Camera: Superb In Sunlight

Camera-wise, the Samsung Galaxy S5 is an incremental upgrade on the Galaxy S4, moving from a xiii- to 16-megapixel sensor. The hardware in question is Samsung'due south S5K2P2XX CMOS with ISOCELL technology, which sees Samsung returning to using in-house photographic camera sensors rather than Sony's Exmor RS sensors, which were what nosotros saw on the Galaxy Notation 3 and Milky way S4.

The S5K2P2XX is a 16-megapixel 1/ii.half dozen" sensor with an attribute ratio of 16:9, a capture resolution of 5312 10 2988, and a pixel size of one.12 µm. The shift from 13 MP to 16 MP is substantially just to make full out the extra resolution needed to brand photos natively xvi:9: shots taken with the Galaxy S5 accept nearly the same pixel height as the 4:iii-aspect-ratio S4, although the S5's shots are 1000 pixels wider.

The Milky way S5 sticks with relatively pocket-size pixels, which may hamper depression-light photography when comparing to other smartphones with larger pixels in their sensors, such as the HTC One M8 and iPhone 5s. Samsung claims some of this advantage is starting time by the ISOCELL technology used in the S5'south CMOS, which reduces crosstalk between pixels by 30% compared to conventional BSI sensors.

The lens used on the S5 is 4.8mm in length, which equates to a 35mm-effective focal length of 31mm, and has an aperture of f/2.2. At that place's no optical image stabilization (OIS) in the Galaxy S5, nor is the lens equally wide open as I've seen, both of which will accept an consequence on possible shutter speeds.

The forepart-facing camera is ii-megapixels in size, and features the same 1.12 µm pixels cheers to a tiny 1/7.3" sensor. It captures 16:ix 1080p (1920 x 1080) images through a lens with an f/2.0 discontinuity.

The Galaxy S5's camera brings no surprises to the tabular array in terms of image quality. Similar the Galaxy S4 and Galaxy Note 3, the unit of measurement performs extremely well in strong lighting, but isn't quite as practiced when information technology comes to cloudy days, indoor photography and low-light situations.

When the atmospheric condition are right, you can get some truly spectacular shots out of the Galaxy S5's 16-megapixel camera. Colour reproduction is exemplary, dynamic range is peradventure the best I've seen on a smartphone camera, while images are reasonably crisp looking at total-resolution detail. At low ISOs, in that location doesn't appear to be a ton of mail service-processing, which means images are unremarkably free of nasty artefacts.

The high resolution images produced by the camera mean that there's room for zooming and cropping, while original shots downscaled to 1080p have a superb level of sharpness and detail. When using the S5 for macro photography, you tin generally go great results, although bokeh isn't great from the f/2.2 lens as is typical for a smartphone.

Throughout my time testing the Milky way S5'south photographic camera, I noticed some interesting behaviour when the camera is shooting in automatic style. In good lighting conditions, an ISO every bit low as xl is used with a shutter speed equally fast as information technology likes. In one case it reaches ISO 50, the shutter speed starts getting slower the worse the light is, until it reaches 1/33 of a second; simply after information technology reaches ISO 50 and 1/33s does it first to boost the ISO, regardless of whether you've turned on the paradigm stabilizer feature or not.

ISO 50 is obviously less grainy and preserves more detail than higher ISOs, merely there are some lighting atmospheric condition where 1/33s shutter speeds but don't cut it. For case, if it's a cloudy 24-hour interval and you're trying to photograph a moving object like some gently rustling leaves, the automatic 1/33s shutter speed choice will mean y'all're getting a blurry photo, despite college ISOs beingness available. Ane fashion to avert this is past overriding automatic ISO with a option of your choice, but I'd prefer to see ameliorate setting selection on the software's part.

The actual quality of the photos in moderate lighting conditions are fairly good. There's an advisable, lifelike amount of color saturation despite less than ideal conditions, and ISOs in the 100-400 range are serviceable through a decent lack of grain. Anything to a higher place ISO 400 and post-processing becomes an issue, where the Milky way S5 tries to reduce grain which in turn noticeably reduces image quality.

The aforementioned image stabilizer is an interesting implementation in that it's just active when the Galaxy S5 detects poor lighting, such as when you're in a night room or you're shooting at night. In these situations, it takes significantly longer than usual to have a photo as it appears to be taking a outburst capture during which information technology selects and keeps the to the lowest degree blurry shot.

