S6 camera review vs S5/ip6/note4

[warpdrive]

Hi everyone,

GSMArena has done a head to head camera review with the S6 vs the S5/ip6/note4. Enjoy

Intergalactic camera shootout: Galaxy S6 vs. Galaxy S5 vs. Note 4 vs. iPhone 6 - GSMArena.com

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[warpdrive]

Nobody has thoughts on this?

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[clevin]

I agree with the test and conclusion.

Note 4 is sharper, s6 has better low-light performance. Both are clearly better than s6 and iPhone 6.

btw, your link above is to the mobile version of the site, if you change that m.gsmarena to www.gsmarena , the resultant test images can be panned by moving mice.

 

[warpdrive]

btw, your link above is to the mobile version of the site, if you change that m.gsmarena to www.gsmarena , the resultant test images can be panned by moving mice.

Thx for catching the goof up.

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[jcp007]

It was a pretty fair comparison and conclusion. I noticed that firmware update version was more current as of about 10 days ago. Would a firmware update help sharpen some of the photos like the one with the rug hanging in the outside of the apartment to capture more of the detail that the Note4 captured better? The GS6 did capture some of the detail. Low light looked much better as well.

 

[Jdroids]

Seems S6 could use a bit more sharpening or loosen noise reduction. Note 4 looks slightly sharper but that comes with more noise. Firmware can change things like this. So daylight seems pretty much equal between two. But low light goes to S6.

 

[warpdrive]

It was a pretty fair comparison and conclusion. I noticed that firmware update version was more current as of about 10 days ago. Would a firmware update help sharpen some of the photos like the one with the rug hanging in the outside of the apartment to capture more of the detail that the Note4 captured better? The GS6 did capture some of the detail. Low light looked much better as well.

Yes, firmware can help. But it comes with a cost, more noise as was said earlier. Personally, I like it as is. Remember, we were looking at 100% crops so at normal size everything will look sharp anyway. You can always add a drop of sharpening filter in almost any digital editor.

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[jcp007]

Yes, firmware can help. But it comes with a cost, more noise as was said earlier. Personally, I like it as is. Remember, we were looking at 100% crops so at normal size everything will look sharp anyway. You can always add a drop of sharpening filter in almost any digital editor.

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So a sharpening filter with a small firmware tweak is the answer to a much better camera?

 

[warpdrive]

So a sharpening filter with a small firmware tweak is the answer to a much better camera?

Not what I ment.

As a retired photographer I know that most people just want to shoot and forget it. They want perfection without editing a picture they took. But take a closer look at the S5 and note4 pictures and you'll notice the "over sharpening" halos and the added noise. The S6 actually didn't have such effects because the firmware doesn't ask for too much sharpening.

A good digital editor can be used to add sharpening, but you'll get the same results and get the halos and extra noise. I'll take the so called "soft" photos because of the added details and lack of noise when first starting to edit the original pic.

Again, I know that most people refuse to edit thier photos, but every picture will turn out far better if you do it. Much better than just accepting the result of any top camera.

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[jcp007]

Not what I ment.

As a retired photographer I know that most people just want to shoot and forget it. They want perfection without editing a picture they took. But take a closer look at the S5 and note4 pictures and you'll notice the "over sharpening" halos and the added noise. The S6 actually didn't have such effects because the firmware doesn't ask for too much sharpening.

A good digital editor can be used to add sharpening, but you'll get the same results and get the halos and extra noise. I'll take the so called "soft" photos because of the added details and lack of noise when first starting to edit the original pic.

Again, I know that most people refuse to edit thier photos, but every picture will turn out far better if you do it. Much better than just accepting the result of any top camera.

Posted via Android Central App

There must be a balance whereby there is an adjustment that tweaks the quality without additional noise in the final picture or video.

 

[warpdrive]

There must be a balance whereby there is an adjustment that tweaks the quality without additional noise in the final picture or video.

That's just it. No, there is not a good balance to be had.

Try to understand that when you take a picture on any camera it produces a RAW file.
Then the software on most digital cameras including cellphones does some "post processing" and then saves it as a compressed file called a Jpeg.
Once that compressed file is saved, almost anything you do to it will now have "artifacts", such as additional noise and loss of fine details.

This artifacting is much worse when the photo is taken with a small or tiny sensor. That is why you will hear on the forum that people will use a Dslr or a quality point and shoot camera for important events. They know that once you start shooting in low light or under trying circumstances a real camera will not have such "drastic" issues as the sensor is much larger than a cellphone.

In other words, you can have the same results as the note4 as far as sharpness is concerned, but you'll also get the added noise and lack of details.

A good example of cellphones that almost always over sharpened the pics from it was HTC. From the m7 and most of the past phones I would tell others to lower the sharpening setting by 1 notch and forget about it. The results of done so will be a slightly softer image, but have allot less noise.
Sadly, on the m8, HTC did away with such advanced settings and you now can't adjust saturation, sharpness, and other things. Samsung never let you change such settings.

And here is a fun fact.
If you have an image that needs to have some of the noise removed, you are going to lose even some more details, and I think that we can agree that the note4 has allot of missing details especially in low light already so why would you want to lose more?

One last thing to think about.
Remember that in the photo test, we are looking at 100% crops or even just a fraction of the image. In real life, you'll never know that your images are soft.
Have you ever heard of a soft image from an iPhone? Now relook at the iPhone images and notice how soft they are? Softness is what real photographers really want because you can always add a drop of sharpness if needed in post-processing with any digital editor. The key is not over doing it so you don't add to many artifacts.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[jcp007]

That's just it. No, there is not a good balance to be had.

Try to understand that when you take a picture on any camera it produces a RAW file.
Then the software on most digital cameras including cellphones does some "post processing" and then saves it as a compressed file called a Jpeg.
Once that compressed file is saved, almost anything you do to it will now have "artifacts", such as additional noise and loss of fine details.

This artifacting is much worse when the photo is taken with a small or tiny sensor. That is why you will hear on the forum that people will use a Dslr or a quality point and shoot camera for important events. They know that once you start shooting in low light or under trying circumstances a real camera will not have such "drastic" issues as the sensor is much larger than a cellphone.

In other words, you can have the same results as the note4 as far as sharpness is concerned, but you'll also get the added noise and lack of details.

A good example of cellphones that almost always over sharpened the pics from it was HTC. From the m7 and most of the past phones I would tell others to lower the sharpening setting by 1 notch and forget about it. The results of done so will be a slightly softer image, but have allot less noise.
Sadly, on the m8, HTC did away with such advanced settings and you now can't adjust saturation, sharpness, and other things. Samsung never let you change such settings.

And here is a fun fact.
If you have an image that needs to have some of the noise removed, you are going to lose even some more details, and I think that we can agree that the note4 has allot of missing details especially in low light.

One last thing to think about.
Remember that in the photo test, we are looking at 100% crops or even just a fraction of the image. In real life, you'll never know that your images are soft.
Have you ever heard of a soft image from an iPhone? Now relook at the iPhone images and notice how soft they are? Softness is what real photographers really want because you can always add a drop of sharpness if needed in post-processing with any digital editor. The key is not over doing it so you don't add to many artifacts.

Posted via Android Central App

Great to know. Thanks.