The Samsung Galaxy S 2 sports a delightful 8MP camera which is capable of shooting video in full 1080p. The mind really does boggle how they are able to fit so much technology into one of the world's slimmest mobile devices.
The camera quality on the S 2 is really strikingly good. Low/no light video footage shows only a small amount of "noise" and creates footage with a beautiful richness and depth of colour. Of course, this isn't going to be as good as professional equipment, but for my personal use it's perfect!
Below are a series of tests using the video-camera mode to give you an idea of the kind of footage it takes. I will update below as more content is added. All of them were shot in 1080p, though please bear in mind that YouTube re-encodes videos, so these aren't exactly true to the original output of the Galaxy S 2. If you would like a copy of the original footage get in touch!
Video Camera functionality (settings):
In (bright) sunlight:
In the shade:
In total darkness with the flash:
Samsung Galaxy S II in low light conditions:
A quick summary of "bad points" (though they're not really bad at all)...
- In the "low light" videos you can see that it takes a short while to focus on certain things and before it does there is a bit of "noise" - fuzziness - , but it gets there eventually. You can see this in the "Low Light" videos above
- If you wobble the camera a lot, there is a sort of "swimming" effect, as an anonymous commenter has pointed out, this is due to the "rolling shutter" (thanks to whoever told me that! :-) )
The "wobble" test:
- In 1080p mode the video "zooms in"
The wobble is to do with how the sensor works
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_shutter
You can see its stranger effects by pointing it at a propellor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fPSpeBfTgw&feature=related