Even more than intriguing is how shots taken using the stabilizer are brighter and less grainy than their unstabilized counterparts, while remaining reasonably mistiness-free. It seems the feature really uses a longer shutter speed and lower ISO, and the results are acceptable as far as I'1000 concerned. Plain photos would be better with OIS and larger pixels, and the S5 is hopeless at capturing moving objects in depression-calorie-free conditions, but it'due south better than I've seen from past Samsung handsets.

Even so there'due south no doubting that taking photos at dark with the S5 produces clearly worse results than its rivals that are geared towards low-low-cal photography. The S5 needs to use higher ISOs, and the prevalence of quality-reducing post-processing is something the image stabilizer cannot ready.

As has been the case with past models, the Samsung Galaxy S5 comes with a fantastic HDR mode. Thanks to improvements on the software, photographic camera and SoC side, HDR mode is now quicker than e'er, while its quality is just equally good. Particular hidden in shadows is brought to life using HDR way, and I achieved less ghosting than in the past when shooting moving objects.

Alongside HDR mode, Samsung has included a new feature called Selective Focus, which attempts to replicate the depth features of HTC's Duo Camera. When you have a bailiwick that is under 50cm from the camera, in this mode the S5 will take two images, one with focus on the bailiwick, and one with focus on the background. Through a combination of depth detection and simulated bokeh, it gives the appearance of DSRL-like depth-of-field.

Except that information technology doesn't work likewise as y'all'd like. For i, it doesn't work well with moving objects equally the camera has to have two images, and secondly, the depth of field calculations are usually in some way wrong, giving strange and obviously fake results. For example the image in a higher place has pleasant faux bokeh, but information technology abruptly stops one-half way down the fence line.

In the Gallery app you can become back and change the focus to i of three presets: most, far or pan (where everything is in focus); merely information technology lacks the flexibility, accurateness and overall quality of HTC's two-camera solution.

The Galaxy S5 doesn't take the fantastic manual fashion of the HTC Ane M8 or Nokia Lumia smartphones, but it does take a decent array of settings to play with. Everything from the metering mode to white balance and effects can be adjusted through the one panel, and there are several other shooting modes to play with. Samsung has actually reduced and condensed the shooting modes bachelor (thankfully), with many being amalgamated into the Shot & More than mode that utilizes burst photography.

Samsung has fabricated a big deal almost focusing and shutter times in the Galaxy S5's photographic camera, and I'grand happy to report that the S5 is very quick at both of those tasks. It's noticeably quicker at focusing in particular when comparing to other flagship handsets, although it's roughly on-par with the HTC 1 M8.

The Milky way S5 is capable of recording videos at a maximum resolution of 3840 x 2160 (4K Ultra Hd) at 30 frames per 2nd, which delivers fantastic results. Each frame looks merely as expert as a however image when you downscale to a 1080p display, while full resolution is surprisingly well detailed, with authentic colors and great dynamic range.

Recording in 4K requires a lot of storage space, with Samsung using loftier-profile H.264 at 48 Mbps. Equally a effect, the 52 2nd sample video above is 303 MB in size, so watch out when shooting in this mode. Standard 1080p30 is encoded in 17 Mbps, which is a lower than the 20 Mbps maximum we've seen used on other devices, while 1080p60 is shot at 28 Mbps.

HDR video is possible on the Milky way S5, and results are fantastic thanks to the about-existent-time HDR mode that significantly reduces ghosting. Even when panning or filming moving objects, it's hard to spot HDR-typical move blur, making it a great selection in high-contrast scenes.

If you want to run across a sample of 1080p60, labelled as "Polish Motility" on the handset, you tin download i here. It's best to record in this mode when you lot're capturing fast-moving items such every bit cars, people or sports, merely be aware that it uses more space and is downsampled to 30 FPS when uploaded to popular services such as YouTube.

Other recording modes include Fast Motility (essentially a time lapse) and Slow Motility, the latter of which shoots at 720p120 at 12 Mbps. The S5 allows you to tape at either 2x, 4x or 8x slower than real life, although choosing 8x slower just means playback is reduced to 15 frames per second rather than xxx. There'due south nothing basis-breaking about this Tiresome Movement mode, but quality is passable.