Samsung Galaxy S7 vs. Samsung Galaxy S5 Camera

I recently upgraded to a Samsung S7 phone from a Samsung S5 phone.  My S5 was getting a little long in the tooth - falling apart, I changed the body once, the screen twice, and the camera lens cover, the back battery cover several times and the accelerometer died on it recently as well so taking landscape photos I would have to manually rotate them.  It was time.
There has been high praise for the S7 camera, most people saying that it is one of the bast, if not the best cameras on a cell phone as of today, and this was really the major contributor in me wanting to get a new phone.  I really wanted the S7 active and not a regular S7, since it has 33% larger battery, some built in protection for dropping, but for some reason Samsung decided to make it not only a carrier specific phone (AT&T, but a country specific phone, meaning it it not available in Canada.  This wouldn't be a big deal - I could buy one off of ebay and unlock it, but the cost is prohibitive.  A new one is about 700-800 dollars due to the CAD horrible exchange rate for a new-ish phoine, and because of Ebays lame Global Shipping program, it meant I'd pay another 150 dollars or more for duty, shipping, etc.
I found a barely used S7 on Kijiji for 450 dollars and jumped at the chance.

The camera simply blows me away.  It is eons beyond my two and a half year old Samsung Galaxy S5.  Gone are the days of grainy out of focus photos almost all cell phones were plagued with 5 years ago, even in good light.  In good light all cell phone cameras take good photos, but low light has always been a challenge.

 Low Light Performance
The Samsung S5 is a decent performing camera in bright light,   Low light left something to be desired.   Even in moderately lit situations such as a pub, the photos are grainy and the camera need to be held completely still.  With the dual pixel camera, and F1.7 lens in the S7 just amazes me in low light. The live view of the camera can actually see brighter than my eyes can - it's always been the other way around.  Compare these two photos and the difference is obvious.

















S7                                                                                                                                                        S5

Autofocus
Autofocus is slow on the S5 and it has a hard time with macro focus, not being able to focus on some things that are a foot or two away.  The S7 does not have any problems.  The autofocus is lightning fast on the S7 compared to the S5. 

Pro Mode

This is my first cell phone, and also one of the first available that you can manually control the ISO, shutter speed and focus if you wish to do so in Pro Mode.  It also shows you the autofocus points in the frame.  And, as well, it has the option to save as a RAW file!  Photographers know that RAW mode gives you more control in post editing, especially when it comes to white balance adjustment. 

Wider Angle
I sometimes struggle to get subjects in view with the S5, especially tight indoor scenes and landscapes, but the S7 has a much wider view. See above photos for comparison.

Ease of Access to Camera
Another plus on the S7 camera is the speed it takes to get to the camera taking mode.  Just a double tap on the home key brings up the camera.  I've missed many good opportunities with my S5 in the time it takes to access the camera, even with the swipe to open camera option on it.

Fast Charging
This phone charges ridiculously fast..  another great plus.  Many times I was just about to run out of the house with my S5 but found the battery wasn't charged, and the charging on this phone takes significantly longer than the S7.  Just plug the S7 into a fast charger for a quick top up in a few minutes and it is good to go.


Other Things and some Negatives
The processor speed is very noticeable quicker on the S7 which is great.
There are a few other funky features that I have yet to play with such as motion photo which captures video before you take a photo, slow mo, hyperlapse that the S5 does not have.

 But, everything isn't all roses with the S7.. there are some negative things I don't like about it.
I do not really like the glass back cover on this thing - it's just looking to get broken.  This is an overreaction by Samsung to the whiners complaining of the plastic on the S5, so they went overboard on trying to make the phone feel like a premium phone.  I don't really like putting my phone in a case to make it more bulky and collect dust - typically I only put a glass screen protector on it to save the real screen from scratches.
The S7 is also horrible for repairability compared to the S5.  I changed a screen and the body myself on the S5 and I don't think I'll be trying that on the S7 - to do repair anything, you have to heat the back cover up to soften the adhesive and pull the back off with a suction cup and use guitar picks to pry it off.   It would be nice to be able to change the battery, since 2 years from now, the battery capacity will have degraded enough to be noticeable, as all batteries do.  On the S5, I simply swapped the battery.

