Samsung S23 Ultra: Photographer's Review

Sheeeeesh guys, absolutely triggered some if you that I said some of the upgrades were incremental 👀 did anyone else see MKBHD’s Intro? I was merely saying that if anyone has the S22 Ultra they would likely not be able to notice significant performance upgrades but with features like the camera (and battery too to be fair) you’d notice a significant difference!

New subscriber. I really pay attention to every thing you say. Really nice review😃😃. Cheers from Lima, Perú.

Rewatching this gem, in time for the S24 drop

Bravo.. You are a professional, there are simply no words. Good afternoon, I am also a photographer and videographer. Say please? Which is better for photos and videos: SONY XPERIA PRO-I, SONY XPERIA 1V or S 23 ultra, your advice please, which one should I take? I'm really looking forward to your response. Thank you very much in advance.

Was it REALLY necessary to shoot your sample photos and videos in an apple store while making a review of a SAMSUNG phone? I mean, REALLY??? I'm not being paranoid, and believe me, I'm not an apple hater, but do I have to watch and see apple commercials like literally everywhere??? Come on, make some sense!

you can take 200MP photos with only 2 to 3MB in file size with heic file type, you just enable it in the settings. i have now enabled the reduction is file size is so great even for the standard 12mp photos

They need to stop increasing the megapixels and instead increase sensor size.

Thanks!

One of the best videos ❤

How is the battery life?

I dont like the camera😢😢..im not satisfied..it looks my skin is dry on my camera

70€ case WTF is wrong with you people!

A great phone.... Samsung s23 ultra....

Travelling is what sold me on the S23 Ultra! I went along the east coast of Australia and did a lot of wildlife and nature photography. For those who know, 10x - 30x zoom is usually the sweet spot for wildlife photography. Having a 10x optical zoom lens made all the difference!

In scenarios where I didn't have a DSLR, it out performed most other phones in our groups. I decided to leave scene optimizer on, although it does over saturate in some cases it did take a picture of how I remembered the moment (as when you're in a new country, everything does seem more vibrant as your senses are taking in all the new sights and smells).

I took mine out to two events in the past week to see if I could get some viable shots. Some notable experiences are that I was able to get some cool shots with the .6 setting, which I could not get with a 24-70, so that was a win. Otherwise I shot with the RAW app capturing only "RAW" files. In that app at 12 mp it's wildly oversharpened. I'm expecting no sharpening at all. Secondly, I took the same shots in many cases with the 12mp and 50mp for comparison, and I saw the oversharpening of 12mp again, but then the 50mp versions were not overly sharpened, but so badly overexposed as to be unrecoverable in lightroom, so I ended up trying to fix the over-sharpened 12mp files. Overall, I would say that they have some real work to do. I see the possibilities, but it's a little disappointing that they are missing some really fundamental targets that require only a rudimentary understanding of the purpose of RAW. RAW should be RAW, and exposure is a mess, even with the pro app.

Question for you.. i bought it the other the and i dont like the camera at all, i feel like i got scammed because i feel like images were better on my mi 10t pro which sounds absurd

With the 10mp pic, how large of a photo could you print?

Forget about negative the keyboard warriors, appreciate your time & effort & fab content.

WE DONT NEED 8K
I'D SAY 1440P is the sweet spot for me

great video,,,,,,,,, if only you could stop waving your arm about. It would become far more watchable..

Camera quality is stellar on its own display .. bcz as soon as you upload to social media apps its mediocre at best 😢
So you can't show others how advanced your S23U camera is!😪

Lindo.s23.ultra.amigo

My god this phone is a beast. Wish I could afford this

To get around the file size how come you are not using HEIC? The file size is not much larger than the standard 12MP mode.

Anu kayang feeling kapag naka bilinka Ng ganyang klaseng phone HAHA

The pixel family don't over saturate or over sharpen, they're the king of camera phones

My pixel 6pro just broke in Colombia. They don't sell Google phones here so I've just bought the s23 ultra my first impressions aren't good. I much prefer the photography on the pixel phones, I hope I can learn to like it

Finally, someone answers my questions! I've been wondering for a long time if softening meant "less sharpening" or "added softening". I also feel that the second interpretation is the right one (unfortunately).

Can you review Xiaomi 13 pro camera 👍🏻

can you do a pixel vs s23 video?
or are you interested in trying a GCAM mod for the s23?

truly a really great camera smartphone

I feel like the photos are better with scene optimizer turned off

Its come to a point thanks to NEW ALGORITHM in Cameras where you do not need to buy a professional camera to shot EXCEPTIONAL photos ,all you got is your phone 🙌🙌

S23 ultra is a great phone. But it's very expensive. So I bought pixel 7

Samsung wants to be the best android camera with tonnes of hardware asbits counterpart google is compensating with software
Nice battle..

Please give us all the original photos you had shown us the video.

I love samsung flagships phones

When I shoot in 50mp with expert raw my photos look good but when I export them to lightroom they come out dark. I have to bump up exposure to 4+ to fix the photo. Why is this happening?

The Camera Assist app works on my S21U also, thanks for the tip

So far I'm disgusted with photos from s23 ultra.
Reviews show zooming in on photo of skyscrapers and seeing every detail on a tiny window area.
My photos with 50 and 200mp zoomed in look li,e somone applied the abstract painting filter.... swirls of blurry details or large blotchy pixelated squares
Wtf is wrong with this.
It's worse than the oneplus 8 I am replacing for almost every photo situation

Great review overall but I do take exception to your comments about 8K video recording. First of all, in the 4K mode you are not actually getting 4K of resolution. This has commonly been the case due to the RGB bayer filter limiting actual resolution (unless it's over-sampled). Anyway, I took a couple of the same videos in 4K and 8K. I examined them both on my 28" 4K monitor and there was no doubt that the 8K mode recorded significantly more detail. I down-converted the 8K video to 4K using Handbrake and the detail increase was left intact. Looking at them on a 65" TV from 8 or 10 feet away it would be almost impossible to see the difference but on a 28" 4K monitor, the difference was obvious.

Great Video, I´m looking for a new Smartphone and my main focus is the Kamera. Your Video really helped me :) I was also thinking about buying the S23 Ultra ot the new Sony Xperia leading smartphone or the Xiaomi 13 Pro. What do you think of those cameras? :)

I always turn off scene optimizer and hdr on my camera settings I just don't like it when taking images of myself and other people I look reddish.

The Samsung s23 ultra like other other phones that do multi stacking to improve dynamic range have serious issues and I'm surprised nobody has picked this up. There is horrendous banding in blue skies that is visible even under small image sizes and is very visible in prints as well. It's a no buy for me.

Did they take away the ability to x2 speed up videos?

Great reviews! We need one for pixel 7 pro

I think it's great what you're doing, despite obviously being afflicted with Parkinson's. How you must have to fight to keep the camera still is practically heroic

Tom, I'm sorry, but you're so cute, I wanna kiss you <3