- The Samsung Galaxy S8 and the S8 Plus have been out
for a little while now
and we've been putting the camera through it's paces
to see how good it is for video.
And you can find out how it went in this video.
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So let's jump into it.
So, Samsung recently sent us out the Galaxy S8 Plus
and we've been playing around with it
for the last three or four weeks now
and I've gotta tell you, it's definitely an amazing phone.
But there's already plenty of reviews out there,
telling you how nice the phone is with this fancy screen
and all the features.
But what we're looking at specifically in this video
is how it performs for video.
So after putting the video camera to the test,
here are the results and my thoughts on the camera overall.
Make sure you stick around to the end
'cause I'm gonna cover off my recommended settings
for shooting video using the S8.
So we'll start off the specifications on the two cameras.
The back camera or the primary camera
is a 12 megapixel camera with an f 1.7 aperture lens.
It comes with optical image stabilization
and will record 4k video at 30 frames per second.
1080p video at 30 or 60 frames per second,
and 720p video at 30 frames per second.
It also supports slow motion, 240 frames per second at 720p.
The front-facing camera is an eight megapixel camera
with an f 1.7 aperture lens.
And the big point of difference here
between this front-facing camera
and most of the other ones around today,
is that this one has autofocus built in.
It also supports video recording and up to 1440p.
The first thing we did was to go into the settings
and to max out our quality settings so that we're recording
at the highest quality.
So 4k for the rear camera, and 1440p for the front camera.
In the built-in camera app on the S8 and the S8 Plus
is really intuitive and really easy to use.
To zoom in and out, all you need to do
is to press and hold on the shutter button,
or the button to take a photo,
and swipe to the left or to the right to zoom in and out.
To record video, you just press the record button,
or to take a still, you just press the shutter button.
You can easily switch between the front-facing camera
and the rear camera just by swiping up on the screen,
swapping from the left will bring out
the different shooting modes.
So if you're on the front-facing camera
then you've got selfie, wide selfie, selective focus
or virtual shot.
And if you're on the primary camera,
you'll get pro, panorama, selective focus, slow motion,
hyperlapse, food and virtual shot.
Now I've gotta tell you the two standouts for me
are pro and hyperlapse.
These are two features that are really, really amazing
and work really well.
So with the pro mode, essentially that you do
is to lock down using professional settings,
things like your ISO, your shutter speed,
your white balance, lock them down
with the built-in camera app.
Normally this is something that you need to go to
an app like FiLMiC Pro or Movie Pro, Pro Shot,
one of these other third party applications
to be able to get their controls.
So it's really awesome to have that built in
to the stock camera app.
And hyperlapse is another really amazing feature
on the phone.
So a hyperlapse is essentially a moving time lapse.
So you're recording a heap of footage
and it plays it back really, really fast to speed it up.
But in regards to the hyperlapse feature here,
it's also stabilizing the footage to make it really smooth,
make it look like the camera is gliding around.
So it's really amazing and I was surprised
by how well it actually works.
When you start to look at the recorded video files,
you'll probably noticed right away
that the colors are really vibrant or heavily saturated.
The blues are really blue, the greens are really green,
there's a lot of color going on here.
Now, some people aren't a big fan
of having heavily saturated videos,
other people love it.
So it really is a personal preference.
I personally don't mind it.
I think that there's definitely a place for it
and it does make really run and gun shooting
or quick videos.
You don't even have to add filters or adjust the colors.
The colors coming out of this thing are absolutely amazing.
But some people don't like it.
Some people would much rather have a flatter image
and grade it later in their editing, in which case,
this is something that you can't actually turn off
with the built-in camera app.
There are other third party camera applications you can get
that would give you control over the color profiles
so you could have a flatter color profile
for when you're creating your videos, if you'd like.
But personally I think that this built-in app
is miles above most other built-in camera apps,
especially the built-in ones on the Google phones.
The autofocus on this camera is insanely good.
It's so quick and so sharp and not once in our testing
did it miss the mark and focus on something different.
It was spot on every time.
The optical image stabilization works well
and it's a nice addition to have in the phone
if you're gonna be walking around
just to help take that bump out or any shake
out of your camera movements.
It's definitely not 100% flawless.
If you move the camera too much,
then you'll see some jittering or jarring in the shot
while it tries to correct it.
But overall, I was pretty impressed.
Now the low light capabilities of this camera
are definitely a standout.
So we did a test here, you can see this is in a bedroom
in late afternoon, lights are off,
it was actually really dark, but you couldn't tell
from looking at this video.
Now, while we're recording the test footage for this video,
we were also testing and comparing this phone
to the iPhone 7 Plus and the Google Pixel XL.
And we will have a video,
a three-way comparison coming out very shortly,
so I'll put a link up to the cards
when that's available to check out as well.
But I gotta tell you, the low light performance
on the Samsung Galaxy S8 was
so much better than the other two.
I wasn't gonna mention it in this video
but I think that the low light performance on this camera
is definitely a standout feature.
Kicking the camera over into slow motion mode,
which is where you're dropping the resolution to 720p,
but you'll be shooting at 240 frames.
When we actually looked at the footage that came off,
we're really blown away with how crisp and clean
the footage is.
Obviously the footage here has been upscaled
for this 4k video, so it's not actually
a true representation of the quality
but we were blown away with the quality
of the 720p recording.