Summary
Some great upgrades with just the camera itself make this phone a must-have upgrade in my books if you like photography, along with the speed of the new processor and memory, but be careful with it!

Full Frame Time - Nikon D600 vs. Canon 6D Considerations

     I bought the bullet and got a Full frame, FX sensor Nikon D600.  I am always looking for better low light performance and dynamic range and this will up the performance over my current D300s.  Less blow outs and dark spots in landscape/outdoor shots, which I primarily use mine for.  I was waiting for the D600 body to get down to $1600 or so, but I saw a sale at BJ photo (NOT a porn site :) in Waterloo for $1800 that also included a full version of Lightroom and Photoshop Elements as well.  Not a bad deal.  Seems I can still get around $900 for my D300s…  either that, or I can buy a couple lenses and become a wedding photographer.  Or not.

My other concern with this is it’s a 24.9 megapixel camera.  The raw sizes are going to be quite huge and I wonder how processing will be with my 5+ year old computer.

     After my 18-200 lens for my D300S died a couple months ago, I was wondering what I wanted to d, since I was without a lens as that was my only one.  I wanted to upgrade a full frame camera, but the lenses for FX sensors are not only more expensive, they are heavier as well, which is a concern when backpacking.  I decided that was acceptable as a tradeoff, but the question was also what brand.  I am certainly not a Nikon fan by any means, although I am familiar with them.  Canon is not so much better either from what I read online, they are both dicks about warranty, and picking and choosing what they feel like repairing, and squeezing out the little repair guy by not selling parts to anyone, which I detest, but there’s not much choice, similar to the mobile carrier situation in Canada – they are all in collusion and all are evil, out to screw their own consumers. 

     That aside, I was considering Canon as well.  Might as well, not like I was tied to any lenses and I heard some good things about their products.  So, it was the Canon 5D Mark III or the Nikon D600.  Glancing at the stats on paper, the 6D has some extra bells and whistles such as WiFi and GPS, which I don’t care much about.  I have no problem plugging in a USB cable, and for the GPS, I do geotag shots quite a bit, but I prefer to carry my handheld GPS instead of keeping the camera GPS on between shots and sucking the battery.  So neither of those are draws for me.  There are some differences, the Nikon has higher resolution, more autofocus points, shot speed and a 100% viewfinder advantages.  One other large difference for me is the Nikon as a built in flash, whereas the Canon requires an external flash.  The 6D has battery life, maybe some better low light capabilities (based on lower resolution/less noise at higher ISO), and possibly better white balance correlation.  The low light performance is a difficult question.  

     Low light performance can be two different things and is a complicated issue.  Either high dynamic range (pulling details from shadows), or just plain old high ISO performance..  less noise at high ISO, faster shutter speeds allowable when there is not much available light.  The Nikon is certinly better in the huigh dynamic range, whereas the Canon _may_ be better in the high ISO, which many people seem to say.  DxOmark does scientific sensor tests, labeling the D600 as the best, but that's just the sensor itself.  After that there's processing, if you save your photos as JPG and not RAW format.  There's also the low light autofocus performance to consider.  The consensus is that at east in JPG mode the Canon is better, and it may be a bit better in the low light autofocus department as well.  If that's not complicated enough, there's the difference in megapixels, since downsampled photos always are sharper and have less noise.  It's the photoreceptor  per pixel ratio. So - it is a difficult topic, although the general consenus is the Canon is better at low light high ISO performance.  In the end both are capable cameras. 

