The Samsung Galaxy S8 Is a Great Camera

The Samsung Galaxy S8.

As a smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S8 is, well, a phone.  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.  It does have incredible sound quality which is especially noticeable when I am on speakerphone.  But what makes this device (and successor models, I'm sure) outstanding is the camera.

I took "Kenneth Avenue at Night" and all the other photos in this post with my Galaxy S8.  The lens is unbelievably good, diminished only somewhat by the lack of an optical zoom.

"Kenneth Avenue at Night" in Carmichael CA

Taking a good photo on full automatic requires a brief amount of time for set-up and the tap of only one button in "Photo" mode.  For instance, if you want to document a moment, the set-up should only take a few seconds, maybe several seconds.

If you strive to make a great photo or at least the best photo you can make, there's a lot to consider and perhaps more buttons to tap.

Barnes & Noble Kitchen in Folsom CA

• "PRO" MODE.  Do you want to stay on full automatic or switch to the "Pro" mode and modify the exposure, the color, or the white balance?
• VANTAGE POINT.  Should you stand where you are?  Should you move closer?  (As I counsel later, do not use the zoom function on this camera.)  Do you need to crouch, stand on a bench, climb a tree, lie on your stomach, or walk a hundred feet to the right?
• HANDLING.  Does your vantage point hamper your handling of the camera so that you have to trigger the exposure with a voice command?  Is there anything nearby that you can use to immobilize the camera—a pole, tree, fence post, building, hood or roof of a car, large boulder, etc.?
• COMPOSITION AND FRAMING.  Can you fill the frame with your subject(s)?  Do you want to apply the "rule of thirds"?  Is anything unsightly in the foreground?  Is the background complimentary or does it clash with the subject(s)?  Do you need to change position to get an acceptable background?
• LIGHT.  What kind of light do you have?  "Auto" white balance should handle most kinds of light to give you a photo with the proper colors and warmth/coolness.  But ask yourself two more questions.  How much light is there? What direction is it coming from?  Indoors, find a way to use the available lighting.  Indoor flash photography with most simple cameras is rubbish.  The road to Hell is paved with these images.
• PHOTO PROCESSING.  What, if anything, are you already planning to do to this photo in your processing app after the shot?  Are any problems in the scene the kind that might be fixable afterward?  

Selfies can be snapped, let's face it.  You want eyes open, beaming faces, and the other thing visible and identifiable in the frame.  Scenic shots, however, should be set up properly and not snapped.  To get all or most of what you want in the frame and to exclude what you do not want, you might have to move around to find the best vantage point.  If you want the subject closer to you, remember: do not use the camera's zoom feature.  Instead, zoom with your feet: get as close as you need to, take the shot, and then, if necessary, crop it to suit your purpose.

U.S. 6 signpost in Delta UT.  U.S. 6 was the route Jack Kerouac took
from Cape Cod to Nevada on the trip that inspired On the Road.

James Irvine Trail in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park near Orick CA.

A rest area in central Wyoming was behind me when I took this photo.

"Morning Storm Clouds" as seen from White Rock Road outside
Rancho Cordova CA, converted from color to black and white
with high contrast in Photoshop Elements 14

Never use a digital zoom on any camera.  Unfortunately, the only zoom on the Galaxy S8 is digital.  Optical zooms maintain the full HD resolution available on a camera.  Digital zooms severely reduce the resolution of an image.  Think of VHS resolution on an old video compared to Blu-ray.  Therefore, to zoom, zoom with your feet by moving closer.  Get as close as you want, take the shot, and then crop.  You have 9 megapixels to work with for cropping.

Columns under the front archway into the Salt Lake City and County Building.

Panoramas require near-perfect execution. Find the "Panorama" mode.  A portrait-oriented panorama gives you more photo for the same amount of labor than a landscape one.  In the two photos below, the first was taken portrait and the second was landscape.  Look for something in the frame that will help keep the camera on a level plane throughout the shot, like the relatively clean  horizon line in the first photo below and the rough one in the next photo.  If you are going to pivot on your feet during the shot, do a dry run beforehand.

A 180° pano taken from The Strand at the foot of 22nd Street in Hermosa Beach CA

360° pano with added graphics showing William Ide Adobe State Historic Park in Red Bluff CA

Close-ups are sharp.  As with close-ups in any camera, however, the shallow depth of field creates a blurred background.  (The depth of field is the area in the image's third dimension that is in focus.)  The blurred background can be a happy artistic accident or a nuisance.  In either case, the depth of field cannot be increased with this camera except by moving farther away from the subject.  When operating more dynamic cameras, just remember: the higher the f-stop number, the greater the depth of field.  Happily, I have liked the blurred-background effect in my close-ups.

Flora at the same central Wyoming rest area as before.

This beauty is my Edison Collier Persimmon Swirl Acrylic fountain pen.
Notice that the image begins to blur at the ball of the clip.  Capped,
this pen is 150 mm (just under 6 inches) in length.

To perform excellent photo-processing on your phone, download this free app: Snapseed.  Every photo in this post except the columns was processed with Snapseed.  Regardless of which smartphone you own, Snapseed will make your photos better.  You can punch up every image with one tap of either "Pop" or "Accentuate" in the "Looks" folder.  The "Looks" folder has a few artsy one-tap presets too.  And in the "Tools" folder there are a couple dozen presets with multi-preset subfolders.  Every preset selection can be adjusted with the slide of a finger.

I have Photoshop Elements 14 on my desktop computer, but I routinely transfer old photos taken with other cameras to my phone so I can process them with Snapseed.  Occasionally I use both processors on a single photo—Snapseed for some jobs and PE 14 for others.  Here, for example, are two versions of the same photo.  The first is the unprocessed original.  The second was processed with both Snapseed and PE 14.

Townhouse on The Strand at 22nd
Street in Hermosa Beach CA

Same image but processed with Snapseed
("Looks"/"Pop"; "Tools/"Details"
/"Structure") and Photoshop
Elements 14 ("Filter"/"Brush Strokes"
/"Ink Outlines")