Just thought I would share my personal opinion when it comes to the camera on this phone.
To be completely honest, the camera was one of the main reasons I purchased this phone. There were others like the battery and screen, but the camera was always a very reliable aspect on previous Galaxy devices. Even my Galaxy S3 still takes amazing photos compared to some more current smartphones. However, this time around it seems that Samsung has really skimped on optimizing the camera in both the software and hardware departments. I started to realize this when instead of making it better they added an absurd "Golf" mode and loaded the UI with bloated, gaudy effects that were honestly nausea inducing. With the Galaxy S4 (which I owned for a short time) photos came out very well, both indoor and outdoor. Of course, indoor photos were a bit less sharp and overall had less quality to them than did photos taken outdoors, but this was to be expected and is to be expected really on any camera unless it has certain optimizations to keep photos usable. Given my history with these Galaxy devices, I felt that the Galaxy Note 3 would be a sizeable upgrade in the photography department, but I was disappointed to say the least. Let me first say that of course, photos taken outdoors with plenty of lighting come out looking very good and sometimes breathtaking. However, this scenario is not available at all times, and for me at least, most of my photos for most purposes would be taken indoors with indoor, AKA not as good, lighting. With previous phones, this was no issue; I am now used to the slight grain found in photos taken indoors. This does not bother me really. With the Galaxy Note 3 though, photos taken in indoor lighting are flat out unusable. Rather, photos taken of people or any moving subject are just atrocious. It is not that there is too much grain or they are too dark but rather that they are so blurry. Subjects in my photos have a ghost effect to their skin because the so called "digital stabilization" feature takes a solid two seconds to process, and of course this is really just a fancy name for letting the lens capture more light AKA upping the exposure a bit. I have tried using the camera with this feature off, but photos are equally blurry, and a lot more dark. For someone like me who does not always have the most perfect lighting or conditions to take great photos, this is a deal breaker. I have reverted back to using my Nexus 4, given that it can take a recognizable picture in indoor lighting as opposed to capturing images of what seems to be a blurred spectre.
Also, the camera software that comes stock on the Galaxy Note 3 seems to have some extremely aggressive sharpening implementaion applied to any photo you take. Sometimes taking still lifes indoors can lead to this implementaion rearing its ugly head - there will be some amount of noise in the photo (assuming you hold your hand very still while the "digital stabilization" works) due to this sharpening. I tried using a different camera app and this problem was not present, confirming that the problem lies within the stock Samsung camera app on the Galaxy Note 3.
Due to all this, I will be selling my phone in the coming weeks. It was a real bummer to be so disappointed by what I assumed to be the best camera experience on a smartphone currently available, but when the phone cannot even take a recognizable photo in indoor situations with moving subjects (AKA a very common real life scenario), I cannot say that it comes even close to that. For anyone thinking of purchasing this phone, please take this into consideration and even wait it out a little bit more while more capable and apt alternatives find their way into the market. Like I said, my Nexus 4 takes better indoor photos, which is really surprising.