Does My S4 Camera Suck?

[JoeMcJoe]

I disagree. I think we are at a point where they should be better by now.

The physical size of the glass lens really decides how good of an image it can produce.
Cell camera lenses are tiny.

 

[TuxDave]

I found the cloud/sun setting not to be too different, the big difference I saw was with inside vs outdoor. Without using the sun/cloud setting, the outdoor images were grey and dull.

Here are few of pix from my s4 GPe, not great, but I was impressed with the phone.

I don't know if it's because you were shooting in HDR and it's blending badly but the edges of the mountains look kind of messed up.

 

[Oyeve]

Last year when I was using my S2, I noticed that my pics were "off" looking. I kept checking everything including the lens for scratches and everything looked ok. But the pics were just off. I took a jewelers glass to the lens a lo and behold, there was the tiniest dent on the lens cover that just threw everything off a bit.

 

[ProchargeMe]

I took these with my S4 about a month ago. I would agree yours does look a bit off.

Also, most of your photos are in low light situations, so that may not help too much with the quality :/

 

[JAG87]

OP, I seriously hope that that hosting site you are using is recompressing your images, otherwise they look pretty awful. Stop using HDR and get an app that gives you full control over focus and exposure. In low light situations, use the lowest ISO possible and the slowest shutter speed that you can handle without blurring.

Shot with my iP5 over this summer in Italy:

 

[blairharrington]

They're not. First of all, most smartphone cameras still have no "real" optical zoom. Second, their sensor is smaller. And don't get me started on the lack of other manual controls.

My eight year-old Canon A310 takes better pictures at night - when I saw the pixel snowstorm in the Roman sky, I cringed...

Also, don't rely on HDR all the time. It's overused, like lens flares in an JJ Abrams movie.

It could also be that the Samsung color reproduction is just not your cup of tea. Before digital, there used to be people who liked the look of Fujifilm and Scotch/3M negatives, as opposed to, say, Kodak or Polaroid. Same thing today: Canon people don't like how pictures look on Nikon, and Panasonic will look slightly different than Sony.

It's just frustrating. I might revert back to my Canon point and shoot for a future vacation. I thought my p & s days were over.

 

[blairharrington]

I took these with my S4 about a month ago. I would agree yours does look a bit off.

Also, most of your photos are in low light situations, so that may not help too much with the quality :/

These don't look good to me either. Perhaps I simply won't be satisfied with current smartphone cameras for anything other than indoor shots and casual ones with friends. I don't know.

 

[blairharrington]

OP, I seriously hope that that hosting site you are using is recompressing your images, otherwise they look pretty awful. Stop using HDR and get an app that gives you full control over focus and exposure. In low light situations, use the lowest ISO possible and the slowest shutter speed that you can handle without blurring.

Shot with my iP5 over this summer in Italy:

Nothing come up for me but broken images.

 

[JAG87]

Sorry forgot to adjust the sharing options in skydrive

 

[blairharrington]

OP, I seriously hope that that hosting site you are using is recompressing your images, otherwise they look pretty awful. Stop using HDR and get an app that gives you full control over focus and exposure. In low light situations, use the lowest ISO possible and the slowest shutter speed that you can handle without blurring.

Shot with my iP5 over this summer in Italy:

Perhaps the issue is that I don't fuss much with the settings. These photos are solid. What beach is this?

 

[Eug]

It's just frustrating. I might revert back to my Canon point and shoot for a future vacation. I thought my p & s days were over.

Hmm... Interesting you should say that.

Not an S4, but in the iPhone 5S thread I said my P&S days are over for most shots because the quality is very good on the 5S (for a smartphone camera), but that doesn't apply to vacations. I'd still take a dedicated camera with me on vacation, no question.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

It's just frustrating. I might revert back to my Canon point and shoot for a future vacation. I thought my p & s days were over.

Ah! A fellow Canon user.
No wonder you don't like the color reproduction on the Samsung

My advice: stay with a P&S for a while. I always carry with me an Elph 330HS, even though I also have a Samsung smartphone (Galaxy IIs)

 

[JAG87]

Perhaps the issue is that I don't fuss much with the settings. These photos are solid. What beach is this?

That's the issue, you're expecting good photos from automatic settings. A smartphone can only do so much because of how small the sensor is (and how brutally it compresses images vs RAW), but if you lock your focus and exposure properly you can pull out some great shots. Example, see the gelato photo? Yes there is glass between us (good for the gelato), but you can't see it because the exposure was locked on a brighter area, so the shutter speed was high and the ISO was low. Result: colors are more contrasted and less washed out, and you basically can't see the glass at all. Same idea with night shots, get an app that allows slower than 1/15 shutter speed combined with a low ISO and a steady hand and burst mode (and absolutely NO flash), and you can get good photos.

Since the 4S I feel that the camera is good enough that I don't need a P&S, even when traveling. Of course I don't own a DSLR because there is obviously no smartphone in the world that will keep up with that. So not owning one makes my decision on what to bring with me very easy.

To answer your question, that stretch of beach is Tropea.

 

[shortylickens]

Protip: The reason your cameras go up to 20 megapixels is because they suck.

Shrink that shit down when posting it. If you are using Android I know for a fact the image can be auto-reduced before sending it to picasa or Imgur or whatever.

