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Blind sample pics: Samsung Galaxy 7 wins over iPhone 7

totaltech1985 said:
but camera is not that important right ?
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That used to be the case, for many wanna be "smartphone photographers" they tend to follow what they're told or the marketing hype.

Personally, I prefer Nikon Cameras for the way the pictures look, Next time you're out and about, notice how many people have Canon over Nikon and iPhone over Samsung or even LG.
 
I wonder if most of the iPhone shots could be quickly adjusted using the built-in photo edit function to essentially match the S7 shots. The reason I say this is that I'd expect Apple to be more conservative on post processing and try to stay closer to natural conditions, while I'd expect Samsung to push it harder with the processing to get that initial wow factor reaction.

If that's true, I'm ok with it. I snap shots on my iPhone and make quick adjustments after the fact to add drama, all the time.
 
The iPhone's video stabilization is light years above any other flagship I've used. The videos I shot with my G4 were terribly shaky. The software used in iOS to stabilize video is phenomenal and it's something rarely praised or discussed.

Huge impact for my personal usage and the reason id pick an iPhone over any other smartphone camera on the market.
 
Personally I disliked the Iphone for almost all rear facing shots. The Iphone takes great selfies although the low light performance is pretty disappointing. I thought it was the worst on quite a few shots. I do appreciate the portrait mode and the 2x zoom though. I wish Apple would step up their low light shots though.
 
The Samsung is great if you're lost in the woods and need to start a fire. I'll stick to my 5D MKIV thanks,
 
pixel_junkie said:
Realistic? Look around you, every image you see today is edited and enhanced to death. Modern photography isn't about realism, it's about creating appealing images and the only thing that matters is if you like them or not.
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Yeah.....not entirely true.

For me, no matter who the client is, an art director for a lifestyle ad shoot, editor for a magazine, and especially a buyer of a fine art print, they all get what I get and that is a great photograph made *in camera* with no juicing up. Fine art prints are really that, hand made in a real darkroom. All the major long established high end judging / hierarchy of real photography has not only remained but has actually gotten stronger because of the influx of faked out, forgotten-by-tomorrow fauxtography that you refer to above.

Not everyone lacks talent and has to make up for it in "photoshop" and I could care less which phone bests the other since I am 99% of the reason the photo is good or not.
 
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The Samsung employs more opinionated post processing, i.e. higher contrast and saturation. I'd say for most users this is fine and probably even preferable. I prefer having more to work with to employ my own post processing with more natural images. I'd probably say that Apple could probably do with a little more opinion of themselves, especially seeing how they tend to cooler, greener images which can turn people off. Especially in blind tests like these.

But like the Pepsi challenge proved, blind tests are biased towards stronger, sweeter flavours which work in small doses and that which stands out in immediate comparison to others.
 
Macshroomer said:
Yeah.....not entirely true.

For me, no matter who the client is, an art director for a lifestyle ad shoot, editor for a magazine, and especially a buyer of a fine art print, they all get what I get and that is a great photograph made *in camera* with no juicing up. Fine art prints are really that, hand made in a real darkroom. All the major long established high end judging / hierarchy of real photography has not only remained but actually gotten stronger because of the influx of faked out, forgotten-by-tomorrow fauxtography that you refer to above.

Not everyone lacks talent and has to make up for it in "photoshop" and I could care less which phone bests the other since I am 99% of the reason if the photo is good or not.
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S7 really oversharpens, so cropped pictures look nicer. Colors are not realistic, but I can live with that in daylight. At night, there is a major yellow tint to everything. But the main problem is oversharpening to the point that the artifacts are apparent in every single picture. No go!

All they need to fix this:
1. Allow pro mode to be your default double click home button action
2. Allow adjusting sharpeness and REMEMBERING it as the default as I want all my pics unsharpened.
3. Allow remembering adjustments to color and setting it as default as well.

#3 is allowed, the rest are not allowed.
Then the S7 would be nice purely because the hardware is much, much superior to the iphone 6/6s.
I never understood why Apple was purposely handicapping itself with an F2.2 lens. But now I'm confused because the iPhone 7 has a 1.8 aperture yet the pics still look darker than normal. So I'm now wondering if Apple's AI-poor gap is manifesting itself. Also the autofocus on S7 is way way faster.

That said, I'm still with iPhone because the apps on Android are all poorly polished and battery drain is still a major problem. Every single program you download you've got to check if it will wake up the phone in the background.
 
I am currently using a samsung galaxy s6 edge and what I really like the camera, samsung pay which I can use with magnetic strip card readers, and wireless charging! I wish Apple had these things. What I don't like about the phone is that it has Android. Android to me feels very unpolished and clunky. Pretty often I see the message that the app has stopped working which is pretty annoying. The worst part is the battery usage is really sub-standard even though the battery has a slightly larger capacity than the iPhone 7 plus. Just today I only managed to get 10 hours with about 30 minutes of screen time with 1% remaining. My wife who used her iPhone 7 plus more than I did still had 62% battery left.
 
