Galaxy S24 Ultra vs iPhone 15 Pro Max Camera Test After 3 Weeks

what's up everybody this is Danny and today is the day that you've been waiting for the Galaxy s24 Ultra versus the iPhone 15 Pro Max photo comparison I've already done a video comparison so if you want to know all about video go ahead and check that video out but what we're going to do now is test the photos in every condition and see which one is the king for 2024 let's do it so let's start with the daytime pictures and this is going to be the same thing as usual it's almost impossible to buy a flagship smartphone that takes bad daytime photos but there are some differences that can change the experience for everyday photos so I'm going to generalize the differences so you can make a personal decision on which one you like more first is the color and contrast differences some photos will be very hard to tell them apart because both are just that good but some like this you'll see that the s24 ultra have a more saturated picture which gives it that extra vibrancy take a look at the sky here but look at how crazy this is this is a 12 megapixel photo from the s24 ultra and look at how saturated that is so if you like that vibrancy keep it there but if you want a more natural photo just jump up to the 50 megapixel mode that gives you more of an in between with more detail better colors so during the day this is a choice that you have here's an example where the 12 megapixel has a totally different color s than the 50 megapixel and even the 200 megapixel looks different but look here when the conditions get darker or it's a gloomy day the 12 megapixel brings out more Shadow detail and brightens things up where the 50 megapixel looks more true to life and the 200 megapixel looks even darker so play around with it but you do have choices but if I am speaking generally you will see that the s24 ultra has a contrasti shot with a little richer color you also see some white balance choices on the processing that will make things look drastically different like this one with the 5x but this is going to be personal preference for sure and what makes these even more confusing is they absolutely go back and forth where the iPhone bumps up the contrast but when you switch lenses look at how that totally flip-flops so it's hard to generalize because they both can be inconsistent for example look at how the s24 ultra is brighter with the image with more Shadow detail which I prefer then switch to the 5x lens and now they switch spots it's interesting how both of these handle the light light bulb though let me know which one that you prefer the Galaxy s24 Ultra likes to accentuate the highlights so you can see here where the iPhone balances the entire frame to prevent clipping as much as possible take a look at the trash can but the s24 ultra lifts the shadows and highlights to reflect the bright daytime look and that looked more accurate but like I showed prior when the conditions get a little darker the iPhone tends to bump up the shadows and produce a brighter picture so yeah that doesn't help much but I wanted to show you how these two cameras just handle things completely differently when it comes to Dynamic r they are both incredible but they also go back and forth on this as well I would think about this as how the entire image is processed versus how good the dynamic ranges here this is clear that the HDR algorithm just failed on the iPhone so you'll get anomalies here and there the biggest thing I think is the exposure on both size that can be tuned better sometimes the s24 ultra will let the highlights clip so that can be unpleasant but especially on the ultra wide that happens on the iPhone 2 so they are both prone to it but I think the iPhone is more prone to it lately so iPhone owners let me know if you're seeing this too the one thing that I want to talk about is how the s24 ultra does better in handling lights that come in from an angle that extra contrast and just the lens housing helps the image not being as washed out so I appreciate that during the day I also saw this on the 5x lens too so this is definitely something to think about of course I can't skip over this the infamous lens flaring can even be seen during the day on the iPhone so I can't wait until that housing gets re-engineered when pointing directly towards the sun though I think the iPhone does a better job with the Sun but look at the green flaring where it impacts the color of the image itself this one is a better example the highlights are better controlled in the middle especially in the foreground even with this ultrawide shot look at the sunlight pattern between the two both great and dynamic range just different overall processing but what about the detail well the Galaxy s24 Ultra has a 200 megapix sensor but it defaults to a 12 megapix output with the binning structure but the iPhone outputs a 24 megapixel image by default with all of their computation at that resolution so how do they differ this is where I think the iPhone pulls ahead because the 24 megapixel output on everyday photos is going to give you a sharper image with more detail and some of that does have to do with the focus points as well but this shot is one of my favorites here in Animal Kingdom absolutely beautiful and that shows the color differences between the two very well punching in slightly they don't look wildly different but it's when you punch in further you can start seeing the difference clearly but again no one's really zooming in this far to regular photos but this is just to show you the difference and the output on everyday photos now I don't want you to get the wrong idea that the Galaxy s24 ultra's 12 megapix output doesn't have any detail there's plenty of detail there you can see there's a clear processing difference where the iPhone hyper accentuates the details and every little detail is picked up and that is really impressive and the iPhone 15 pro and pro Max Chang the detail level this year with that 24 megapixel output so that really was a game changer for them in fact the 24 megapixel output is so good that it even competes with Samsung's 50 