     But one thing tipped it over for me to decide on Nikon in my mind, which people don’t tend to talk about in reviews I’ve read, is the types of lenses available.  After using the all purpose ultrazoom 18-200 lens quite a bit on the D300S, I am a fan of it.  When traveling or backpacking, I am only taking one lens with me.  End of story.  I am not taking a while bag of different lenses.  Some people hate these all in one lenses because, I admit they do have some tradeoffs in distortion and the like, but it suits my needs well for situations where I want a wide lens and when I need to zoom in on wildlife or some details far away.  The equivalent lens in FX is the 28-300mmNikon lens.  Canon doesn’t have a lens like that.  Well, actually they do have a 20-300 lens but it is ultra expensive and much heavier than the Nikon version, and performance isn’t all that great.  Sure, I will get some prime lenses, some low f stop lenses for certain occasions when i have the luxury of carrying around a bag of lenses with me, but like I said, I do like the all in one lens for traveling, and canon just doesn’t have a lens that is in this category, so the Nikon it is.

Death of a Lens - 18-200mm Nikkor

Well, it looks like my Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED-IF AF-S VR DX Zoom Nikkor Lens has kicked the bucket and I’ll just sell it for parts now.  I used this lens over the last many years on most of my outdoor adventures with my Nikon D300S body.  It’s a versatile lens, able to take wide angle landscapes and zoom in to a respectable 11X to get photos of wildlife or far away objects.  For traveling I certainly wouldn’t take more than that, it’s a good all-in-one lens.  Sure, there are better lenses for a given purpose, but this one fits the bill if you are on the go and want to minimize equipment.  I’ve taken it to the jungles of Borneo, canoeing and sea kayaking, and on backpacking trips.

As I was making my way up silver peak waist deep in snow in Killarney last weekend, the zoom felt very stiff and something broke inside the lens and was rattling around.  It could have been due to the cold, ice, the wear and tear or the (slight) abuse I had given it over the years.  I did bump the end when putting a filter on once and the wide angle was a little ‘loose’ in the 18-24 range.  The zoom tubes were not synced and I could still take photos, but only in wide angle with everything collapsed.  I decided to take it apart.  I found some good photos online from someone from New Zealand taking theirs apart (http://www.boardworld.com.au/forums/viewthread/582/#9637). 

This is a 900 dollar lens - normally I would just send it in to Nikon for repairs.  But Nikon are dickheads about repairs.  For starters, they will only repair a lens that was sold in the same country or region. That means if I bought a lens in US or from Asia off of ebay, Nikon Canada will check the serial numbers and will just send  it back to me and decline to repair.  I think they are trying to enforce some inane regionality plan where they can charge (slightly) more in some areas for the exact same product.  I guess Nikon didn’t get the memo that it is a world economy with the internet and eBay nowadays and Nikon wants to fight it, like they haven’t learned from the record companies.  And I am not talking about warranty repair, I’m talking about paid repair which they would make money on one way or the other.   So instead of working with their customers and making them happy, Nikon and Canon as well seem to like being stand offish, pissing their customers off and threatening them with the prospect of not being able to have their camera repaired if they don’t ‘follow along’ with the master plan and buy from a local dealer…  unnecessarily heavy handed and fascist in my view.  On top of that Nikon flatly refuses to fix some items, picking and choosing the easier ones.  If a part is deemed ‘water damaged’ by a little water detecting sticker inside the part having turned red, they just won’t even try to fix it, even if you pay for it, or if the parts don’t look corroded at all. 

Secondly, Nikon charges a lot for repairs in general, so most items end up costing about the same as buying functional second hand lenses or camera bodies by the time it is repaired.

And then thirdly, Nikon not being content with all of those measures they had in place to screw over their own customers trying to control what they do, both Nikon and Canon (can you say collusion) both recently decided to stop selling any repair parts to anyone going forward.  This effectively puts third party repair shops out of business, and prevents you from repairing your own cameras if you just need a small part or two to fix it.  I wish there was a third large camera manufacturer that actually wanted to make their customers happy instead of screw them over, I’d shower them with money, but unfortunately that’s not the case.  Nikon claims they are doing this because of the complexity and setup equipment required to fix their parts are beyond everyone else’s ability (except theirs) to fix properly..  talk about condescending and false B.S.

