Gadgetory

isn't it frustrating when you're watching a phone review and when the reviewer gets to the camera section all they post are a couple of terrible shots while riding the camera off because it's not on their favorite phone don't you want to know more about a phone camera than what you might learn from a handful of mediocre HDR shots let's do something about this we live in an age where the only camera a person might own is the one bolted to the back of their phone so shouldn't we review that with the same attention we might give a standalone camera there's more to smartphone photography than just megapixels and selfies shooting in real-world conditions we're going to cover color saturation exposure optics image stabilization bouquet low-light focusing video and any other fun features the manufacturer might have packed on I'm Juan Carlos bag now for pocket now and here's our real camera review of the Samsung Galaxy s7 brought to you by deep brand buckle up folks we've got a lot of ground to cover and we're going to move pretty quick first a little housekeeping the galaxy s7 is utilizing a one over two point six inch 12 megapixel image sensor with a native aspect ratio of 4 by 3 the lens has a huge aperture of f17 and a fairly y 27 millimeter equivalent field of view with hardware optical image stabilization our review unit is an ATT branded model powered by a Qualcomm 820 and utilizing a sony image sensor I shot samples at full resolution and will be cropping to show a closer look at details and this video is being uploaded at UHD resolution to match the highest quality output from the camera any adjustments made to the image will be detailed in the upper left corner of the frame starting with exposure and saturation it shouldn't come as any surprise that most photos in daylight are going to be overexposed by around 1/2 a stop at least and while Samsung has dialed back some of the saturation pop they've been known for in the past output from this camera can still easily be called juicy or punchy blues greens and browns look lush and the sensor does a fantastic job of handling color gradations like moving from a dark blue sky to lighter blue then to the green grass nor do we see exaggerations on rust or wood colors white objects in the Sun are obviously the hardest to expose for and I was excited to see that in auto mode Samsung is now consistently using more of a spot metering than a matrix or average system tapping on the brightest part of this calla lily the camera is ignoring darker background information and we're retaining quite a bit of the flowers texture moving to warmer colors like yellows we start to see information loss to this combination of juicy saturation and overexposure hot spots on this hibiscus destroy the crinkly texture of the petals reds are always the hardest color to expose for on digital sensors and they can prove problematic here in sunlight lots of small details in these Bougainville blossoms are gone the color starts sizzling fearing more into purplish or magenta territory dialing back the exposure can help a little but really you need to jump into the s7s Pro mode and set up a custom color profile when facing this kind of scene overall we get terrific dynamic range though that might be difficult to see sometimes because of this philosophy of producing bright photos dialing back the exposure even just a third of a stop will often retain more detail in highlights without creating too many issues for shadowed areas of the frame average JPEG files are between three and five megabytes with RAW files eating up around 25 megabytes of storage considering the reduction in resolution even the JPEG files are retaining quite a bit of detail and doing a little light editing is certainly not out of the question it's difficult to point to the lens or the lower resolution but when pixel peeping the output from this camera is a little on the soft side we get good contrast but on our review unit we do see subtle deformation on street lights and nighttime shots taking a quick look at the raw files there's tons of information to play with and you can pull quite a bit of info out of shadows and highlights but pixel level details still feels a bit dull applying sharpness we just can't pull the same kind of clarity out of these raw images that we might from cameras like the Lumia 950 and even the LG v10 in similar situations can offer more detail from a lens which is more prone to distortion and aberration we've seen numerous comments from people disappointed by the more square-ish aspect ratio though even accounting for the crop to achieve a 16 by 9 image you'll still end up with plenty of resolution to play with for most conditions it's not likely you'll be viewing these images on a 9 megapixel or higher display that's a slightly higher resolution than a UHD TV the main complaint or compromise here is zooming and cropping the galaxy s7 should be treated a bit more like a camera with a fixed aperture prime lens as much as you can if you want to zoom you should zoom with your feet will show more of the zoom image degradation a little later in this review the huge f 1.7 aperture also introduces some issues for specific situations first of all most phones with larger apertures now will have some issues with lens flares and internal reflections like these little floating UFOs here the other issue is found in macro shots the depth of field blur you can create when getting close to your subject is absolutely gorgeous but the field of focus this aperture creates is razor thin even on small objects it was difficult getting a whole flower in focus this tiny blossom is smaller