megapixel capture when it comes to detail and when you punch in you can really see how comparable it really is so Props to Apple there now Samsung last minute did add a 24 megapix mode to the s24 ultra but it's only an expert raw so you have to go to another mode to get to it and this takes a 12 megapixel and a 50 megapixel image together and combines it for more detail and here's how it Compares first of all it does come out as a DG file so you'll need to convert them in another app like Lightroom but I'm happy to say that the detail level seems to be very close to the iPhone's 24 megapixel output which is great this might be self-explanatory but if you use the 3x or 5X lenses they won't be 24 megapixels they'll be 12 megapixels so you can only do this with the main lens regardless look at how close these images look they both look fantastic when you crop in the detail level seems to be on par or even better but the s24 ultra does seem to be a bit oversharpened just for your info I did slide down the sharpening slider to zero because it was on 40 by default in Lightroom and when you go in and inspect the image it does look oversharpened like a JPEG so I would love to see how they progress this mode I get it because it was added add it in last minute so all they need to do is tune the software to back off the sharpening a bit and I think this resolution will compete nicely then hopefully we will see this as an option in the regular camera app if people use it enough in some scenarios like this one the detail and noise level are better on the s24 ultra look at how sharp the leaves are in the Rock itself very impressive of course when it comes to just pure resolution the Galaxy s24 Ultra has a 200 megapixel mode and when you shoot in this mode you get some insane amount of detail this is especially helpful for for landscape shots like this where you might want to reframe or print this later going up to a 1,00% scale crop look at the detail retained here on the Samsung so very impressive on the high resolution capture but I think when it comes to the modes more people will end up using the zoom lenses more than changing the resolution so let's test the zoom I think the biggest difference in the experience is that the iPhone 15 Pro Max does not have a 3X zoom level on an optical level so that is bypassed where the s24 ultra still has it so it gives it that extra flexibility the 5x Zoom is the most most interesting here so I tested that the most which I'll get to in a minute but like I said before the 10x digital zoom on the iPhone is so impressive during the day they should add a button for it but of course the 30X Zoom is still usable on the s24 ultra so this is still the best zoom experience and that 100x is just a party trick that most people won't use but this is cool to have in your pocket anyway even though the iPhone is not advertised as a zoom phone it competes better than it should especially during the day no doubt the Galaxy s24 Ultra is a better zoom camera look at the 5x quality here on the iPhone it looks more detailed and then at 10x you can obviously tell a difference on the Galaxy s24 Ultra but the iPhones is definitely usable 25x is where the iPhone starts to fall apart and that is the maximum Zoom where the 30X on the s24 ultra stay strong with great clarity and again that 100x is just crazy to have in your pocket the new 5x lens is what I think most people want to know about so the best way to test it is on a safari ride this is extremely bumpy and it will allow me to strictly use the 5x lens to get Zoom shots of the animals they both did well but I did notice that the iPhone's 5x lens for the most part did better on this test sometimes the colors did turn out better on the Galaxy s24 Ultra so respect to Samsung on the color tuning improvements iPhone owners know very well that you can get this awful white balanced and watched out photo on this time of day so I hope they can improve that in the future but for the most part the iPhone was consistently just grabbing sharper photos take a look at the elephants here the skin is just so much more detailed I think a lot of this has to do with the optical image stabilization on these two lenses I was holding them both in my hands hit the shutter at the exact same time and you can see the blur on the s24 ultra and while you can see the movement on the iPhone in the rest of the image it keeps the cheetah sharp which is impressive I took multiple photos and the same results almost every time and also the Highlight blowouts were even more apparent with the super bright conditions on the Galaxy s24 Ultra Samsung is well aware of this and they will be addressing this in the next sofware update so as soon as that drops I will make a followup video video so don't worry about that the shot of this Croc shows the blurriness under movement a little bit better where the iPhone is crisp yet again when the truck slowed down slightly the s24 ultra captured a good one here but then just seconds later look at this the consistency is what I'm hoping to see improve with the next update from Samsung I mean even driving by Colonel singala compound the iPhone had the crisper image so the colonel might have something to say about this Samsung the positive thing about the zoom experience on the Safari ride was having that 10x Zoom so easily accessible unlike the iPhone so I was able to grab this shot of the lion sleeping which was really cool speaking of blurriness I know a lot of you want me to test the shutter speed on the Galaxy s24 Ultra so here you go I never really saw an issue with this in good lighting so I took a ton of pictures back to back with both phones while my kids were drumming away as fast as they could but as the light went down this is where I normally have issues with the Samsung devices so did it improve at all on the second frame you can start seeing a little motion blur on my son's shoe they are running fast by the way and the face is sharper on the Samsung on this one which is nice to see but on this one here you can see the Samsung is suffering more from the blur but as you can see with my daughter the blurring