From what I've read, both professional and user reviews, the S7 takes great pictures. However, I do still see minor nitpicks with over sharpening, color reproduction (yellow tint on low light), halos, etc.
Has Samsung provided firmware changes to address camera issues in the past? Or are users pretty much stuck with what is released?
Good question. Not sure... I got a S7 for my wife specifically to reduce, as much as possible, her complaints. And it also gave me the chance to pour over the thing to satisfy my curiosity and I can see where the photography types log complaints. They do have a tendency to overcook the processing a bit when they could really afford to scale back... Now, the whole core principle of the S7 was to put out a phone that addressed users' complaints, so Samsung is willing to play ball a bit, they were just a little reluctant to do so on launch.
And I have my own theories as to why.
prepare for tangent! Sorry... I'm in a funny mood and love technicals.
I think Samsung is a little gun-shy about noise. Now, with the new sensor, it's size paired with the larger aperture should help reduce noise with respect to the much smaller, older sensors. But that doesn't eliminate noise... so they still have to process the images to reduce it. On the older sensors, they had to really scrub things to get rid of the crud... and you ended up with lots of artifacts and smudgy bits... you end up with a 'cleaned' image, but some information is lost a bit, described as an oil paint effect. Now, I've read up on some photography sites and a lot are saying that a little noise is better than processing it to reduce it all... It's analogous to the grain you see with film cameras. Oftentimes, that grain can actually add to the drama and richness of a photograph... and with digital photography, it's like being able to swap out the film to whatever you want.
Here is an example of what I mean.... and where Samsung could REALLY improve things. This was a shot in a dark room with a bright window on the right. The top is the S7 (HDR) and the bottom is a 6P HDR+ shot, both 100% crops. Now, in terms of noise levels, the 6P's has more noise, but it's kind of homogeneous and even... and while the image is a bit softer than the S7, it's also smoother, and (at least I think) more accurate. And during the course of the processing, some colors are getting worked over a bit (look at the portrait on the left). And the white walls look a little blotchy.
When panned back, the S7's total picture appears a bit sharper, but that's kind of artificially so since they are damaging the picture a bit.
Now, they can most definitely reduce this... it's all software remember. And considering that if you read around, the criticisms that reviews do mention, they are pretty much in lock step with what I just pointed out. But it just goes to show how far phone cameras have come... we're blowing things up and looking at a really low level, nit picking fine details... a couple of years ago, getting shots of this quality was a fairy tale.
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