My Galaxy S21’s cameras have been very good during the first year, and that’s despite it being the base model of the S21 series.
During the last 12-ish months, I’ve never I wished that I instead opted for the S21 Plus or the S21 Ultra.
That’s not to say it’s been perfect at all times – there have been a few frustrating ‘annoyances,’ but I’ll go into those a bit later.
Now, as there are three cameras on my S21, there is quite a lot to discuss. As such, I’ve decided to split this blog into 2 sections:
- 1. Ultrawide camera; and,
- 2. Wide & Telephoto cameras.
First up: the ultrawide sensor.
Ullllllllltra-wiiiiiiide
Although ultrawide cameras have been around on phones since the LG G5 in 2016 – a phone that I very nearly purchased – the S21 is actually the first phone I’ve owned that’s got one.
If anything, that proves that it hasn’t been an essential feature for me. Thus far, I’ve found that using the Panorama mode to capture ultrawide shots has been an efficient workaround method, if sometimes producing photos that are a little distorted.
From a quick internet search, while using the Panorama mode to capture ultrawide shots has personally been great, it appears to be a solution that’s not commonly known.
Still, on my S21, the ultrawide camera has proven to be the most useful of the 3 cameras on my Galaxy S21 – and, in the aforementioned Panorama mode, can capture even wider ultrawide shots.
Indoors, and in tight spaces, photo’s are now much easier to capture. No more stepping back indefinitely to capture a scene – just one flick of the lens, and photo taken!
This is particularly true when the field of view of the default ‘wide’ lens just wasn’t wide enough, or when lighting wasn’t optimal.
In Night mode, it’s also proved very useful, something I discovered on a recent trip to Prague.
But it hasn’t always been perfect – ultrawide night mode photos can be grainy, with some blurriness around the edges. It’s unfortunately an expectation that arises when the ultrawide lens hasn’t been given the same treatment as the main camera sensor – something that’s common with a lot of phones.
Although the Galaxy S21 is my first phone with an ultrawide camera, I’ve tested phones such as the LG G5 before, and my thoughts then about the technology still largely hold up today:
“[The LG G5’s] wide-angle lens is great, even if there’s a little bit of fish-eye distortion near the outer edges of the image.
My only gripe with the dual-camera setup is that the wide angle 2nd camera is a lower resolution than the main one – 8mp to the primary’s 16mp.
Not that I’d be fooled by Megapixels, though – but I found the difference in image quality very noticeable. During my in-store tests, results were poor. Very… poor.”
The ultrawide lens undoubtedly improves the choice of perspectives, but without proper optimisation, it still feels like a bit of a gimmick.
If the ultrawide’s quality doesn’t match the main camera, is it still useful, or simply a marketing tool to get you to buy the phone?
Worse still, it’s an issue which afflicts almost every phone manufacturer out there, including Apple…
That said, I’ve found that the ultrawide camera has both improved my creativity and ability to capture a wide angle scene, and at all times of the day (and night) it’s proved an especially useful tool.
Panoramas, but even wiiiiderrrr
The ultrawide camera lens has also been useful for capturing even wider panoramic shots than before – something that, again, might not be common knowledge.
It means that for some landscape photos, I can capture even more of the scene than I could by simply using the ultrawide camera on its own.
Although it’s clearly the weaker of the 3 lenses, with less optimisation & image correction, the post-processing does a good job of smoothing out the blurriness.
Also, HDR is as amply applied here as it is with the wide/main sensor and the telephoto lens.
Sometimes, the blue skies are too blue, but that isn’t a criticism unique to the ultrawide sensor.
That’s part 1 of the cameras done, now onto part 2 – the Wide & Telephoto lenses!
– Chris JK.
KPH tech blog 
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