Mobile phones in photography have been famously contentious, but a force to be reckoned with nonetheless. Samsung has now released its greatest camera phone, and it has got some photographers' attention, mine included.
I've written before on how mobile phones in photography are not only useful as a method of getting people into our passion, but they're useful to photographers too who want a wide-angled lens when they're out with their camera, but don't want to switch. Many times I have kept my favorite prime on the front of my camera body and taken wide shots with my phone, though admittedly only when I'm shooting for myself, never a client.
Samsung has now released a new phone that is specifically pitched at photographers and videographers and it has undeniably impressive specs. The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G has a phenomenal 6.8" AMOLED display, 12GB of RAM, 5G, and a host of other impressive features, but it's the camera side that's interesting to us. It comes with quad cameras (108MP, 12MP, and two 10MP), can record video up to 8K resolution, and has wide, ultra-wide, 3x tele, and 10x tele options. The 108MP camera is the wide lens and so the phone lends itself to landscape and cityscape style photography. As if it isn't trying to irritate photography purists enough already, it also has a built-in feature to pull a still from 8K video and have it as a standalone image.
It's certainly an impressive piece of kit, and it's starting to near being regarded as a camera on which you can call your mother, rather than a phone. I hope to get my hands on one to test. What are your thoughts?
Unless Samsung has done something revolutionary with the S21 that they didn't do on the Note 20 Ultra I wouldn't get too excited, it's still a phone camera.
108MP mode is useless, don't know if it's due to the glass in front of the camera or the tiny pixel size, but I can't crop into a 108MP photo like I expected to. From my personal testing there is virtually no quality difference or increase in detail when snapping a photo in broad day light and it actually looks worse in poor light. Not to mention you can't shoot Pro or capture RAW in 108MP.
Also the ultra wide angle and telephoto cameras cannot shoot pro(Samsungs manual settings mode), they are stuck on auto with no RAW support. Plus the camera software decides whether to use a telephoto lens or use digital zoom depending on the lighting, so again the zoom is only actually there in broad day light.
Too make matters worse, Samsung locks down their cameras and prevents 3rd party apps from getting proper access to them. It's why Moment abandoned their Android app, they couldn't keep feature parity with their iOS app due to Samsung and others refusing to let them access the additional cameras with their app.
While Samsung makes great phones and offer arguably the best camera hardware on a phone, they cripple it with their software and their tendency to over expose images and crank the saturation and sharpening.
Hi, Robert. I have been using the S21 Ultra device for about 4-5 days now. A buddy of mine owns a Pixel 5 and I own a Pixel 4a, so we did some side-by-side comparison of the S21 Ultra in Pro mode (108 Mpx) to the two Pixels. There is a significant difference when you pixel peep (pun intended; Pixel peep?) The S21 has a lot more detail, but now I need to learn how to adjust settings and observe how the output changes, until I get things where I want them. I found that the Pixel is superb at making every one of those pixels accurate and the image completely distortion-free. The Pixel however does not allow for the manual configuration of many (or often any) settings. The S21 Ultra should provide more satisfaction with its premium lenses, diverse set of sensors and large number of settings. It feels premium in the hands. Samsung has addressed the issues raised about the last gen of this series. It will be interesting to experiment and learn and compare to my mirrorless camera equipment.
You can use pro mode while shooting 108Mp on the S21? It wasn't possible with the S20/N20.
I don't see the 108Mp option on the Pro mode, only in standard photo mode, pity... , I compared the photos taken in the 108Mp mode to those on my Mirror less Fuji XT3 24Mp and the S21 ultra is much better in terms of zooming in and see the details, but this is limited to a lens equivalent to 36mm on full frame. The other modes on the S21 ultra are 10-12Mp and the details are only reasonable, the Huawei Mate 20 camera for example is better in detail and overall photo quality, it cost 30% of the S21 ultra. The X10 zoom is impressing but the photo quality is not that great, cannot really zoom beyond that.
You are correct. I conflated the 108 megapixel setting and Pro mode. Sorry about that! Now that I have had the device for some weeks, I am much more familiar with it.
Sounds like it's a 12mp camera that does stitching so fast it's virtually on the fly. Is that the gimmck?
Does anyone know the specific directory for the RAW images on the Galaxy S21 ultra, I set up the camera to store a RAW image with each photo I take in the 'professional' mode but cannot find the RAW images on the DCIM directory or any other directory on my phone. Thanks Oz
I believe it should be under DCIM/Camera
Also, try searching for *.dng,
Thanks so much, it is a dng file indicated as a directory for4 each RAW photo