Samsung Galaxy S Camera - Photo Taking and Video Recording

Apart from its Super AMOLED display, Samsung Galaxy S also comes with a 5-megapixel camera that performs quite good under most conditions except in very low-light/dark situation since it doesn’t come with flash. The camera is also capable of shooting HD videos (1280×720 resolution).

Photo Taking

You can snap photos in various scene modes covering portrait, landscape, night, sports, party/indoor, beach/snow, sunset, dawn, color of fall, firework, text, candlelight and backlight. Here are some photos taken:

(Indoor mode)

(Landscape mode)

(Sports mode for moving objects. You can see the moving cars are nicely taken with no motion blur)

(Sunset mode, taken under hot sun in the afternoon)

Apart from the scene modes, you can also adjust the shooting mode. You can take continuous and panorama pictures as well as other added effects like beauty, vintage, add me, action shot and cartoon.

The Add Me shooting mode is kind of fun in which you can snap two “photos” and combine as one.

The self-shot mode allows you to take your picture using the front facing VGA camera.

Video Recording

As for video recording, I have tested recording using 1280×720 resolution and 720×480 resolutions. The two videos (embedded below) that I have uploaded so far were actually shot in 1280×720 resolution, but they were compressed due to slow internet connection. Anyway, I will upload a few more videos in 720HD soon. The quality of the videos taken are really superb! You might not even get such quality with some mid-entry video camera.

Good stuff: HD recording is brilliant and photo taking/processing is fast.

Could have done better: No flash which makes photo taking in low-light condition almost impossible (very poor quality). No dedicated camera button, which means you need to depend on the onscreen controls.

Tags:Android, Camera, Maxis 10 Review, phones, Photos, pictures, Samsung Galaxy S, videos

7 Comments

Bryan, July 7, 2010 @ 2:19 am Reply

I prefer to use the onscreen snap button because it causes less movement of our finger. A dedicated camera button might not be as sensitive as the onscreen button also.
- KeeMan, July 7, 2010 @ 2:21 am Reply
  
  Yeah, some of my friends said so too. Maybe because my fingers are too big. I kind of struggle to hold the camera when wanting to press the “snap” or “record” button.
Elisha, July 7, 2010 @ 1:59 pm Reply

You can’t tell whether the pictures and videos were taken by a phone because it’s like digital camera quality.
Jayelle, July 9, 2010 @ 3:18 pm Reply

good opinion about the onscreen snap button! never thought of that. If they had a button on the phone’s body that might cause some movements. but i always accidentally hit the back button instead and get sent back out to the homescreem.
- KeeMan, July 9, 2010 @ 5:12 pm Reply
  
  Haha..guess we’re facing the same problem Jayelle. I kept pressing the back button as well.
Ana Costa, July 23, 2011 @ 10:48 am Reply

Keeman I loved your review. I’ve been trying to decide if I should buy the Samsung Galaxy S1 or the Galaxy S2. To be quite honest I am pretty sure the S1 is great and don’t know if it’s worth paying so much more for S2. One thing I do need on a phone is a good camera and I loved your photos and videos. But I take many photos indoors and I am afraid the S1 won’t be of any help because it lacks the flash.

My Samsung digital camera does VERY WELL without flash, so well that most of the time I prefer to take pics indoors with the flash off. Have you tried taking portrait photos indoors using all of the possible configurations to see if anyone of them give you a nice pic?

I’m going to decide between S1 and S2 based on the camera.
- KeeMan, July 23, 2011 @ 10:53 am Reply
  
  Hi Ana,
  
  To be frank, taking indoor picture with sufficient lighting is not that bad with SG1. Of course, under low light condition, the 5MP camera can’t deliver good pictures.
  
  But to compare SG1 and SG2 in terms of camera, SG2 has a greater advantage.