What mid-range smartphone for camera?

[Freegs]

Hi all,

I'm hoping to get some advice regarding a decent mid range £350 smartphone with the camera quality being my primary interest. I've owned a Panasonic LX100 compact for the past 12 months but not used it as much as I had expected. That, coupled with the fact that my ageing Motorola G3 is sorely in need of replacement and one of my friends now works for Nikon and can get me a hefty discount on their DSLR's means i'm looking to replace the LX100 with a new phone for snaps on the go.

There seems a plethora of choice in the current market, further confused by the option of buying an older 'flagship' model such as the Samsung S6 (will I be sacrificing the recent advances in UI/Hardwear/Android?). The Moto G5 plus is quite a popular mid-range model but I don't think the camera is it's strongest point. I have been very impressed with Samsung S camera's and am considering the S6. There are newer choices such as the Oneplus 3T which seems good but the camera does not receive rave reviews.

Any real-world advice would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers,

Tom

[MikeGoodwin]

S6 will shoot raw (dng in pro mode) as well as nice jpeg. Itll never replace a good camera, but if you've no other choice then I guess itll do just fine. I went to Rome and shot the whole trip with an S6 and got some nice shots. Personally Id just dump jpeg with a mobile as raw mobile images are rarely worth the bother. The Cloud pic below is raw from an S6 Edge +, the other 2 are jpeg from S6 Edge +

Any Samsung will do very well (S6,7,8), iPhones have very good mobile sensors but I don't like the OS.

Some from the S6:

Bee Fly Galaxy S6

Galaxy s6 by

Galaxy S6 Raw


Some more, Veronicas is from my stag do so I was absolutely st faced, even so I was impressed with how well the image turned out.

The Building is one of the first photos I took with the S6.

Reef by

Rome by





Aside from the clould photo which is dng, the rest are unedited.

HTH.

Edited by MikeGoodwin on Saturday 24th June 22:19

Edited by MikeGoodwin on Saturday 24th June 22:21

[S47]

Makes sense to use a decent phone for a camera, I used to use canons 'G'series of compact camera's, but they'd only last a year or so B4 the motorised camera lens fked up - since I got a Samsung S2 phone 6years ago I've only ever used the phone for this type of SNAPS, Any samsing S series has a really excellent camera IMO has as been mentioned forget the camera RAW images the phone JPEGS are excellent just use 'best quality from the phone and set ISO to minimum [100 ISO]

[Freegs]

Thanks all for the advice, very much appreciated! Particularly Mike Goodwin, those shots are stunning for a phone.

Further research has shown that galaxy S7's are available around the £350 mark albeit second hand but as new so I think that's my best bet as the battery is supposedly considerably better than the S6 and there's a micro SD for expandable memory.

[Kernowlokal]

My OnePlus 3T is pretty good and I think they are around your budget, probably under that now as they've just released the new model.






No editing in any of those pics. First shot was very early morning, next was mid afternoon, third was sunset and last was artificial light.

I believe the camera workings are Sony, which is one of the reasons I went for the 3T, my previous Sony Z3 had a brilliant camera. The OnePlus software isn't great though, a lot of shots were coming out blurred, so tried a few other things, eventually finding Cameringo works best.

Other than the camera, it's got a fast processor, 6gb of ram and 128gb built in memory.

Only real issue is that it's not one of the big brands, but the specs are better that the Samsungs and Sonys that were available and it was about £10-15 a month cheaper.

[Freegs]

Thanks yes I've been considering the Oneplus 3T as well, great to have some shots as well... especially when they look so familiar. I grew up in Lelant and parents now live down on the Lizard near Coverack. I surfed Mexico's two weeks ago when I was last down but the weather wasn't quite as good as it is in your shots.

[paulrockliffe]

The other thing to look out for is how long it takes from getting the phone out to being able to take a picture. My Sony Xperia Z5 took something like 10s to fire up the camera app and be ready to shoot - garbage and no use for capturing stuff as it happens. My new S8+ is as quick as my DSLR!

[Kernowlokal]

Freegs said:

Thanks yes I've been considering the Oneplus 3T as well, great to have some shots as well... especially when they look so familiar. I grew up in Lelant and parents now live down on the Lizard near Coverack. I surfed Mexico's two weeks ago when I was last down but the weather wasn't quite as good as it is in your shots.

i I saw earlier that the OnePlus 5 is £450, which seems like a good price to me.

I grew up near Gwithian, and have been there (with a couple of years in St Ives/Carbis Bay and Camborne) since. It's family land and we're building here soon. I haven't been in the water yet this year, not had the chance when there has been waves, a newborn and toddler seem to take up a lot of time. With the weather warming up a bit, I can take the toddler out for a wave or two and then leave him with my wife while I get a few waves.

Here's one of Mexico when it was on (a little over head high, long barrels), but not taken on my phone.