Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra Review: Good for Cinematic Video? By Mobile Motion

I've just got a new Samsung note, 20 ultra and in this video I'm going to investigate how good its cameras are for shooting video to the specs. The device has one front-facing camera and three rear-facing cameras. You can see that the camera block really protrudes from the back of the phone here and compare that to my old Samsung s9, which is virtually flat. The front facing camera is a 10 megapixel, wide angle with an 80 degree field of view and an aperture of f 2.2. The rear cameras are a 12 megapixel ultra-wide with a 120 degree, field of view and aperture of f 2.2 again. The standard lens is a 108 megapixel, regular, wide angle with a 79 degree field of view and an aperture of f 1.8. This camera also has a 1 over 1.33 inch image sensor size, which is the same as the main camera sensor in the galaxy s20 ultra. The third lens is a 12 megapixel telephoto, with an aperture of f 3.0, and this lens gives you up to five times optical zoom. What Samsung calls space zoom and beyond the optical, you can get up to 50 times zoom, but only when shooting stills when shooting video the native camera app offers you up to 20 times.

Zoom, there's also a laser autofocus sensor here and Samsung says the laser AF sensor is used to enhance the AF performance in close range and low light environments. The problem is those 108 megapixels have to be squeezed onto this sensor, and that means small, pixels and small pixels can mean poorer, low light performance. So the strategy is that in low light situations the 108 megapixel sensor will combine neighboring pixels to create bigger, pixels and then grab more light. The Samsung note 20 ultra, is HDR 10 plus certified, but most of their recent devices have this. So there's nothing special for this phone in particular.

Yes, this device will record and playback HDR, 10 plus, but then so does my old s9, like with other recent Samsung flagship smartphones, the note 20 ultra can shoot 8k video bear in mind. You are limited to 24 frames per second, only when shooting 8k, otherwise the device can shoot.4K video at up to 60 frames per second, the same as last year's note, 10 and s10 range, there's also slow motion at 240 frames per second at 1080p and super slow motion at a kind of crazy 960 frames per second, but that's limited to 720p, so Samsung recently brought back pro mode for video and for still photos. This means you can get great manual control without using a third-party app to access pro mode. You need to go into the camera options and look through a list of choices, there's full control for focus, ISO, shutter, speed and so on and pro mode even gives you focus peaking this kind of green outline to help you get a nice sharp focus. Let's talk about the telephoto lens in this device, so this is the first time I've owned a smartphone with a dedicated telephoto lens, and I'm curious to find out how useful it really is.

So the first thing I tested was pro mode because, as a videographer, I really want to use manual control. I want to set shutter speed. I want to set focus, and ideally I want to switch between these lenses, but there's no way to access the three lenses directly. All you can do is scroll up to this top icon, labeled zoom, and when you tap this, you get a plus and minus slider. Now, in pro mode the lowest it can go is one times and the highest it can go, is 10 times now.

You would think it would be using the device's dedicated telephoto lens to capture a telephoto shot. But incredibly, when I put my finger over the tell lens, it reveals that the device is not using it. Therefore, in pro mode, the device is only using the rather unprofessional digital zoom, which produces this rather poor quality video. It also does not allow you to use the ultra-wide angle lens, which is why the slider doesn't let you zoom out further than one times so. In fact, pro video mode only allows you to use the standard wide lens this one in the middle, but these two either side are out of bounds when using pro mode.

So that's really quite a strange decision by Samsung. One excuse might be that the ultra-wide has a fixed focus and would therefore conflict with pro mode manual controls, but that doesn't explain why we can't use the telephoto in pro mode, because, ideally, in pro mode, there would be a telephoto lens button to switch to that lens and give yourself five times: optical zoom. That would be what I consider a pro feature, but to have this lens sitting in your phone and not be able to switch to it when you're in pro mode at least, is pretty frustrating. Once you switch to auto mode. The note 20 ultra now accesses all three lenses in regular video mode of the native app you get these three icons which control the zoom each one of these icons is basically a button to switch lenses.

So if you tap the one big leaf icon at the top, it zooms in to five times, which is the limit of the optical zoom, and if I place my finger over the telephoto lens, you can see that it's now actually using that lens and that's why you get this much better quality, because it's uh it's using a lens to zoom in it's, not zooming in using you the sensor, and if I tap the two trees icon, I get the middle standard lens, the one in the middle of these three lenses and if I tap the icon with the three trees it zooms out to use the ultra-wide angle, 0.5 times lens the great thing about using these zoom icons in regular video mode. Are you can tap them while you're recording you don't need to stop and change the zoom level and then start again? So it's its great for spontaneous video shooting on the fly. One thing: that's really! Nice is the way the autofocus changes its fast and accurate, but smooth as well- and this is very slick but to my eyes. So when I move the direction of the camera just a little, the focus switches from the flower in the foreground to the bush behind it, but it does so smoothly and that's very usable um. You know as a filmmaker.

