As an amateur landscape photographer, I've spent the last few years upgrading cameras, lenses and gear in the search to get the best tools for the best shots. For a long time that ended up being a Canon EOS 6D - a favourite for many amateur and professional photographers alike thanks to it's full frame sensor and (relatively) low price.
But recently I did something previously unthinkable and sold the Canon camera, in favour of using my phone - a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, along with the slightly eccentric looking Lens Cover kit.
Although the phone camera has a few drawbacks compared to the 'real' camera, the test shots I've taken to compare the two show the phone coming up with better shots in almost every situation. Read on for more…
Most of the time I like to use manual shooting modes, but the above photos were taken on auto mode, just point and shoot. The extra lens was not attached to the phone in this shot. One thing that's immediately obvious is the difference in dimensions of the two photos - the Samsung takes something closer to a square image, which is much more social-media friendly (think Instagram, where landscape photos are a nightmare to post). The Samsung also manages to focus on more areas at once, with the plants, cliffs and clouds all looking sharp. In comparison the Canon focused on the sand, but when zooming in it becomes obvious the cliffs and plants aren't as sharp. Finally the Samsung picks up way more detail in the cloud and just took a more vibrant looking image overall.
Comparison chart
Looking at the above chart, the biggest drawback with the Samsung is the fixed aperture. Being able to control aperture means being in control of how much light is hitting the image sensor at any one time, which is great for long exposure photography - think waterfalls or shots of the night sky. Similarly there's no competition when it comes to ISO range (the sensitivity of the image sensor to light) - the Canon easily wins. Even comparison shots taken on both devices at the same ISO of 800 looked quite grainy from the Samsung, but quite clear and free of noise on the Canon.
Given those drawbacks though, I still can't get over how great it is to head off into the mountains now with only the relatively small phone in my pocket, along with a few lightweight accessories in my bag. Comparing the weight and size of the two it's crazy to think how much energy I used dragging that big heavy Canon around. Not to mention the fact that the phone is waterproof and carried safely around in a case, making it much more tolerant to being accidentally dropped.
The accessories I'm using with the phone include a Joby GripTight Tripod Mount to hold the phone on a tripod, which is either a regular full sized tripod or a Joby GorillaPod, depending on where I'm going and how much gear I want to carry. If I want to use a filter, I just hand-hold it in front of the lens. Generally I use a circular polarising filter for controlling reflected light, or neutral density filters for reducing the amount of light getting to the camera sensor. Although it's not ideal to stand there holding filters over the camera for longer exposures, it's still way quicker than properly attaching the filter to the Canon lens using a ring mount and filter holder. And because the filters are much bigger than the phone camera lens, there's no sign of it in the corners of my shots, as per these photos:
Using filters
So in these shots I'm using a circular polarizing filter to get some control of the way light is reflecting off the pond. By the time that filter is mounted on the Canon, you can actually see it in the corners of the shot, meaning I'd have to crop the photo smaller to remove them. With the Samsung the filter is far bigger than the lens, so it doesn't show up. This problem could have been fixed in camera on the Canon by zooming the lens slightly, or buying slimmer filters in the first place, but that would have been an extra expense.
Wide angle shots
The Samsung above image was taken using the wide angle lens from the Lens Cover kit on the phone. As you can see it actually captures a much bigger area than even the widest lens setting on the Canon.
Zoom/telephoto lenses
Zoom is one area where I expected the Canon to easily win. While there's a lot of situations where it would, I struggle to see much difference in the above images. The Canon image was taken by simply twisting the lens to zoom, while the Samsung needed to have the telephoto lens from the Lens Cover kit attached, and some further digital zoom applied to match the crop of the Canon. If the image was displayed bigger (eg printed to a poster), or if you zoom in, you would see that the Canon produces much clearer results when zoomed. But for sharing on social media where images are generally only displayed on smaller screens anyway, there's effectively no difference here, in fact the Samsung image looks slightly clearer to me.
Exposure bracketing
The above images are examples of exposure bracketing, where three images are taken at once, each exposed slightly differently. One image is too dark, one is 'just right', and one is too light. When combined using software like Photoshop, the image gets a much bigger range of detail than you'd get from one shot alone. Both devices needed custom software installed to do this automatically, although it can also be done manually, which is slower. On the Canon I had Magic Lantern installed, and on the phone I was using Camera FV-5. Again the Samsung is able to get a wider field of view, and in my opinion, a nicer looking image.
Star/night photography
Here's the one down-side of the phone - nightscapes or astrophotography. The Canon 6D is one of the best cameras available for this thanks to a full-frame image sensor, which is able to physically capture more light than the much smaller sensor in the Samsung phone. The Samsung image also looks far more grainy than the Canon even though they both used a setting of ISO 800, and I found it harder to get the white balance right with the Samsung despite capturing a RAW image.
That said, it's not completely out of the question to take these kinds of photos on the phone. The Samsung is able to capture RAW images, meaning more in-depth editing is possible afterwards, and it can capture long exposures of up to 10 seconds. It's something I can't wait to try out as the milky way becomes more visible here in New Zealand over the next few months.
Conclusion
For sharing photos on social media, where viewers are more likely to be scrolling through a feed on a smartphone, the large 20MP images of the Canon aren't necessary, and the sheer bulk of the camera, not to mention the price tag makes it a liability to drag around mountains and rivers trying to find a great landscape shot.
On the other hand the Samsung manages to take images that are almost always better than the Canon, while being lighter and easier to carry around. The fact that it's also waterproof and able to be kept in a case makes it much less of a worry to have on me in the outdoors. Even multi-day use is possible thanks to products like power banks or solar charging panels.
I can't wait to try the Galaxy S7 camera out on a few more trips around New Zealand - check out where I'm at on my Instagram - @oli5000
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