Samsung Galaxy S5: Camera test and review

Samsung’s Galaxy S5 smartphone sports an updated camera with 16MP resolution and a 1/26” sensor. Apart from taking high-resolution pictures, the camera is one of the few smartphone cameras that can also shoot 4K or UHD videos.

The UI of the S5 is fairly simple and all of your settings are in a single location which makes it easier to control. All the settings are on your left and other modes are on the right. The UI has quick shortcuts for HDR, selective focus and camera selection. Rest of the settings can be accessed by hitting the gear icon that opens up a vast menu which includes settings for your pictures as well as video recording.

The camera has a selective focus mode where you can choose the area to have in focus

On the right, you can select between the video and picture mode as well as various camera modes such as ‘beauty hot’, ‘best shot panorama’, ‘dual-camera’ and the new ‘virtual tour mode’.

Pictures in low-light conditions are decent although there is some loss in details. The noise reduction system works well and there isn’t a lot of grain. But unfortunately, pictures are quite soft.

In bright conditions, the camera is a charm. Focusing is accurate and the colors come out a bit towards the neutral side. We weren’t exactly happy with the sharpness as the pictures come out slightly soft and if we zoom-in we noticed a slight blur. The auto white-balance on the camera is great and we didn’t feel the need to select different white-balance presets.

Check out some of the camera samples below:

Selective focus turned off                                  Selective focus turned on

The camera on the Galaxy S5 also has the capability of shooting 4K videos. This does sound like a great feature but the biggest concern here is that everyone doesn’t own a 4K display and watching such videos on a display as small as 5-inch screen doesn’t really look different. Another issue is the amount of memory that each 4K video takes. We recorded a one-minute video which ended up taking 320MB of space. Apart from 4K, you can also shoot in 1080p, 720p, 480p and VGA resolutions. Videos are sharp and audio recording is also quite clear, unless you cover the microphones.

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Kunal Khullar