than my pinky nail and we see some fringing and ghosting along the edges of the flowers it's already falling out of focus to be sure the aperture is a huge help in low-light shots but there are a few compromises for other styles of photography Samsung has been touting the dual pixel technology of this sensor claiming it's the fastest and most accurate focusing for any phone and I think they might be right in our focusing test here I was not able to physically move my finger fast enough from one part of the screen to the other to actually tax this sensor it's remarkable performance and the actual focusing action is noticeably smoother than the twitchy focus we've become accustomed to on previous Samsung's it now handily competes for accuracy with laser assisted focusing options and is almost always faster if there's a criticism to be had it's my pet peeve about miss focusing reporting I wish there was better confirmation for focus I really enjoy green and red boxes to let me know I might not have locked onto my subject trying to lock on here I just get the same gray circle I get in every single situation I was really too close as the minimum focusing distance is actually here a red indicator would have been nice to let me know that I didn't actually lock focus white balance on the s7 veers warm in daylight but not to a point of disruption I feel the color here represents the scene well moving the shaded shots I'm happy to see the tone remains on the warmer side even though these shots are in shade this is still Southern California and the s Evan avoids the trap of overcompensating with a colder out put another gripe I have with most Android cameras is how they process HDR photos high dynamic range means we should see more details in darker and brighter areas of our frame but more often than not Android HDR just becomes a shadow brightening mode the s7 often Falls for this trap making darker elements in the frame brighter but highlights either remain the same or get worse I'm not a huge fan of HDR processed images in general and I feel more often you can land a better looking photo with a quick exposure adjustment but it's frustrating to see the SM and simply exaggerate the already bright photos the camera takes panorama performance is absolutely fantastic improving even on the note 5 a sideways scan through a scene showcases wonderful stitching even on fine details like these power lines exposure is handled terrifically as you'll probably be looking at the Sun at some point during a pan through a landscape and it is also kind of fun looking back through the motion photo video which is created from that panorama I don't spend a lot of time on selfie cameras but Samsung still has one of the better options for a front-facing shooter get a decent 5 megapixel resolution a nice wide field of view where it's easy to line up a shot of you and your background and the video mode is fantastic for delivering quad HD resolution Samsung's beauty modes might be getting out of hand though all of these various controls to alter your face shape eye size and to purposely blur the frame produce horrific Lee plasticky unflattering results Samsung is taking a gamble on reducing the sensor resolution they lose the marketing bullet point of having more megapixels but can point to better low-light performance indoors their plan would seem to be working the shot was taken handheld at one tenth of a second in fairly dark conditions and we get a reasonably well exposed image it's not too far off the mark from the same shot lit by a single desk lamp though obviously this has more than twice as fast a shutter speed throwing the flash will help in better freezing action for your shot helpful for situations where people might be moving around but the s7 does a fantastic job of harnessing available light in nighttime situations the spot metering can sometimes trip you up here on the street scene I focused on the billboard and the entire shot is too dark focusing on the business sign below the billboard gives a better overall result but then blows out the bright Street sign on our creepy tunnel shot lens flare chromatic aberrations from the streetlight are a bit distracting but the information retained around the tunnel is excellent considering how long the shutter was held open where white balance veers warm in daylight the s7 lands a bit cooler at nighttime especially on objects lit by yellowish artificial lighting this creepy gate is something of a halfway point between the white of the gate and the ugly yellow of the security light adjusting the white balance in the exposure can get us a bit closer to what the scene looks like in real life on this walkway shot we can clearly see the differences in color temperature between these two security lights and again the s Evan showcases excellent dynamic range as the blown out hotspots under each lighter fairly small pixel keeping again though the noise reduction here is turning fine details into watercolour smudges moving to extremely low light situations last year's galaxy s6 would often just refuse to find focus in situations like these the s Evan does not suffer the same issues sure this is a terrible shot and you should probably use your flashing conditions like this but Samsung now joins LG in being able to focus properly on the subject with very little available light manual controls are terrifically helpful in pairing the s Evan up with the tripod it's wonderfully easy to pull off long exposure shots you can shoot up to a 10 second exposure for all your streaking tail light needs though I do wish we could shoot longer as some competitors allow for up to a 