S21 Ultra Camera VS. S20 Ultra VS. Note 20 Ultra! By NothingButTech

So yeah, the s20 ultra's camera was kind of a disaster. The question is: did Samsung redeem themselves with the s21 ultra? My name is Jacqueline and welcome to the camera. Comparison all right, we're starting this out with a portrait mode test, and they all look pretty good. The note 20 ultra definitely added a lot more contrast to my hair. So on the right side it looks a little darker. They all did pretty decently.

With the detail on my skin oftentimes with Samsung phones, we see a ton of skin smoothing it's a little less. I think that the s21 ultra in this particular image has a little more than the s20 and the note 20, but that's not going to be consistent throughout the video. It's just in this example. All right this next one of my camera lens shows a major color difference. The s21 ultra is the brightest out of these and has the least amount of contrast versus the s20 and the note 20 ultra, which added a ton of contrast which actually made the camera lose a little of detail.

That said, the s21 ultra went to a greener hue on the lens, which is just not accurate, but I did this test because I wanted to zoom in and show you the capabilities of the zoom, because the s21 ultra now has a three time: zoom and a 10x zoom, so both are optical and then in between three and ten, it's all digital zoom. So the question that I wanted to see is: is the digital zoom good, so I zoomed in to 5x, and there is a huge difference here with sharpness. The s21 ultra looks so much sharper than the s20. If you look at the Sony label, it's just much sharper on the s21 ultra. The color tone is still a little off.

It went to that greener hue, but it looks like a really sharp image. Then no 20 ultra has less zoom than the s21 ultra, so this will max out at 50 times versus this at 100 times, and I'll have a sample of that later in the video. But for 5x. I think that they both did a pretty good job with the s21 ultra having a slight edge. Then I took a selfie and this time the skin smoothing is a lot more consistent with what I thought it would be.

The s21 ultra has much less skin, smoothing than both the note 20 ultra and s20 ultra. The s20 ultra definitely has the most skin smoothing out of the three. I think that they all miss my skin color a little like Samsung phones, tend to go to this hellish yellowish hue, which just is not accurate, and you could take the photo on a different phone and the skin coloring will look totally different. So I think that's important to note. The s20 ultra looks the most like pink out of all of them, but I think that the detour retention on the s21 ultra is the best, and it has a 40 megapixel sensor.

So there's a lot of pixel batting, going on there to help with dynamic range as well. So one of the main complaints with the s20 ultra was the focus, fringing and softness of the image. So it has a 108 megapixel sensor and because of that, it's a huge sensor with a really low aperture, which means it has a very shallow focus, because, unlike a DSLR, it has a fixed aperture. So it can't adjust to get more or less in focus, and that meant that, even though the images were sharp, they looked really soft, because only a small percentage of the object or the subject would be in focus. Samsung is trying to fix that with the s21 ultra, so their solution is to use something called focus, enhancer and basically, what it does is it uses AI to determine how close you are to a subject and what should be in focus and if it notices that a lot of it's going to be out of focus, then it switches you to the ultra-wide lens, which leads to a wider depth of field.

So, like more things, are in focus, there's less of that blurry background effect, but it also means that there's some like image warping, because you're taking a shot really close up with an ultra-wide angle lens. I think it's a pretty good solution, though. If you look at the s20s image versus the s21 ultra a lot more of it is in focus on the s21 ultra and if you're not a fan of it, you could easily turn it off. Then I took another outdoor photo for detail and dynamic range, and they all crushed it. Alright, the zoom test.

We got to talk about zoom, so I started on all these phones, ultrawide camera and I snapped a shot, and they all look perfect here. The s21 ultra has a little more detail on the bottom of the frame, whereas the note 20, ultra and s20 ultra added a ton of contrast and therefore lost some detail in the blacks and the shadows, and then I started zooming, so the s20 ultra has it a hundred times zoom and so does the s21 ultra. But there are two major differences between the zoom technologies. The first one is that this has both a 10x and a 3x, and it works together to create this optically zoomed in image and at 10 times zoom. This just looks better because it's actually using a sensor for that 10x zoom completely optical, and the second thing is that the s21 ultra has far superior stabilization.

