s4 lets you tap to focus on a given subject and it displays a box around what you've tapped on this can be handy for long shots or trying to force perspective in a close-up photo the box flashes green if the phone can get focus and red if you're too close or if there's not enough light for a clean shot so just getting the filters out of the way these are overlays like cartoon and rugged and oil painting that you can use to quickly add some personality to a photo yeah you can do this after the fact and a great number of apps but the advantage here is you can see what the shot looks like before you take it one thing you might notice about the galaxy s4 camera is that it has a narrower field of view than some other smartphones on the market meaning you'll need to step a bit further back from your subject to capture as much surrounding area that's just something to keep in mind for shooting in tight spaces now the camera feature you're probably going to be using most often is the mode selector which Samsung has brought over from its Galaxy camera which we covered on Pocket now a few months ago the device offers specialized shooting modes for all kinds of situations but they're laid out in a nice friendly series of cards you can scroll through with one thumb auto is what you'll probably use most often and it does a good job of optimizing photos across most normal situations Beauty face says it enhances facial features automatically but it's results sometimes look more like someone smeared pancake makeup all over your subjects face your mileage will vary on this one best photo and best face we've seen before on the galaxy s3 in the galaxy note 2 they're effectively burst shot modes with stitching features so you can pick and choose the best faces in a group or protect against your subject blinking sound and shot is a feature Samsung seems to have added just because it can it lets you record and append an audio file to a still photo the results are weird you're left wondering why you didn't just shoot a video but it's cute we showed you drama shot in our full review which is awesome it overlays multiple exposures for a neat effect it's a little finicky but it works and the results are very trippy animated photo replicates the cinema gram or cinemagraph functionality of apps on other devices that let you create an animated gif selecting specific areas to animate or D animate this is a lot of fun at parties we've talked a lot before about rich tone or HDR and it's one of our favorite shooting modes this is ideal for a situation where maybe your subject is slightly backlit or there's a mixture of very bright and very dark areas in the frame HDR which tends for high-dynamic-range takes photos from the same angle at multiple exposures and stitches them together to create a single photo you don't want to use this mode all the time though and you don't want to use it on moving images eraser is a mode that also draws from Samsung's innovation in the multiple consecutive photos arena it snaps five shots in a row of your subject and eliminates objects like people or vehicles that might pass between you and it it's perfect for areas packed with oblivious tourists who would otherwise blow your shot and it works very well panorama is something of a standard feature these days allowing you to stitch multiple photos together into one ultra wide shot it works ok on the galaxy s4 but it really demands a steady hand and even then the stitching lines between photos are often very evident especially if the exposure value changes as you pan across a scene the Samsung has added the ability to take panoramas in portrait mode with the galaxy s4 which is cool as well as 360-degree panoramas but unless you're only photographing distant landscapes you really need a lot of skill and patience to execute one properly the last two modes sports and night are self-explanatory the sports option helps you capture fast movement and the night mode allows more light into the sensor just be sure to keep a steady hand when shooting modes can only take you so far sometimes you need to access the more granular aspects of the camera and that's what the settings cog is for in the upper left tapping it expands some quick and helpful options there's the flash toggle which lets you choose between flash on/off and automatic next to that is automatic night detection which will let the camera put itself into night mode if it detects a low-light situation next up is the voice command toggle which either enables or disables the function that lets you take pictures by telling the camera things like smile cheese cap shoes shoot some of those trigger word cheese better than others by the way cheese cheese you second to last is the recording mode toggle for the video camera which lets you either limit video size for media messaging or change the frame rate to shoot slow and fast motion video these are really cool options but we're not focusing on the camcorder for this tour so we'll stick with normal finally there's the Samsung specific sharing options such as share shot which uses Wi-Fi direct to share photos to other connected devices Samsung's old buddy photo share feature chat on if you use chat on and probably the coolest feature in this menu remote viewfinder this allows you to use another galaxy s4 connected via Wi-Fi direct as your viewfinder in situations that call for stealth or self-portraits serve just some fun silliness when the toggle bar is extended in the upper left tapping the COG again that's the tricky part is what gets you access to the very granular settings the window is separated into three tabs still video and other under the still heading is the photo size selector which is probably the only setting we semi-regularly play with on this device that's what allows you to set the resolution of your photos which out of the box is 9.6 megapixels instead of the maximum rated 13 that's to preserve the 16 by 9 aspect ratio fortunately the aspect ratio is included in all the resolution settings so you don't forget what shape you're shooting in other settings like burst shot and face detection are pretty self-explanatory a burst shot lets you keep your thumb down on the shutter release to take up to 20 photos in the space of a couple seconds and face detection does what it says optimizing focus for human faces that the camera can see metering is more complex it refers to the way the camera determines exposure and allows you to select between center-weighted which concentrates sensitivity toward the middle of the frame spot metering which takes its exposure information from a very small area and matrix mode which averages several different points of analysis these modes can be handy for very tricky scenes like crazy backlighting but HDR mode should suffice for all about the toughest conditions ISO refers to the sensitivity of the image sensor the lower the number the less sensitive the sensor and the finer the grain you can force the ISO manually higher to capture more light in darker situations but the picture will be much noisier again the night shooting mode will take care of most folks in low-light situations so you shouldn't have to touch this very often if you're just a casual user anti-shake refer - the cameras artificial software stability enhancer for bumpy shots but it's not as good as Hardware stabilization and its default setting is off auto night detection is a duplicate we saw that before switching over to the video tab makes us wonder why it's even here there are only two options in camcorder mode one for controlling resolution and the other for anti shake in recording again defaulting to off mode it's the other tab under the COG that contains the rest of the cameras advanced features once again we have a mix of complex and simple here and we wish Samsung had organized this a little better in the more complex Department white balance allows you to compensate for various atmospheric lighting conditions both indoor and outdoor in short it helps you keep white objects looking white which of course makes your colour reproduction overall better exposure value allows you to compensate for a camera's incorrect assumptions about the lighting of a scene it's most useful in very dark or very bright situations where the auto settings sometimes gets things wrong for very bright settings the positive numbers should be used for darker environments go negative these settings will be most effective in the hands of a more experienced photographer but it can't hurt to try them if you're in a tricky spot at the very least it's helpful to know they're there finally the cameras other settings are pretty self-explanatory GPS tagging lets the camera know where each photo was taken useful information for the gallery and other apps review displays the just taken photo immediately after capture the device volume buttons can be used to simulate a shutter release or zoom more the camcorder record button and the timer is handy if you can find a rock to prop the phone up against for a self-portrait guidelines can help with the composition of your photo contextual file name governs how your photos are named in the phone's file system and finally reset will you guessed it reset the cameras settings back to default if it all seems a little overwhelming well it is but that's just a combination of all the utilities samsung is built into this camera software along with the fact that really no one should sit down and try to absorb all this information at once and we've really only scratched the surface of describing at all hopefully though we've provided a useful high-level overview of the Galaxy s4 camera settings and features that you can refer back to the next time you're wondering what that button in the viewfinder does until then happy photo taking and good luck folks as you know if you've been watching long enough we have much more coverage on the Galaxy s4 at pocketnow.com and here on youtube so drop us a like if you enjoyed this video subscribe to us on youtube and at our various social feeds if you haven't already leave a comment down below if we forgot something or if you have some other feedback and thank you for watching we'll see you next time