30 second exposure now moving over to UHD video we're saving around a 50 megabit per second video file and we can expect file sizes between 350 and 375 megabytes per minute of footage plus the time limit for UHD has been increased to 10 minutes per file the galaxy s7 adds the ability to manually focus in video and to adjust white balance but we don't get shutter speed control which would be nice for those looking to shoot super crispy action while shooting video we can take a better look at the zoom action there's less resolution to do aggressive pixel resampling and as you might imagine pushing to the farthest reach of the zoom creates a blown-up image degrading overall quality this is one area we're having more pixels to play with would obviously improve the final results video also gives us a great look at image stabilization the galaxy s7 has optical image stabilization for all shooting modes so even while recording UHD video though this icon is greyed out you can still see the slight jello effect from the lens elements trying to compensate for my footfalls happily this effect is far more restrained than what we might see from LG and Microsoft when shooting 1080p video at 30 frames per second we can also employ software stabilization which crops the frame now I'm usually not a fan of both hardware and software stabilization being used at the same time but Samsung has done a great job balancing the lens distortions against the pan and scan software compensation we get a nearly ethereal floating tracking shot which approaches the software stabilization of the iPhone and which avoids the buzzy nasur jerkiness we might see from the LG v10 on the whole the phone keeps up well with higher resolution video and faster frame rates there are the occasional dropped frames but action for the most part is fluid the 60 frames per second mode creates super slick video which we can't show off here but through the magic of editing we can use it to create a high quality half speed playback audio is also top-notch excellent stereo microphones paired with a conservative but effective noise reduction filter delivers some of the best audio I've ever heard from an Android device attesting exposure transitions moving from dark to bright and back the galaxy s7 is a little twitchy er than previous galaxies the exposure and white balance still bloom pleasantly very even-handed changes with barely perceptible steps in altering ISO and shutter speed but the autofocus is jumpier as exposure changes it's more prone to hunting around than last year's phones were Samsung still leads in this test but competitors are closing in on similar exposure adjustments and calmer autofocus performance checking out low-light video it's almost always brighter than it needs to be sometimes by almost a full stop spot metering can at least make sure that you're exposing for what you think is important but more often than not producing the brighter scene just means more noise than we really need lastly the slow motion setting on the galaxy s7 is excellent 240 frames per second video at 720p resolution it's almost at the level of iPhone and Nexus 6p quality and the only issue keeping it from reaching that top tier is I'm seeing a few more dropped frames from the galaxy than I do on those other two competitors even though it's not the best this is a lot more fun to play with than last year Samsung's in LG's so where does that leave us with the camera on the Samsung Galaxy s7 it would seem we're approaching the limits of the half inch camera sensor faster than we hit the wall on third inch camera sensors Samsung's experiment here is focused on speed and low-light performance judged by those standards samsung has largely succeeded this camera performs very well in challenging lighting conditions and I don't think a faster camera has been created in terms of launching the app or in auto focusing to achieve those goals though we do see compromises elsewhere software output then we're usually accustomed to from a galaxy more chromatic aberration and lens distortion and as I'm a huge fan of shooting macro pics I can't say this is my favorite camera for getting really up close to a subject the wider f1 points have an aperture possibly contributing to my personal issues focusing fast enough to prevent missing the shot landing good photos indoors with natural light and pushing low-light situations to their limits this is where the s7 excels to be sure this is a very good camera and even with some of these compromises the s7 will likely land in the top five of our favourites for the year for the most part I had a lot of fun shooting with it and only occasionally with pining for the features or settings I enjoy on Lumias and LG's as manufacturers focus on specific goals though we savvy consumers should start to walk away from the idea that any phone company can create a faultless photography all-rounder looking for a way to customize add some grip or protect some of the glass around your Galaxy S Evans lens cover D brand has you covered check out D brand comm slash galaxy or visit the link in the description below to customize yours today as always folks thanks so much for watching this is a new review series on pocket now and it won't continue without your support it takes a significant amount of work to produce this much footage so above commenting and liking sharing will always be greatly appreciated for pocket now I'm Juan Carlos bag now author of take better photos smartphone photography for noobs available on Amazon Kindle you can chat me up on Instagram and Twitter as some gadget guy and I will catch you all on the next review you