Galaxy S21 Ultra vs S10+ Camera Comparison! By Quick Tech News

Hey guys, hope you’re doing well. So this is my new phone, the Galaxy S21 Ultra. It’s the newest, fanciest flagship of flagships, for the next couple months anyway. The full Review is coming soon but in the mean time I can bring you guys a camera comparison between it, and the S10 Plus it’s replacing. When I watched all the reviews drop on this phone many actually complained about its’ camera performance and since then Samsung have released a software update in which they specifically mentioned that camera performance had been improved so let’s see if their efforts paid off. We kick things off with a shot using the widest lenses available on both phones.

It’s actually the S10 Plus which goes the widest but at the cost of some more barrel distortion around the edges. The S21 Ultra is a clear winner, with a more realistic colour tone and better handling of the highlights. We move onto the main sensor and the 2 images are quite different. The S21 produces a more realistic, albeit dull image whilst the S10 Plus adds colour saturation which I’d argue isn’t a terrible idea in this particular image but technically the S21 wins for accuracy. Moving into telephoto it’s a similar story.

It’s worth noting that the S21 Ultra has a 3 x optical zoom here whilst the S10 Plus has only 2 x. In the next picture it’s total domination from the S21 Ultra but that is to be expected, with it having a fourth 10 x optical zoom lens whilst the S10 Plus has to make do with digital zoom. The result is the S21 brings out far more detail and sharpness even when zooming in digitally. Speaking of which the S21 Ultra’s 100X space zoom is worth a quick mention. At this point the phone is also zooming digitally so the end result is not going to blow you away.

It’s technically impressive and is surprisingly easy to use with Samsung’s screen lock which lets you tap on the image to apply electronic image stabilisation, but it’s unlikely to ever produce a picture you’d hang on the wall. The best use case for this could be to read some text that’s very far away, or you can show it off to your friends. But nevermind the space zoom, the 10 x optical zoom is a bigger deal than I would have imagined. Up until now I’ve looked at the telephoto lens as something nice to have, but I never wanted to use it. Usually, I could get away with using the main camera and just taking a step forward.

But now I can take pictures of things from far away, like these ducks, or this bird, or this bridge. It’s not the fastest lens, these twitchy birds were difficult to capture but if your subject is static it works really well. Here we’re back to the main cameras and a theme is starting to emerge. The S10 Plus is relying on lots of saturation to make the image pop, but at the expense of realism. For example the top of this building here was in fact grey but on the S10 Plus looks more blue-ish.

The S21 Ultra may be adding some sharpening to the image in post processing which makes it look a bit more detailed but I think it would be more detailed even without it. In this image the S21 once again handles the scene with more realism and just a bit more polish than the S10 Plus. The S21 Ultra can also produce more of the blurry background which a lot of people will enjoy, it is mostly software trickery but it’s done quite well and the S21 handles the bright and dark parts of the image better. In this example we again see the S21 Ultra looking more natural, sharper and a bit less distorted around the edges. I know everyone likes a good sunset so I threw this in as a bonus, once again the S21 Ultra takes the cake with all of its lenses, colours are more accurate and the dynamic range is better.

Moving onto night shots and in this first picture I have to say the S10 Plus did a great job. It’s still a bit over saturated but the two phones are very close in this shot. However in this one, the S10 Plus is clearly behind, in order to get more details from the eye the rest of the image is way underexposed and you can barely see the bikes standing in front. Plus, the eye itself doesn’t look all that great either. The S21 nails it in comparison Same story in this image, the S10 Plus just can’t keep up and misses out on lots of detail from the darker parts of the scene.

But if you get the right shot the S10 Plus still holds up well. The S21 Ultra wins again with more lifelike colours and less blooming around the text but it’s a close one. It’s also worth mentioning that the S21 ultra is much quicker at taking these shots which means you’re less likely to get blurry shots. I need to do more testing with video but from the shots I’ve taken so far to be honest neither of the phones blew me away. In fairness this was a tricky scene with the sun shining into the lenses and the S21 Ultra did handle lens flaring better but neither were particularly well stabilised.

You can enable “super steady mode” on both phones which adds some additional stabilisation at the expense of cropping the video more. Both phones do pretty well but the S21 ultra seems to remove the shaking from footsteps a bit better. Moving onto super slow motion video, I think the S21 ultra wins again. Both phones are recording at 960 frames per second and both in 720p. The S10 Plus seems to crop in much further so the S21 will be more versatile and it seems much better at capturing what you want.

I did multiple tests side by side pressing the record button at the exact same time and every time the S10 Plus doesn’t quite get it right whereas the S21 Ultra does, or at least does better. In this other example which was taken before the S21 had it’s software update, it again wins hands down. It’s just more detailed and more usable. The S21 Ultra also wins at Selfies with a more natural skin tone and more details in the face. Speaking of selfies if you’re into vlogging the S21 Ultra is a considerable upgrade over the S10 Plus in both video and audio quality – check it out.

The S21 Ultra also has a neat trick by being able to record on both front and rear cameras at the same time. Excuse the shaky video in this case we can blame my hands that were freezing off from the cold weather. It also wins at taking pictures of food if you’re into doing that. And one more cherry on top for the S21 Ultra is that it is surprisingly capable at taking macro pictures as well. When you get close enough to something the camera switches to the ultrawide lens and lets you focus much closer than the S10 Plus.

So that wraps up the comparison. The S10 Plus really puts up a good fight considering its’ 2 years old and since image quality is very subjective some may even prefer the more vibrant and oversaturated pictures it takes but in my opinion it’s a clear overall victory for the S21 Ultra. It handles almost every scenario with more grace and realism, not to mention it has way more tools at its disposable to help you get the shot you’re looking for. And in practice I found it much faster and more reliable to use which means you’ll more often get the shot you wanted. Which camera did you prefer? Let us know down below.

Thank you guys for watching, if you enjoyed the video please drop a like it really helps my channel grow and I’ll see you guys next time.

Source : Quick Tech News