 

[blairharrington]

That's the issue, you're expecting good photos from automatic settings. A smartphone can only do so much because of how small the sensor is (and how brutally it compresses images vs RAW), but if you lock your focus and exposure properly you can pull out some great shots. Example, see the gelato photo? Yes there is glass between us (good for the gelato), but you can't see it because the exposure was locked on a brighter area, so the shutter speed was high and the ISO was low. Result: colors are more contrasted and less washed out, and you basically can't see the glass at all. Same idea with night shots, get an app that allows slower than 1/15 shutter speed combined with a low ISO and a steady hand and burst mode (and absolutely NO flash), and you can get good photos.

Since the 4S I feel that the camera is good enough that I don't need a P&S, even when traveling. Of course I don't own a DSLR because there is obviously no smartphone in the world that will keep up with that. So not owning one makes my decision on what to bring with me very easy.

To answer your question, that stretch of beach is Tropea.

This sounds very complicated. Apparently I'll need to learn how to technically snap better photos with a smartphone. I wish I could just point and shoot.

How did you like Calabria?

 

[shortylickens]

if you dont wanna go manual then at least take multiple shots each time. Raises the odds that one of them will be halfway decent.

 

[JAG87]

This sounds very complicated. Apparently I'll need to learn how to technically snap better photos with a smartphone. I wish I could just point and shoot.

How did you like Calabria?

Good photography is complicated unfortunately. That's exactly why they created P&S cameras, because people are lazy. Sometimes this is obviously not feasible, but when you do have the time, take your time, the results are worth it.

Calabria is the best place on earth. People are great, food is great, summer weather is great. You don't really need anything else in life except a decent income and a government that doesn't screw you, that's where it really falls short. I used to live there so my perspective is not that of a biased tourist.

if you dont wanna go manual then at least take multiple shots each time. Raises the odds that one of them will be halfway decent.

Seconded. If you can't be bothered then at the very least take a few of the same shots and just move the camera a little bit to trick it into re-focusing and re-exposing. HDR is just about the worst way to cut corners, especially if you don't have a steady hand. It will take two awful photos and combine them into an even more awful photo.

 

[Eug]

HDR is a life saver for snapshots. I own a couple of dSLRs and point and shoots and by far the feature I miss the most on them is HDR.

I find myself using my cell phone now when I think HDR might be beneficial

 

[sm625]

Why do people do full-quote replies to posts with a bunch of pictures?

 

[hanoverphist]

my first real smart phone was the samsung omnia. i loved that camera, it did great in low light as well as fairly well outside. i have hated every motorola phone since then, their cameras just plain suck. this sgs4 has a better camera so far, but in reality, i accepted the fact that id have lower quality pics as the trade off for not carrying the p&s camera i used to cart around. for the most part, the sgs4 camera has been decent, and works for what i need it for while at work. the pics while out and about arent dslr quality, but they print decent enough that ive accepted the fact that i dont have a great camera at my disposal at every given moment.

 

[WelshBloke]

HDR is a life saver for snapshots. I own a couple of dSLRs and point and shoots and by far the feature I miss the most on them is HDR.

I find myself using my cell phone now when I think HDR might be beneficial

HDR can be useful sometimes but most of the time you're better off without it for sharp photos, particularly if theres any movement.

Still images with lots of shade and light can show some improvement.

Non HDR.

HDR on.

 

[Eug]

Still images with lots of shade and light can show some improvement.

Exactly.

---

Smartphone: Shoot HDR, email to friends, allowing your phone to auto resize.

dSLR or P&S: Shoot a bunch of pictures, transfer files to laptop, load up in Photoshop, play with the various settings, resize, export, and email to friends.

---

Why companies like Nikon and Canon cannot figure out the marked difference here in "workflow" is beyond me.

If I have a WiFi enabled camera, I'd expect it to be able to do HDR and post to flickr/photobucket direct from the camera, with minimal effort. In fact, I'd expect it to autoresize to send emails, to a limited set of emails in the very least.

 

[Ramses]

Only real gripe I still have with the s4 cam, and the s3 before it, is you can't tap on a lighter or darker part of the screen and make it adjust the light balance or whatever it's called to that spot you tapped. There's center weighted or matrix and some other setting but it'd still be a big time saver to be able to tap where I wanted it to adjust for and be able to frame a shot the way I want. Wifes iP4S does this fine.
That and she pulls a lot better macro focus out of hers.

 

[WelshBloke]

Exactly.

---

Smartphone: Shoot HDR, email to friends, allowing your phone to auto resize.

dSLR or P&S: Shoot a bunch of pictures, transfer files to laptop, load up in Photoshop, play with the various settings, resize, export, and email to friends.

---

Why companies like Nikon and Canon cannot figure out the marked difference here in "workflow" is beyond me.

If I have a WiFi enabled camera, I'd expect it to be able to do HDR and post to flickr/photobucket direct from the camera, with minimal effort. In fact, I'd expect it to autoresize to send emails, to a limited set of emails in the very least.

The problem is people leave all those settings on (HDR, resizing, compression, etc) all the time and then wonder why their photos look all muddy.

 

[JAG87]

The problem is people leave all those settings on (HDR, resizing, compression, etc) all the time and then wonder why their photos look all muddy.

Exactly, didn't think this thread was about "what is the fastest way to take a photo and send it", but rather about "how do you take a photo with a phone that is worth keeping". Obviously HDR can be handy if you're just emailing a small/medium resized photo to your friend and you want it to "pop", but hell if I ever shoot a photo I intend to keep for memories in HDR...

HDR is only good if (in order of importance):
1) your subject is stationary
2) your camera is stationary
3) you're otherwise having a hard time exposing properly because of the lighting

It can be amazing if you meet all the criteria, or it can be disastrous.