Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus Detailed Camera Review By TecworkZ

"Music" Hey guys it’s Sagar from Tecworkz. I have been using the S10 Plus since it came out. And in that time I took a lot of images and videos with it. I am glad I waited so long to post its camera review, coz with the latest software update, Samsung added a dedicated night mode to the camera. And I was able to take and compare a few images with and without the Night mode, in this video. After having added one of the first variable apertures in smartphone cameras with the S9 and S9 Plus.

This year Samsung adds an extra lens to the mix, which mens the Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus comes with a triple camera setup at the back. It’s nice to get 3 different focal lengths, while shooting on a smartphone, It adds a lot of versatility to your shots. It also gets an interesting dual camera setup at the front, so on the S10 Plus, we get 5 cameras in total. Now before we look at the specifications of these 5 cameras, why don’t you take a few seconds to hit the subscribe button and the bell icon next to it? This way, you won’t miss out on any of the amazing videos coming up on this channel. Primary camera at the back has a 12 megapixel sensor, with variable aperture of F/1.5 to 2.4, 26mm lens, each individual pixel has a size of 1.4micron and this module gets optical image stabilisation. Second camera again gets a 12 megapixel sensor with F/2.4 aperture, 52mm telephoto lens, each individual pixel has a size of 1.0micron, and it also has optical image stabilisation.3rd camera has a 16 megapixel sensor with F/2.2 aperture and 12 mm ultra wide lens. It can shoot 4K 30 and 60fps videos, 1080p 30/60 and 240fps videos, and 720p super slow motion videos in upto 960fps.

It is also one of the few phones which can shoot HDR videos. At the front, this time we get a dual camera setup in this weird looking cutout in the display. Primary camera has a 10 megapixel sensor with F/1.9 aperture and a 26mm wide lens. And the secondary camera gets a 8 megapixel sensor with F/2.2 aperture and a slightly wider 22mm lens. And this one is just a depth sensor, so it is there to help you get better portrait selfies.

Now the front camera can also shoot 4K 30fps videos, which is something that you don’t get in too many phones. With all the specifications out of the way, let us now get to the image and video samples, that I took with this S10 Plus. Starting with the bright daylight images, you can see how detailed and sharp they are. Right now It is summer in India, and we have the sun shining very bright, which gives us these bright crispy looking images. Even in shadows, the Primary camera on this S10 Plus captures a whole lot of details.

Colours look beautiful from the S10 Plus, in almost all lighting conditions. They are vibrant and look really good, but at the same time, they are not overly saturated like from Samsung smartphones from a couple of years before. Almost all images from the S10 Plus are a bit over exposed, so with most of your photos, you will have to pull the brightness slider down a bit. It shows excellent dynamic range when the situation demands it. Just look at the amount of details it managed to brings up from the shadows, even if there is bright sun in the background.

Now you get 3 different focal lengths to choose from. Up until a few years back, you had that option only while using interchangeable lens cameras. Having these different focal lengths on a smartphone that we can fit in our pockets, is such a luxury. Here is the same shot with wide lens, normal lens, and the 2x telephoto lens. Thanks to these 3 lenses, You can now compose your shots in so many different ways.

Here are a few more examples of the same shot captured at 3 different focal lengths. Normal and telephoto lenses take sharp photos throughout the frame. But the edges of the images shot with the wide lens are not as sharp and there is a bit of chromatic aberration. Centre of the frame is perfectly sharp, but the corners are not. This is not a huge dealbreaker, coz you only notice this if you zoom in on these shots.

But I still wish we had a crisp shots throughout the frame. Also be aware of weird distortions if you plan on shooting people with this ultra wide lens. It makes people appear extra tall or might distort them in some other funny or weird way. So just be aware of that. Here is a focusing speed test, before we move on to close up and macro shots.

It is quick at changing the focus from far to near objects. And it is equally quick to change and set the right exposure according to the scene. Once the focus is set on a nearby object, you can get crisp and sharp close up shots. It is really good at keeping the subject in sharp focus, and you get nice blur to the background. You can also head over to the Pro mode, and change the aperture to F/1.5 to get even shallower depth of field, or to add more blur to the background of these close up shots. Coming to the portrait shots.

Samsung calls it Live focus. You have the option to adjust the amount of blur in the background, and you can also add various effects like spin, zoom and selective colour to these portrait shots. It detects the edges accurately and does very well to separate the subject from background. Blur looks very natural and overall images are pleasing to look at. You can also capture portrait mode images of objects.

