Samsung NOTE20 ULTRA - A Photographer's Review By Robin Wong

Hi, my name is robin Wong, and I have here the Samsung Galaxy note 20 ultra. I want to talk about its camera performance. Let's do this before we start here are some important disclaimers. This is not my phone, the Samsung Galaxy note 20 ultra is on loan from Samsung Malaysia and I have to return this phone to them after this review. This is not a paid review. Samsung didn't ask me to do this.

I did this because I genuinely am curious about the camera performance of the latest flagship smartphone from Samsung. Also, I've noticed that a lot of gadget or tech reviewers did just glance over the camera performance of a smartphone when they are doing a review, and I haven't seen a truly qualified photographer's review of the Samsung note 20 ultra. I am a professional photographer I'll, be reviewing this camera's performance from a photographer's perspective. Having used this for about two weeks now, I will not talk about the video performance of this smartphone. I will also not talk about the selfie camera.

I believe that we don't need the selfie camera repeat after me. We do not need the selfie camera with that out of the way, let's dive right into it. This Samsung note20 ultra has three camera modules: the ultra-wide angle, camera the main camera, as well as the telephoto camera. You should be using the main camera most of the time. It is the best that the note 20 ultra has to offer it features a 108 megapixels image sensor and the image set itself is larger than usual.

It is one of the 1.33 inch. I believe this is the largest image sensor in any smartphones. In today's market it has an equivalent focal length of 26, mil at f 1.8, bright aperture with built-in image stabilization. So I was at my hometown coaching Borneo for one week and was testing this note to the ultras' camera. I used the main camera most of the time, and I was quite impressed with the image quality.

That's come up from this camera. Of course, I didn't use 108 megapixels all the time I believe the 12 megapixels default camera setting was more than enough. In fact, it is more optimized Samsung down sampled 108 megapixels to the 12 megapixels. To give you an optimized image output, my images came out full of fine details. They were sharp.

The dynamic range was perfect. The colors were saturated. It was pleasing. Of course, it was a little punchy and contrast, but that's just how the camera renders the image which is consumer friendly. I have no issue with that.

With a little of tweak, I can get images to look exactly as I would like them to look. I did have plenty of fun shooting the telephoto camera of the note 20 ultra. It features a 12 megapixel image sensor with a periscope folding lens design, with an equivalent mil focal length that is truly impressive. What Samsung can fit into the smartphone? The aperture is not that bright. It is f3, it does have image stabilization now I do shoot with a telephoto lens from time to time, because this can render much more professional looking result with less background to deal with compressed background and less ugly distortions.

That's what separate a professional photographer than an amateur which uses wide angle and shoot everything now. Having said that, I do have a few complaints when it comes to the telephoto camera of the note 20 ultra number one, the folding periscope design is innovative, but there are compromises to fit such a long lens into a smartphone. The lens is not sharp. You can see that the telephoto camera produces images that are visibly softer in comparison with the main camera number. Two autofocus performance is not that reliable.

In fact, the autofocus does miss quite a lot during my shooting, especially in bad light situations or situations where there are a lot of details and contrast in the background, the tape for the camera will jump to the background instead of focusing on the subject that is in front and number three is the most troubling of all the telephoto camera. If you shoot very, very close up to a point where the lens cannot focus anymore, the note 20 ultra will automatically switch to the main camera without any warning. Now, when this happens, the main camera is widening your camera and will apply digital zoom. When digital zoom is used, you get images, they are pixelated, it lacks details, it doesn't have much contrast. It just looks like garbage, and I believe this can be fixed with future software updates.

There really is nothing to write home about when it comes to the ultra-wide angle, camera of the note 20 ultra. It features 12 megapixels and the lens is impressively wide. It has a 13?mm equivalent ultra-wide angle coverage at f, 2.2, bright aperture, which is really decent now in terms of image quality. The ultra-wide camera is perhaps the poorest of all the camera modules. The images are nowhere near as sharp as what the main camera can do, and the 12 megapixel image sensor falls apart very quickly when you're, using in low light.

The main camera has better performance, and if you look at the main camera itself, it is already very white with 26 mil equivalent focal length. That should be wide enough for most situations and will highly suggest that you use the ultra-wide angle camera when you absolutely have to so the autofocus performance of note 20 ultra is just okay. It is not blazing fast, it does take about half a second to achieve focus and that's with the main camera in good light in low light conditions, it does get a little slower, but of course, when you compare with any other smartphones today, this is perhaps one of the fastest available out there. I'm just saying if you are a photographer and if you are used to DSLR or what a professional mirrorless camera can do, there is a big gap in terms of autofocus performance and, if you're, shooting really fast action shots if you're doing street photography, for example, if you want to nail that critical moment that half a second autofocus lag is enough to make you miss that moment. If you are dealing with low light, I highly suggest that you use the main camera the main camera slow light performance is very good, I'm very happy with what the camera can do up to ISO 400.

It is usable as 800, though there's lots of details with aggressive noise reduction. Anything above that is just well, I'm not going to say useless or garbage, but you know as a photographer. I do have to maintain certain standards, but generally with the wide open, aperture, f 1.8, with built-in image stabilization, you can get away with very, very good night images, I'm not talking about using the night mode. The night mode does not necessarily make things any better. It is just a HDR trick to blend in multiple images, to avoid certain parts of the image from being overblown and perhaps draw a bit more details from the shadow.

If to me, that's not important to me. The main performance of the camera, without even using the night mode is already very, very good, and, of course, if you are dealing with very, very low light situation, please avoid using the telephoto camera or the ultra-wide camera. These cameras will not give you very good performance. There is one issue that I must point out here, which I don't think any other reviewers have mentioned before it is about display, lag and display refresh rate. Now, of course, Samsung will claim that they have the best display out in the market today with 120 hertz display with the super AMOLED and high resolution screen.

Of course, no one is questioning that this display is perhaps one of the best available, but when the camera mode is turned on, the display is nowhere near 120 hertz. It is not even 60 hertz, the refresh rate drops significantly below 30 hertz, and I can prove that to you by running a slow motion capture with my camera, a photographer who uses a camera looking at the screen. All the time will definitely see that this refresher is slower, and it's not as smooth as it should be. The second thing that I must mention the display is that there is a noticeable lag. It is not big, but it is definitely visible and for normal consumers it is not a problem, but for photographers who care about speed and how responsive the camera is, every tiny delay will make you miss the critical moment.

I can show you- and this is quite a big problem again with a slow motion capture. It just bugs me that you know this is a flagship smartphone. Everything should be the best of the best. I expect smooth screen. No, it's not lagging, I don't know.

Is it just me or are you? Are you feeling uncomfortable as well? All in all putting aside the display issue with the refresh rate and, of course the obvious lag, I do think that the Samsung note 20 ultra is the best smartphone camera out there. Today the 108 megapixel camera main module is truly impressive. I get images, that's full of details. They are really sharp. The colors are pleasing.

The dynamic range is amazing and the low-light performance is quite good and, of course, there's the added versatility of a telephoto lens having a 120?mm reach. That's truly something and an outro wide angle coverage. Now having all these three camera modules together, you do get a very versatile option for a smartphone solution. Well, do comment down in the in below and let me know if you disagree with anything that I've mentioned or if you think that there are any other cameras that is better than the Samsung note.20 ultra I haven't tested them and I do want to get my hands on these smartphones and test them and review them right here. That's all I have to share about the Samsung note.20 ultra's camera performance. I hope you have enjoyed watching this video.

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Source : Robin Wong