effect is on both phones so I think the s24 ultra kept up pretty well despite the iPhone doing slightly better so let's go ahead and move on to portrait mode and skin tones because this is what I was really excited about testing and let me tell you they are both great with that 5x portrait mode this really lets you get that incredible background separation and adds that extra element to the photo taking experience the thing that makes the s24 ultra more flexible for portrait mode is that besides the main and 2x options it still gives you the 3x portrait mode option which is missing from the iPhone 15 Pro max if you want that you have to go to the regular Pro then you don't get the 5x so that is a compromise in comparison to the Samsung side of things but what I did notice on most of the shots is that the skin tones are brighter on the Galaxy s24 Ultra the iPhone with the now famous yellow tint as you can see here where the Samsung goes a bit colder and I prefer that more in this scenario the segmentation is good on both but look at the iPhone here with the indiv idual hair strands really impressed with that I know it's not perfect but hey this is next level for a smartphone here we do a swap where the iPhone is brighter on the skin tone where the s24 ultra goes in harder on the contrast which looks really great but if you just lift up the midtones a little bit this would make a better image as you can see so hopefully they will tune this up a little bit another example of the s24 ultra with a little too much saturation where the iPhone keeps it more natural but this is during golden hour so I can understand why it did that look at how impressive this 5x4 is I took this by mistake but the iPhone while not perfect really captured the leaves down here and separated this portion well if I had to call it though the iPhone's 5x portrait mode is a tiny bit sharper but they both look really really great I love this perspective and you can get some really great photos with the 5x lens in this scenario I was really surprised that the iPhone lost Focus while shooting it just didn't capture at all so I was surprised there this was all happening so fast I just kept hitting the shutter and this is what happens so the iPhone does mess up sometimes the skin tones also swap back and forth with the front-facing camera as well here the iPhone really brightens up my wife's skin I prefer the s24 ultra here and then here the s24 ultra goes brighter on my skin and you can see how it blows out a little portion behind my hair on this one when there's more than one person in the frame the iPhone seems to brighten up the scene more it probably has to do with my wife's skin tone here to balance out the entire shot when I got the whole family in I think I like the iPhone's rendition a little better in this one but under certain lighting conditions the iPhone can get washed out like this and go towards the cold tone where the Samsung curves towards the warmer and while both are not accurate I think I like the Samsung here much better so I think this is going to be a personal preference thing for sure on what colors and Renditions that you like better but I do love the fact that on the iPhone you can take a picture of a face and it automatically detects it as a person and you can just switch between portrait and non- portrait mode right here even if you forgot to put it into portrait mode on the s24 ultra yes you can go and change it in the editor later but I do need to mention the AI features on the s24 ultra for photos and this could take your edits to the next level by being able to pretty much remove anything that you want out of the picture with just a touch of a button and I think a lot of people will like this feature you can even change the scale of the person or object whatever you want so you can be super creative while even generative filling in areas that don't even exist on the picture I know this is not a part of image quality itself but it's still cool to have in a phone I'm sure the Apple answer will be coming later this year but as of right now the iPhone can't do this with the stock photo editor so let me know if you want to see these types of features on the iPhone okay so that about does it for the daytime here are some food shots and macro mode pictures to end it out I think with a few software updates on the Galaxy s24 Ultra this could be one of the best cameras on the market for sure the Galaxy s24 Ultra Still Remains more flexible as a camera system because of the vast amount of choices and features that it brings but when it comes to the overall image quality I think at its current time the iPhone still edges it during the daytime so to see what what happens at nighttime and low light go ahead and check out the next video where I break down the nighttime photos I'm doing these as two separate videos so it's a little bit easier to follow let me know if you like that or if you don't like that and I'll go ahead and adjust on my next camera comparisons thank you for watching and thank you for the support of course when a software update drops I will make sure that I test those specific features and give you an update on this channel so make sure that you subscribe I went ahead and made this video anyway cuz I want to use this as the master reference to the camera comparisons and their features and everything that gets updated along the way I'll make sure I touch on those on this channel so thank you for watching guys I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Danny Winget

Views: 75,373

Keywords: samsung galaxy s24 ultra, galaxy s24 ultra, samsung galaxy s24 ultra camera, galaxy s24 ultra camera, galaxy s24 ultra camera test, galaxy s24 ultra camera review, galaxy s24 ultra camera comparison, galaxy s24 ultra vs iphone 15 pro max, galaxy s24 ultra vs iphone 15 pro max camera, galaxy s24 ultra vs iphone 15 pro max camera test, iphone 15 pro max vs galaxy s24 ultra camera, iphone 15 pro max vs galaxy s24 ultra camera test, danny winget, s24 ultra vs iphone 15 pro max

Id: 8ZM8HB3_JbA

Length: 14min 35sec (875 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 09 2024