Again it is very accurate at detecting the edges and separating the subject from background. Sometimes the edges around the objects can be a bit soft, specially if the object has many edges, but the images still looks good, and the colours are still amazing. Here is a quick tip, if you are taking close up images in lower light, I would suggest you to switch over to the live focus mode, that way, the noise in the background is just blurred out, and the image turns out much better. Speaking of low lighting conditions, here are a few shots I took with the S10 Plus in these situations. It still delivers crisp images even in artificial and low lighting areas.

Text in these shots is clear and readable. But it again has a problem with over exposing the overall shot. If you pull down the brightness slider a couple of points, I feel that the images turn out much better. Colours are rich and vibrant in these lower light images, and image processing on the S10 Plus does really well to keep the noise levels down. You can switch to the wide lens in these situations as well.

It is again not very sharp towards the corners, but it gives you a different perspective of the scene, which is sometimes very essential. From the Pro mode, you can also change the aperture to capture these low light shots. Here is a shot with F/2.4 aperture, and now the same shot with F/1.5 aperture, keeping all other settings the same. You can see how much more light the wider aperture lets in. With a recent software update, Samsung also added a dedicated night mode to S10’s camera.

Here is a normal low light image which already turned out pretty well. And now here is a night mode image of the same shot. Image with the night mode is sharper, handles the lights and colours better, and it also shows up much more details in the darker areas. Here’s another shot of a same scene with and without the Night mode. Again the image with the night mode is brighter and tad bit sharper.

This mode doesn’t bring a drastic improvement, as the S10 plus is already doing a good job in low light. But its always good to have a dedicated night mode to get the sharpness and brightness levels which separate these images from many other phones. That brings us to the front facing cameras. These images are sharp and detailed, and to be honest, not a lot better or worse than other flagship smartphones. You have the option to take wide selfies, but its not as wide as you would expect.

And I think Samsung could have done a bit better job with the exposure with all of the cameras on this phone. The secondary depth sensor at the front helps with portrait selfies. These selfies are good, but I don’t see a lot of difference in the edge detection of these portrait selfies and ones from other phones which have single selfie camera, and rely on software for blurring the background. Good use of a secondary camera would have been putting an ultra wide lens on it, wider than it already has. So you could again get a different perspective, and more of your friends in the shot.

Here is a video from the front facing camera of the Galaxy S10 Plus. You can see how it handles the colours of the scene, exposure and stabilisation when I am walking around with it. You can shoot 4k 30 and 60fps videos with the S10 Plus. You can’t switch between the lenses while shooting in 4K 60fps mode. While shooting in 30fps, you have a steady shot option, which makes sure your videos are extremely stable.

But the overall video is very soft with steady shot turned on. Here is the same shot with steady shot turned off. Video is still stable thanks to OIS, and it is very sharp. Here is a side by side comparison to to show the sharpness in both the modes. You can switch between the wide, normal and telephoto lens while shooting in 4k or 1080p 30fps.

You get the option to shoot 720p 960fps super slow motion shots, and here are couple of examples of it. There are not a lot of things happening in real life, which would look very good at this frame rate, and the quality is also not that good. So I prefer normal 120 or 240fps 1080p slow motion shots. So after looking at all these image and video samples, I think S10 Plus has very good set of camera, specially with the addition of the new Ultra-wide lens. With he Night mode being added in the latest software update, It is also one of the better cameras for taking low light images.

Kudos to Samsung has stepped up its camera game in low light photography. If you already have the S9 or S9 Plus, upgrading to the S10 Plus will give you a slightly better camera, but might not bring a noticeable improvement to your overall day to day experience. That being said, if you are using any phone which is older than the S9, and if you are looking to get a smartphone that will offer you a great set of cameras, then the S10 Plus should definitely be on your list of options, right up there with the Pixel 3, iPhone XS Max and the Huawei P30 Pro. In the next few days, I will be putting the cameras of the Galaxy S10 Plus, iPhone XS Max and the Pixel 3 and the Huawei P30 Pro up against each other, in a mega camera showdown. And while these 4 are best of the best flagship smartphones, the results of that comparison are going to be a bit surprising.

So trust me, you don’t want to miss that one. If you are going to purchase the S10 or S10 Plus, I will appreciate if you get it from the affiliate link in the description section. It helps the channel a lot, at no extra cost to you. That is it for this video guys. Please hit the like button if you enjoyed this video and subscribe to the channel, for more quality tech videos like this.

You can also check out some of the other videos from this channel. This has been Sagar, and I will catch you guys in the next video. Take care.

Source : TecworkZ