But I digress, I was just explaining why I was in the position of disassembling my lens in the first place instead of sending it in for repair – it’s because Nikon Canada wouldn’t repair my lens if I sent it in, I bought it in a kit from eBay, which likely got the lens from Asia. So I did manage to carefully take apart my lens up to the zoom ring.  While I was removing the zoom ring, I unfortunately wasn’t paying close enough attention and I mashed some of the metal sensor fingers (called brushes) for the lens to determine the zoom and focus positions.  These are small and cheap parts - if I could buy some replacement parts from Nikon this wouldn’t be a huge deal, but.  I did get to the offending part.  Like Tony from boardworld’s lens, the pin threads had stripped out of the tube it was attached to.  I did find some brushed on eBay, but they would cost me about $25 for each of them…   $50 total.  I also would have to epoxy the pin in and hope it held.  I still think the initial bump and looseness (i.e. only sometimes being able to focus in the 18-24 range) that the lens had would still be evident.  So I am thinking that I just give up on this lens and sell it for parts on eBay.  I guess if Nikon is not selling repair parts to anyone, there at least should be a good market for selling parts.

      I had wanted to upgrade to a full frame camera, perhaps this is an opportune time although I didn’t want my hand forced in a decision  – I have my eye on the D600, but was waiting for the price to drop a bit.  I would get the 28-300mm lens for it which would be the equivalent of the 18-200mm I have right now on the DX size sensor.  And then I’d have to get a whack of filters – UV, circular polarizer, neutral density, I also like using an expodisc white balance filter, all of which I have in 72mm not 77 as the larger les would be.  We’ll see.








      And a big fuck you goes out to Nikon and their anti-customer service, as it only really can be described as,.

Panasonic TS5 Announced

     I've been using compact digital cameras for outdoor adventures since close to when they first came out.   I don't think camera companies recognized the potential for outdoor adventure use right off the bat - they were more for going clubbing or just around town when you wanted to slip the camera in your pocket instead or dragging around a camera case for your camera.

      I went through quite a few of them, most dying a death due to dropping into water, rarely any of them retiring gracefully.  Once I dropped a camera into a puddle while backpacking on the La Cloche Silhouette trail in Ontario and spent the evening at camp taking out the micro screws on the case with my Swiss Army knife and drying it out over a tealight candle...  to my surprise it actually worked the next day!  At times, I was almost on a first name basis with the repair people at Nikon who kept continually rejecting repairs as a result of water damage and I had to buy replacement cameras.  Thankfully the industry developed the ruggedized, waterproof compact cameras a couple years back... I actually have had the same camera for 3 years now!

     I think my first one was the Konica Minolta Dimage X, then I moved onto the Nikon Coolpix S series.  Nowadays I use Panasonic TS series, the one I have right now is the TS2.  In the beginning the low light performace of compact cameras was downright terrible, and the long shutter speeds and lack of  image stabilization made for a huge percentage of blurry photos. But now the performance you can get out of a small package is astounding. 

    I have been wanting to upgrade my TS2, but have been waiting for a good reason to.  Camera companies throw a bunch of what I consider non-value added features into cameras for the sake of gagetry, and not for the sake of the prime function of a camera - to capture images the best possible.  That is what I find paramount in a camera, the image quality.  The GPS, Wifi connectivity, scene modes, and other things like that are just frilly gimmicks and I never use them.  However, one cool thing I find though is the new panorama mode you can just sweep the camera and it will form a panorama shot within the camrea - the Panasonic TS4 and other recent cameras have nowadays.  

     Digressing, Panasonic announced their TS5 launched today at CES.  It has a new type of sensor, which they say has excellent low light performance.  Excellent, that's what I, or any self respecting photographer is always looking for.  It's 16.1 Megapixels, and has 4.6x zoom, same as all of the earlier models.  It also has some extra frilly, gadgety features like NFC (near field communications), GPS, and Wifi connectivity all of which I really don't care about and wish they made a camera without these things to save some weight/size.  It is even more rugged/waterproof than ever, which is great as well.  In any case, I'm really looking forward to seeing some test photos and to really tell if it's worth upgrading from my old TS2.

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