Camera/phone experts: Who has the Samsung Galaxy S7? DxOMark says this is the phone with the best camera hardware and, at least to some extent, software. I’m skeptical due to the painful experience that I had with the camera software (unresponsive) on a Note 3.
A friend recently purchased an S7 (not an S7 Edge) and I took some photos of the same scene (indoor close-up; subdued evening light through the window) with her new Samsung and my iPhone 6 Plus. The Samsung images were plainly better in terms of detail and color balance. But I’m wondering how well the Samsung would cope with running children/dogs/etc. This where the Note 3 fell apart and the iPhone does pretty well due to Apple’s brilliant software.
Readers: What do you have to say about the latest Samsung as a practical picture-taking tool?
[Separately, the new Sony A6300 is potentially revolutionary due to its ability to focus on a subject’s eye. (Olympus tried this a few years ago in one of their Four-Thirds camera but it didn’t have a state-of-the-art sensor like the Sony’s.) I am enthusiastic about upgrading from my old A6000.]
We have the S7 Edge and a6300. The S7 Edge is the best smartphone camera I’ve used, and it has a fantastic focusing system. It’s a great camera, but it’s fixed wide angle lens, of course, so you’re not going to take a 85mm f/1.2 bokehful portrait with it. But for what it is, it seems to be the best.
Many of the Sony cameras have the eye detect focusing. It works pretty good for casual photography, and can be way easier than trying to select the focusing point right on the subject’s eye. However, it also misses, especially in backlit situations, or if the subject blinks… and sometimes it hunts and delays for several seconds, which can throw off the rhythm of a professional shoot. For pro work, they either need to improve it or give me an old-fashioned thumb stick to control the focusing point.
We review the a6300’s eye detect focusing in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDpL_A0aPwA
My Fujifilm XT-1 has eye detection, with a further option of selecting right or left eye priority. I’ve had mixed results but when it works, it really works well.
I have a friend opening a showroom a week ago. He made some photos with a digital camera, also using his Samsung Galaxy, don’t know if it’s S7 or previous model, he complained about photos as depicting not so real colors in the case of the digital camera while the colors in the photos taken with the smartphone looked more natural, more real.
Not a camera buff, but I’ve had markedly different results when using different camera apps on my note 2 and now a nexus 5. The stock apps were not the best. I can’t give any good tips as to which one as I dont take a lot of pics with my cam anymore but I’d recommend trying a half dozen alternatives and seeing which ones work best.
This looks like the ~ list of the ones I looked at.
https://www.androidpit.com/best-android-camera-app
A friend of mine got a S7 too. I can confirm, that the cam is great but not as good as expected. Samsung clearly overhyped the cam of the S7. Despite, the Samsung S7 isn’t a bad phone but I’d prefer a Xiaomi Mi5 nowadays.
Can’t comment on the S7, but Android camera apps seem to lack responsiveness on other devices I’ve used. Also, Olympus has had eye detect focus tracking for years now on M43 gear and it works very well. The newer Olympus cameras have perfected it a bit, perhaps due to faster sensor readout.