Galaxy S21 vs iPhone 12: In-Depth Camera Comparison! By Paul Bradford

This video will go over photo and video comparisons between the Samsung Galaxy s, 21 and the iPhone 12. Mini well. This is the mini, because that's the one that I have, but it has the same camera and specs and image processing as the 12, so yeah, the s21 versus the 12. On paper, the s21 beats the iPhone 12 in pretty much all aspects, but how do the actual photos and videos turn out? We're going to cover everything in this video from daylight test to night mode, HDR, 4k, video, slow motion test and even 8k video with the s21. So let's not waste any time and get right into it, starting out with our most basic daylight tests. The two are very similar: the s21 seems to be a bit more saturated and have slightly more dynamic range than the iPhone, which is a recurring trait, we'll see throughout these photos.

Looking at the same subject taken with the ultra-wide lens, once again, the images are very comparable, and they seem to distort the image just about the same amount. So there's no major differences there in this next photo. The iPhone does a better job of maintaining a more pleasant exposure throughout the image. The s21 is a bit too dark in my opinion, and the s21 also appears to have some excessive digital sharpening going on. If you start to zoom in, so I'm going to give this one to the iPhone moving on to the zoom test.

The s21 has that extra three times telephoto zoom lens that the iPhone 12 doesn't have the 12 just has the standard and the ultra-wide lens. So it should be no surprise that the s21 outperforms the iPhone 12 in pretty much any zoom situation. Here we have the same photo taken on the regular camera, so just no zoom to start with, as our baseline and once again the s21 is a bit more saturated, but in terms of sharpness they're very similar. But when we get into that three time zoom, we can see where that telephoto starts to shine. The digital zoom on the iPhone is just no match, and the s21 image is very sharp for low light, shooting both the s21 and the iPhone 12 have their own night modes and both are perfect.

In this first test of the statue, the galaxy s21 goes a bit further than the iPhone in recovering the shadows in the sky, and it also saves a surprising amount of detail in the tree here in the corner. We can see the same thing once again in this picture. The s21 just goes a step further in shadow recovery of this tree on the edge of the photo in this next one. The s21 does a much better job of maintaining the highlights of the sign, while also accurately brightening the rest of the image, and we can see the same thing when we switch to the wide angle cameras on both phones, it seems like the iPhone is having a lot of trouble with maintaining the highlights of the image while bringing up the shadows and for our last night mode test. We have this image of the playground, and I'm telling you guys it was pretty much pitch black when I took this picture, so I'm surprised either.

One of these was able to capture what they did, but the s21 is the clear winner here, it's much sharper all throughout the image and has way less noise than the iPhone's image. So when it comes to low light, shooting the s21 wins all around. Moving on to the depth of field tests, both of these phones have a pretty good depth of field for a smartphone camera. But of course, smartphone cameras are pretty limited in terms of depth of field because of their sensor size so to get the most depth of field you're going to want to use portrait mode, which will basically artificially enhance the depth of field. You can get in your photos.

I think the s21 has the edge in most portrait shots in this image. The s21 just absolutely nails the focus outline while the iPhone kind of smudges the edge of that candle, and this isn't the only scenario where that happens. In this picture, the s21 once again nails the water bottle outline, while the iPhone just completely blurs the little plastic part of the lid, but for front-facing portrait mode. It's a bit of a different story here you can see the s21 just chopped off my ears in this masked photo, perhaps just going a bit too aggressive on that digital blurring, but in unmasked situations both do a fairly good job of blurring out the background without getting too crazy around the hair. Okay, so I think that's enough time spent on photos.

So, let's move on to video, starting with a simple walking test to see how the digital stabilization works. In this test, the Samsung looks a bit jittery, and it's just not as smooth as the iPhone 12. , but in other clips I took with the s21. It was much more stable, colors and saturation are about the same as we saw in the photo tests. Autofocus is superfast on both phones, and you're, able to just tap the screen to focus on different parts of the image.

Both phones do have HDR video recording as an option that you can turn on. For up to 4k 30 frames per second HDR recordings really make the videos look extra punchy in terms of dynamic range, and they look fantastic when viewing them on the phones. But unfortunately this is something I can only really enjoy on the phones themselves at the moment, because I don't have another HDR compatible display when it comes to slow motion. The s21 is the clear winner with the ability to record at a 720p resolution with 960 frames per second, although it can only record for a few seconds in this mode for other slow motion modes. The s21 has 1080p at 240 fps and the iPhone has 1080p at 240 and 120fps, using its telephoto zoom lens.

The galaxy s21 also has the capability of shooting 8k video at 24 frames per second, and I was pretty skeptical about how this 8k footage might look, but it actually surprised me with a resolution of 7680x4320. You can crop in 200 and still have a 4k resolution. The only issue is that stabilization is all over the place to the point where it's pretty much unusable unless you have some sort of gimbals or tripod setup. So, as far as practical uses for this AK video, the first thing that came to my mind is maybe you're a parent recording, your child's soccer or basketball game from the sidelines, you'd be able to punch in really far and still have a sharp image, which is something you just can't do on most other smartphones.99 of people will probably never use this feature, but hey if you have a stable setup, and you want to shoot 8k video, then the s21 has it so after seeing all of those photo and video samples, let me know what you guys think performed better in the comments down below the s21 or the iPhone 12. Personally, I like the colors and saturation of the iPhone a little more, but the s21 wins in pretty much every other department.

It has that extra telephoto lens for when you need to zoom in its incredible for low light, shooting and the video footage looks fantastic as well as this video. If you liked it subscribe for some more content similar to this, and I'll catch, you guys in the next one.

Source : Paul Bradford