Macshroomer said:
Yeah.....not entirely true.

For me, no matter who the client is, an art director for a lifestyle ad shoot, editor for a magazine, and especially a buyer of a fine art print, they all get what I get and that is a great photograph made *in camera* with no juicing up. Fine art prints are really that, hand made in a real darkroom. All the major long established high end judging / hierarchy of real photography has not only remained but has actually gotten stronger because of the influx of faked out, forgotten-by-tomorrow fauxtography that you refer to above.

Not everyone lacks talent and has to make up for it in "photoshop" and I could care less which phone bests the other since I am 99% of the reason the photo is good or not.
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What do you think Photoshop is? It's the dark room of the digital age and has nothing to do with if the photographer has talent or not, it is what clients want and pay for. In fact, you may have a great eye for photography now days but unless you can edit your photos well in software like Photoshop, you're going to starve. The fine art film photography developed in dark rooms you speak of is a niche, very small part of the vast photography business. Don't get it mixed up - Photoshop and photography go hand in hand today.

And since you're such a purist, you especially can use all the help you can get with quality hardware and in camera software cos like I said, a good eye will only get you so far...
 
Does it even matter to the large majority of people who are just taking pictures to post on Instagram and Facebook? Serious photographers will probably use a dedicated camera over any phone. At this point it's more about people just being able to say that their phone has the better camera, even if it makes no practical difference.
 
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pixel_junkie said:
What do you think Photoshop is? It's the dark room of the digital age and has nothing to do with if the photographer has talent or not, it is what clients want and pay for. In fact, you may have a great eye for photography now days but unless you can edit your photos well in software like Photoshop, you're going to starve. The fine art film photography developed in dark rooms you speak of is a niche, very small part of the vast photography business. Don't get it mixed up - Photoshop and photography go hand in hand today.

And since you're such a purist, you especially can use all the help you can get with quality hardware and in camera software cos like I said, a good eye will only get you so far...
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I'm not sure if you are at all familiar with the top earning tiers in this biz....but it is not at all like you think it is.

Once you hit a certain level of success, the client goes looking for you and your independent style and hires you or buys your work based on your eye and your offering.

I have turned down plenty of work because what the client wanted was not a good fit for me. Then again, I can easily afford to do that.....that is what success brings you.

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joeblow7777 said:
Does it even matter to the large majority of people who are just taking pictures to post on Instagram and Facebook? Serious photographers will probably use a dedicated camera over any phone. At this point it's more about people just being able to say that their phone has the better camera, even if it makes no practical difference.
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I think this is a big, big part of it. Even in the dedicated camera circles you have those who just go on and on about how one brand is going to "kill" the other and then you look at their work and it is often really bad.

So yeah, it becomes something for either the internet gear test stars or arm chair tech gurus to boast about and nothing else.

A lot has changed in photography in many ways but in some ways it also has not. The number one thing that matters in photography is the eye for bringing the convergences of light, form and moment into a unified narrative or concept that engages the viewer. In simple terms, talent.
 
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Fun to read the comments here. Suppose for a moment the labels were changed between the S7 and iPhone 7, would you still be making the same comments about saturation?

It's not like any of these cameras are bad, we're really splitting hairs at this point. You can get fantastic pics out of any of these phones, but keep it real, give credit where credit is due.
 
Took the survey, had to switch back and forth, and back and forth on most photos. What I learned today: The camera quality doesn´t matter ********* on a flagship smartphone today! :eek:
 
pixel_junkie said:
Realistic? Look around you, every image you see today is edited and enhanced to death. Modern photography isn't about realism, it's about creating appealing images and the only thing that matters is if you like them or not.
Click to expand...

Except that, what you want the phone to take in the beginning is a good reference image, that you can then change to the way you want with all the software apps out there. You don't want to start with an image that has already been altered from real world like the S7.
 
I mostly picked iPhone shots, but that test was... iffy. Most of those were "which of these crappy pictures is the least crappy?" The only one that really surprised me was the outdoor panorama, where the iPhone has what looks like a stitching artifact in the middle of the cloud bank. I've never had issues with artifacts like that when using panorama mode.
 
I have a veggie and flower garden, most all grown from seed. I would really prefer true to life colors especially for my flowers. Sometimes I go back to my pictures for reference, so accurate color is preferred.
Seems like the iPhone is best in my situation.
 
uwdude said:
Except that, what you want the phone to take in the beginning is a good reference image, that you can then change to the way you want with all the software apps out there. You don't want to start with an image that has already been altered from real world like the S7.
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I personally wouldn't bother editing a phone photo.
 
even toss up for me. mostly the v20 or lumia then the iPhone 7. the galaxy's colors are horrible.
 
LG really does make amazing smartphone cameras. I had the G4 and it was amazingly good, and the same sensor has been carrier over to the G5 and V20 more or less, just with the addition of a new wide angle camera.
 
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