So when you're taking a photo at a hundred times, zoom, it's really hard to frame it because any sort of movement will completely change the frame. The s21 ultra has great stabilization, so it makes it easier to frame it. The photo turns out clearer, and I think it's actually the first time that you could get away with pushing in 100 times zoom if you wanted to, but I think more realistically, the 10 to 30 x range is gonna, be where it's at, and this phone crushes that it's definitely the best zoom out of the three I took another 10x shot and the change is just like so prominent here, like the s21 ultra looks so much sharper, and it retains a lot more of the color detail as well. It doesn't get as noisy or grainy talking about noise and green, let's head outdoors for a nighttime shot and wow. This literally shocked me when I saw the comparison.

So, first I took this around midnight, so I could not see anything. The phone saw a lot more than I could see, but the s21 ultra. It's no comparison here between this and the s20 ultra, it's so much sharper, there's so much more green on the s20 ultra image. Again, it's still really incredible that we can get that type of image out of a smartphone. I'm not trying to put this camera down, because it's still a feat, but in comparison to the s21 ultra it's night and day it's night and night.

I guess we could say why did I just say that the note20 ultra also did an incredible job here? This phone still has a really, really good camera, but I think that the s21 ultra's color tone looks a little better to me. I just prefer it personal preference also be sure to subscribe to the channel for more tech content if you're enjoying the video so far. Let's transition to some video testing. The first improvement is from the s20 ultra the note20 ultra. This already had better video quality because of the laser autofocus sensor and the s21 ultra.

This focus feels a little faster and a little more reliable. All of them can look jumpy at times, but I don't think that there's any comparison really between this and the s20 ultra, because this often missed the focus or was slow to pick it up and the s21 ultra is pretty fast, so huge improvements again. It feels like Samsung, really took the feedback to heart and went with it. This truly is one of the best camera sensors on the market and for portrait mode tests of non-people subjects. It's also perfect.

So I took a shot of my cold brew and the cobra was watered down in here. I would never drink it, but I thought I snapped the shot. You know I love cold brew. I think that the note 20 ultra pulled out the w here. The exposure is so much better.

The s21 ultra tried to really up the exposure and brightness, and I think it looks like not true to life. If much prefer the note 20 ultra in this particular example. The next shot is a nighttime shot indoors and in this one they all actually did a perfect job. The nighttime mode is really, really impressive for lower light stuff. The detail retention on the guitar is incredible.

In all three of these, I honestly don't have a favorite out of these three. If you do. Let me know in a comment below this typical shot of me. Just standing and taking a photo is actually interesting because of color tone, because in the background I have this LED light with a red gel. On top of it to make the background red and the note20 ultra did a perfect job, picking up the saturation of the red without overdoing it, I think, on the s1 ultra it desaturated a little too much.

I would have loved to see a little more saturation there, and also in the s20 ultra. The color tone is very green, which I'm not a fan of. I think that it kind of ruined my skin tone a little the s21 ultra and the note 20 ultra have very similar skin tones than this one they're also a little green. I think that the Samsung phones tend to be like pale and greenish or yellow so not ideal, but they're definitely miles ahead of the s20 ultra, which really went all in on that green. Then I snapped in for a portrait mode test in the same location, and they all did really well with this.

Actually, the edge detection is amazing. It's crazy. How far we've come with edge detection, and I'd be down to post any of them on Instagram. I think that they all did a perfect job here. The s21 ultra's camera is just like a champ.

It feels like a huge redemption over the s20 ultra. They fixed a lot of the focus issues. There definitely are still some issues and I think for video, the iPhone 12 Pro is still better in terms of color and stabilization, and I just made a full camera comparison there. If you want to check it out, you can click right here, but I'm super excited to keep testing this and eventually have it all culminate into a full review, so get subscribed if you're, not. If you want to see that and turn on the bell.

Thank you so much for watching this one. I appreciate you, and I'll catch you next week. Bye.

Source : NothingButTech