A question that I’ve received over 50 times so far is “is the Samsung Galaxy S camera really that good?” Well, I’ve been using this guy right here, the Galaxy S6 Edge and the Galaxy S6 as my daily driver for about a week and a half now and I’ve been doing a little bit of traveling, I’ve been using this phone on a daily basis. so that means, I have taken quite a few videos and photos and this is sort of my Samsung Galaxy S6 Camera Review and an overall perspective on why I think this is the best camera in the mobile industry.
So first of all, let’s go ahead and talk about the hardware of this camera here. It’s pretty much a very simple thing. It’s a 16MP camera sensor over a 1/2.3-inch sensor. It also has Optical Image Stabilization and it has a lot of good software to make your videos and photos look very beautiful.
Over the past couple generations of Galaxy S, devices have taken huge strides in making the camera almost near perfection and in my opinion, the Galaxy S6 is really the best camera around. In my opinion, better than the iPhone 6. I’m not sure if I’m going to rate it as much as a Lumia 1020 but that’s really out there in terms of the megapixel war.
First of all, let’s dive into the photos because that’s usually how I go into these reviews. First of all, dynamic range is really on point. HDR works beautifully. Really good dynamic photos here like a New York skyscraper. We’re looking at really beautiful looking blue skies, a nice building. Colors and exposure are all in perfect harmony. And also photos like in nature, like in parks and stuff, the photos just look really beautiful. The detail from the 16MP photo look really good. The leaves are very green, the cells you can almost see the cells of the leaves. It just looks really, really crisp.
One thing that I’ve noticed while using the Galaxy S6 is really how fast autofocus is. It is really crazy fast. Autofocus is like a sniper rifle, we’re talking about super-fast autofocus. It works really well and you’ll see how that also works in video because while we’re doing 4K video, the focus is unbelievably good.
Even zooming in and popping into any of these photos, you really don’t lose so much detail. You’re only going to start seeing details and artifacts when you really go again like 400-500%. But when do you ever do that on your desktop computer, most of all your photos are going to be on Instagram, Facebook and maybe on other types of media sharing websites. But other than that, you’re really not going to blow up any of these photos and print them. You probably could, it would probably look really good because the photos just look that good.
Moving in to the video side of the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, is 4K UHD video an OIS? First of all, the 4K video is unbelievably good. It records unbelievably good and rich video. I mean, everything, the smooth the colors are great. You’re basically getting the same dynamic range as you are getting when you’re using HDR mode on the photos side of the Galaxy S6 and that just looks really stunning. I actually used the Galaxy S6 as a standalone 4K camera on some of my shoots with Danny Winget a couple of days ago and the video just looks very good.
OIS also works very good. If you have really shaky hands or if you’re walking or something, you’ll probably see the little kind of stabilization effects on the edges of the video but overall, it does a very good job at stabilizing shaky hands while you’re walking or really, it just does a good job in making your video look that much better.
In general, 4K video on any type of video recording on the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge is just really fun to do. You have tons of options on the camera, you have tons of things you can do when video recording. You can do slow motion video, you can do 4K UHD video if you want to. You can really do a whole lot of stuff off this camera.
The only gripe I still have on the Galaxy S6 is the camera application is still a little rather confusing but it definitely is improving the software and hopefully the next generation of TouchWiz will see a very good and intuitive software in the camera department.
So my overall impression on the Galaxy S6 and really the camera is how flipping good the camera is. It’s super crisp, super detailed. It is literally the best camera on a mobile phone I’ve ever used. Better than the iPhone 6, better than any phone I’ve actually used in all of my time of being a phone reviewer. It’s just really, really good. I’m happy that Samsung has nailed this camera and I’m really looking forward to how the heck they’re going to improve this camera in the next iteration. You have the Note 5 coming up in September, the Galaxy S7 next year. It’s definitely going to be interesting to see how Samsung can really improve this. We’re probably going to talk about 6K video recording, right type of quality on the next Galaxy S7, which would be pretty epic.
So I want to hear what you guys think about the Galaxy S6 camera. You saw all of my staples during this video, you’ve probably looked at samples online from different reviewers. I want to hear what your thoughts are on the Galaxy S6 and its camera primarily. Make sure to leave those comments below in the comments section.