This smooth change of focus is it's very nice. It's very nice quality to it. Even with many top DSLR and mirrorless cameras, you will see the autofocus hunting around, or you can see it breathing. So the image is distorted as it moves, but this is really nice. Film pro seems to work fine with the note 20 ultra again, there's no access to the telephoto lens, and I know third party app developers are not given access, but that's no surprise, as it seems Samsung's own pro mode.

App developers don't even have access to it, so you wouldn't expect third-party app developers to get it either. Now, when you choose the ultra-wide lens, you can see that you can't adjust the focus. The focus reticle is fixed, but you can still adjust shutter, speed and ISO and so on. So at least when using a third-party app, you do get to use two of these lenses. Most recent Samsung devices, I'm talking about the last three or four years, can shoot and playback HDR 10 plus.

The note 20 ultra is of course included for those of us who want to shoot the best possible video with our smartphones, either for social media or filmmaking or anything maybe work related. We are sort of heading in two directions. One of those directions is HDR, 10 plus, which is metadata attached to the video adjusting parts of the image to increase dynamic range. For example, the software will tone down the sky, so it doesn't blow out, and you get this richer, bluer look, and it will also boost the shadow areas to show more detail in the shadows. Apple have recently introduced Dolby Vision to their iPhone 12 range, but they have been using dynamic tone remapping in the camera software for video for a number of years already, and the second direction is manual control so like when using film pro or pro mode in your Samsung device.

If we take this direction, we get to control, shutter, speed and ISO and focus and all the rest of it. But now here's the problem, HDR 10, plus Dolby Vision and dynamic tone remapping, do not work with manual control. They conflict because with manual control, you're trying to fix everything in place, but with these new technologies for enhancing the dynamic range they're adjusting different parts of the image in real time, which is why, when shooting with an iPhone and film pro, you sometimes get this flickering sky effect or the tone. Remapping overrides the locked exposure and adjust the exposure anyway- and this is something Steven Lederberg complained about when shooting a high-flying bird with an iPhone, 8 plus, and perhaps why he's never made another movie with an iPhone. So let's look at the difference.

The good thing about android devices is they allow third-party apps to switch off HDR and HDR 10, plus in film pro? If you switch on HDR, it tells you that you now have zero control over manual settings, but at least you can turn it off with iPhones. You cannot turn off dynamic tone remapping, and so you always get this conflict going on, especially in low light conditions. So I took a few shots to compare shooting with manual control over using the Samsung native app, but not pro mode, and you can see that when I'm using the native app in auto mode, the HDR 10 plus kicks in and creates a more dynamic range. More vibrant colors. Now compare this to the same shot using film pro and HDR switched off.

Now I get to control my camera settings, but I lose all that dynamic range you can see. The sky is more blown out and the trees are darker. There's less detail in the shadows. Now as a filmmaker, I'm in two minds about what is best with manual control. I get to control my camera like it's a DSLR, but when shooting with the native app in auto I get this rich color dynamic range right out of the box.

You don't need to do anything to enhance the colors or tones because the phone is doing it all for you, plus, with my note 20 ultra. I now get to switch between the three lenses, so that's really a bit of a difficult decision now for us to make the longer this goes on with companies like Samsung and apple, developing the HDR, 10, plus or Dolby Vision and the dynamic tone remapping. It becomes more of a kind of feature of shooting, with your smartphone you're, going to get more and more dynamic range. It's going to get better at doing this. Furthermore, it means that you just shoot video and the software is doing the work for you, but on the other hand, you don't get the control so when you're moving the camera around or when the objects are moving within the frame, there's going to be adjustments to exposure, which is traditionally something that we consider to be unprofessional and messy.

So it's really quite a difficult decision. Now I went out to shoot just to get some tests and I had a lot of fun, just shooting most of the time with the auto app so that I could get to use this telephoto lens and try out moving the camera slightly. Just to see this change in focus, the autofocus is really nice as well, and that's something that you won't get if you're using film pro or the pro mode or another third-party app. So I guess it's CR, you know there are creative choices to be made there, and I personally I'm in two minds about. I mean if I shot another short film.

I don't know if I would always use film pro now or another third party app, because we'll be losing that extra dynamic range with this extra vibrancy in the colors and you, then you have to try and put that back when you, you know, color, grading and smartphone. Video just doesn't um, take too much grading and, of course, it's a lot of extra work. So what do we do? What do we decide? Well, at least with android. We do have the option to switch it off if we want that manual control. So that's another plus point for using a Samsung or another android device over iPhone.

iPhone is definitely going in the direction of software controlled cameras and with apple that we know that they don't like to let other people mess with how their devices work anyway. So that's it for this video. I hope you found it useful and if you did please like the video and if you haven't done so already much appreciate any kind of subscription. Add yourself to subscribe, and you'll get more videos from me, and I'll see you in the next video.

Source : Mobile Motion