Feb 23, 2022 7:26 PM

Samsung Galaxy S22/S22+/S22 Ultra Camera Samples

Featured in this article

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
01
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, Portrait mode. Samsung says it has improved its Portrait mode with pets, and that's pretty evident here. There's a nice natural blur that tapers off past my pup's head. His face is sharp, and there are no weird clipping issues. 
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
02
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, 3x optical zoom. This camera is the same on the S22 and S22\+, and its quality is pretty great. Having extra cameras at differing zoom levels means you can get tack-sharp images no matter how far away you are from your subject.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
03
Samsung Galaxy S22, 50-megapixel camera with Night mode. Samsung's Night mode, which requires you to stay still as the camera captures multiple frames at different exposures and blends them together, has improved a little this year. I don't have any qualms here—my pup is sharp and the colors are nice. 
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
04
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, 10x optical zoom. The reason to buy the Ultra is the 10x zoom. It adds so much more versatility to your shooting kit. This kind of shot would've been impossible to get at this quality without 10x zoom. There *is* some over-brightening going on here though.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
05
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, 108-megapixel camera. You can choose to take the default pixel binned image with the S22's main cameras (seen here) or go into a high-megapixel mode to capture more detail (not seen here). That usually means a higher file size though. I ended up finding the pixel-binned image to be brighter and sharper, particularly in low light, even with Samsung's new Adaptive Pixel tech aiding the 108-MP or 50-MP mode.
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
06
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, 3x optical zoom. Compare this photo with the following image. This zoom camera does a pretty neat job, but it could do better. This is at sunset, and so the shadows on the side of the building we see should have more contrast, and the sun's rays should be a bit more golden.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
07
Google Pixel 6 Pro, 4x optical zoom. Yes, Google's phone has a slightly higher zoom (though it can't compete with the S22 Ultra's 10x zoom). But you can see some of the contrast I was talking about; zoom in and the image is really sharp too. 
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
08
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, Night mode. This church was *really* dark in real life, and the S22 Ultra did a great job here of illuminating it. Compare it to the following iPhone 13 Pro photo, however, and zoom in. It's a bit blurry with some of the fine details on the bricks, and it removes too much of the shadows.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
09
Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max, Night mode. As I said in the last image, the iPhone maintains shadows well here, so the image doesn't look too flat. It also has nicer colors. 
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
10
Samsung Galaxy S22, 3x optical zoom. I took photos with last year's S21 alongside the S22, and images from the 3x optical zoom camera were indeed a hair sharper and brighter than its predecessor. The colors are quite nice here.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
11
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, 3x optical zoom. The one area where I think Google Pixel phones and iPhones excel over Samsung is with high dynamic range (HDR) when you have a bright background and a darker foreground (or vice versa). Here, the sky in the background has this weird hazy effect, and the yellow blanket of sunlight isn't quite the right color. It's a bit too dream-like. 
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
12
Samsung Galaxy S22, Portrait mode. Portrait mode's improvements can be seen on people too\! The S22 did a fairly good job around the subject's hair, accurately applying the blur effect without looking too odd. My fiancée's face is really sharp if you zoom in, too.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
13
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, 10x optical zoom. I was on a bridge when I took this photo. Really far away. It's awesome that I can take a shot like this from my phone without having to digitally zoom in—everything looks pretty sharp\! 
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
14
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, 100x Space Zoom. OK, this is a bit gimmicky, but the S22 Ultra can technically zoom in up to 100x. But it's digital zoom, meaning the quality greatly suffers. That said, this is a handheld shot I took of the freaking *moon*. Use a tripod and it'll look even sharper.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
15
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, 10x optical zoom. You don't need to be a photographer to take advantage of 10x optical zoom. I've taken close-ups of people batting on a baseball field despite standing far away—imagine doing the same when you're on the bleachers watching your kid in Little League. Or, you know, you can take more pictures of dogs.  
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
16
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, 10x optical zoom. Or cats.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
17
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, 40-MP selfie camera. I'm not much of a selfie person, but I will say there isn't much to write home about with the selfies on the S22 range. There are times when it can perform well, but usually, I preferred the selfies I took on the Pixel 6. 
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
18
Samsung Galaxy S22\+, 3x optical zoom. This camera works pretty well with the Night mode, as you can see here in this sharp image. However, the same was not true with the 10x zoom camera on the Ultra. I usually ended up with a blurry image in low light.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
19
Samsung Galaxy S22, ultrawide camera. The ultrawide is the same on all three phones. It's sometimes a notch above the ultrawide on the iPhone, but I generally found the Pixel 6's ultrawide camera to produce sharper images. 
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
20
Samsung Galaxy S22\+, main camera. This was delicious. I quite like this photo too. It's sharp, vibrant, and colorful, and it's ramen\! What's not to like?