When we were checking out
the 240 frames per second slow motion footage,
we brought it in to the computer
and we were looking at the footage
and it actually shows up as 260 frames per second footage,
not 240.
I can't explain it,
we've checked it with a few different programs,
and it all says 260 frames per second instead of 240.
Not sure what's going on there,
either way it looks really good
and an extra 20 frames per second can't hurt.
What you don't have on this phone though
is a 1080p slow motion mode.
You can shoot at 1080p 60 frames per second,
but you can't shoot 1080p 120 frames per second
like you can on phones like the iPhone 7 Plus
and the Google Pixel XL.
And another really cool feature about this camera
slash phone, it's really a phone feature
but it comes into play with the camera as well,
is that the phone is water proof or water resistant.
So you can get it to a depth of 1.5 meters
for a length of 30 minutes.
So that's pretty cool depending on the types of videos
or if you're gonna be filming in,
potentially it's gonna rain,
then you don't need to be so worried about your camera.
So now, looking at the front-facing camera,
color-wise once again, typical of Samsung devices,
it has vibrant colors.
So the blues are really blue, the greens are really green,
all the colors really pop out from the shot.
Then regards to the autofocus,
once again it worked really well and really fast.
So definitely impressed with the autofocus
and it's actually really handy having autofocus
on your front-facing camera.
Now the only other thing we noticed,
it was way too much detail.
Almost that your footage didn't look that good
because there was too much detail in the shot.
So in our editing, I've actually wanna tone that down
a little bit and remove some of that detail,
soften the image a little bit because it was too much.
It actually looked unnatural.
So it's definitely not a deal-breaker
but I definitely thought there was too much detail
on the Samsung Galaxy S8 front-facing camera.
So how is the S8 video camera overall?
Here are my final thoughts before you run
through the camera settings that I recommend
if you are using the S8 for video.
So I really like the low light performance.
I really like the autofocus, I think it's amazing.
I think the pro mode, where you've got the ability
to lock down you shutter, your ISO, your white balance
directly from the built-in camera app is amazing.
I really like the hyperlapse feature.
I think that is something that should be included
in all phones now.
I didn't think that I would actually use it.
I've been using it for Instagram stories
and things like that and it's really, really cool.
And it's so easy to use.
I also really like the front-facing camera
and the fact that it's got autofocus,
and the fact that it's recording at 1440p.
I think it is now a solid solution
for people creating content videos themselves
to be able to use the front-facing camera
without trying to have to use
the rear-facing camera on the phone,
which if you're gonna be filming by yourself,
can be rather difficult.
And I also like that the phone has the option
to add expansion or memory cards,
so that if you are running out of storage on your phone,
you can put in a micro SD card
and you can expand that storage out.
Now, we did shoot through the 64 gig,
which is the phone that we've got, pretty quickly.
So I would recommend if you are gonna be shooting
a heap of video on your phone
that you get maybe a 128 or a 256 gig micro SD card
to include in your phone.
So what don't I like about it?
Well, I guess the biggest pet peeve that I have
with this phone is the location of the fingerprint scanner.
So it's not specifically a problem with the camera,
it's a problem with the fingerprint scanner
because when you use it,
you inherently touch the camera lens
no matter how hard you try or how many times you do it,
you're still gonna end up with fingerprint smudges,
whatever, on your camera lens which isn't ideal.
So you've really gotta built that habit then,
if you're gonna be using the fingerprint scanner
to get used to--
Every time you pull your phone out to take a video
or take a photo, you wanna clean the camera lens first,
which is a good habit to have anyway.
But it would be ideal if the fingerprint scanner
was nowhere near the camera lens in my opinion.
And the second thing is when you're using
the front-facing camera, the amount of detail
that's in the shot.
I think there is too much detail in the shot,
so much so that the footage can look fake
or just doesn't look right.
There is too much detail.
All the wrinkles and everything--
Yes, I'm getting old--
But everything is shown.
Whereas, if I'm using the Panasonic GH4
and sitting the same distance apart,
you don't see any of that
like you do on the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus.
So it is something that you can soften the footage down
in your editing afterwards
or
if you really want to, I suppose you could apply
some of their filters.
The beauty mode or something like that
which I probably advise against,
but it's not a deal-breaker, it's just something
that I don't necessarily like too much.
Now in regards to the recommended camera settings,
something that everybody should be doing is,
wherever possible, not using the auto-mode.
At least top and hold on your screen
and lock down the exposure, so the brightness and the focus.
So that you're setting what's in focus
and you're setting how bright or dark your shot is
and not leaving it up to your phone to decide
and potentially change throughout your shot.
Now if you are gonna be shooting on a Samsung Galaxy S8
or an S8 Plus, then I highly recommend you use
their pro mode and really lock down all of your settings.
Lock down your white balance, lock down your ISO,
your shutter speed to really get the best results
out of your camera.
If you're not on a Samsung Galaxy S8,
you should probably consider it
or you could check out an app like FiLMic Pro
that will give you a heap of those settings as well,
so that you can still lock everything down.
And if you're looking to get even better results
with your smartphone then make sure you check out
our complete guide to filming amazing videos
with Android and iPhone, which is linked on screen now.
I'll see you soon.