so the new samsung s22 the s22 plus and the s22 ultra have just been announced and with
it comes improvements to the camera systems so obviously we're going to talk about them
my name is tom i'm a professional photographer and videographer so when it comes to cameras
i genuinely do have a lot of experience and as smartphones get better and better it's getting
funner and funner to shoot with them so today i'm actually going to not talk massively about
the samsung s22 ultra which is essentially the galaxy note squeezing back into the s22 line
even though it does have better camera specs on paper they're relatively similar to the s21 ultra
and most of the improvements are going to come through software changes which we will
be discussing pretty much detail anyway it's also just not going to be the most popular version of
the phone most people are going to be going for the more affordable relatively more affordable
s22 and s22 plus there is a whole lot of if it ain't broken don't fix it with these phones
most of the improvements come with better software than they actually do with hardware but there are
a few small hardware improvements so first of all let's talk about those mainly it's that on the s22
and the s22 plus there is a bigger sensor and as a photographer a bigger sensor is pretty much always
better so the sensor on these phones on their main rear camera is a new 50 megapixel sensor with dual
pixel technology and samsung is saying that that is 23 larger than the previous versions of the
phones this is pretty much only a good thing a synthesizer increase means better low light
performance more natural looking bokeh or blur in the background of your photos more detail and just
genuinely overall better shots one significant hardware change though and i know i said i won't
talk too much about the s22 ultra but it's the inclusion of something samsung are calling super
clear glass and basically what this is it is nano coated glass which should essentially eliminate
ghosting and reflections when filming or taking photos at night this is a huge one for me
personally even though it definitely sounds like i'm overreacting but even cameras like the iphone
13 pro max have this basically massive issue where when you're filming or taking photos at night any
artificial light caused this sort of horrendous ghosting reflection on your photo or your film
and there's basically no way of getting around it so if samsung have fixed this then it's actually a
massive massive win in terms of lenses we mainly stick to the same blueprint as the previous s21
the s22 and the s22 plus have a main 50 megapixel camera which is a 23 millimeter focal length then
they have a 10 megapixel telephoto with a focal length of 69 millimeters and then finally a 12
megapixel ultra wide with a focal length of 13 millimeters and then the ultra has an extra camera
with a 10 megapixel 230 millimeter focal length zoom which it carries over from the s21 ultra
personally out of those lenses i'm most excited by the 69 millimeters i just think that's such a
nice focal range it will definitely let you take a really good range of shots it's actually one of
the things that's missing for me most from my pixel 6 which is an insanely good photography
phone but i do sort of wish i'd gone with the pixel 6 pro to get access to the telephoto on
the camera so it's nice that both versions of the s22 come with this focal range okay so moving on
to some of the more significant software changes that are really supposed to differentiate the
s22 camera line over the s21 camera line so like the cameras on the pixel 6 and the iphone 13 line
samsung is going really hard on nighttime photography and the extra sensor size is
really going to be essential to making this happen i know i keep banging on about it but
the pixel 6 is the first phone that i've generally used to take a really decent low light photos and
sometimes it even outperforms my more expensive cameras due to how much ai processing is going on
in these smartphones nowadays the samsung line is going to be using something called pixel binning
which essentially combines the 50 megapixels of that main camera into a final 12 megapixel photo
and theoretically this does mean that you should get less noise and way better detail in those
nighttime shots the very few select low-light photos we're seeing from the s22 line already do
look fantastic so far so definitely looking like this phone might be a low light beast now i have
very strong opinions about portrait mode on phones because as a lucky person with access to more
professional cameras i can normally spot it just a mile off and it's genuinely feel like it never
really comes off looking that realistic often that is down to the edges of subjects bit hair
hats or glasses and this is really where samsung is stating that new ai improvements are going
to improve performance they're actually saying that the processing in these phones is powerful
enough to pick out individual strands of hair and again theoretically this should make for very good
portrait mode shots this for me really is a point of remains to be seen it's been promised before
i'm sure it'll be promised again for me you just can't beat proper photo bokeh the final large
software change is the introduction of something called expert raw shooting app i think this is
going to be in line with something like apple pro raw we might need to wait a little bit just to see
how much new functionality this actually brings because phones have been able to shoot raw dng for
a while we've been able to shoot raw and then take that file and edit it on something like lightroom
or lightroom mobile i'm expecting this app to essentially just streamline that raw process
instead of shooting raw loading it into lightroom and editing it that way you can potentially edit
much faster and still retain a decent amount of control of the final photograph again similar
to something like apple pro so to wrap up i think overall my worry with these phones is that samsung
are hugely pushing for the cameras to be a super central feature and be a huge driver of sales
i'm just worried really about the competition cameras like the iphone 13 or the pixel 6 are
hugely impressive pieces of kit and particularly the pixel is more affordable than the samsung line
it does remain to be seen quite how much better the samsung line is because judging by these specs
and the features they've highlighted i just don't really think they're going to be different enough
or good enough to potentially get people to switch from other competing phones these don't seem to be
leading features they just seem to be kind of in line with the competition anyway that's my
thoughts on the s22 s22 ultra i'd love to hear yours down below and i'll catch you next time