Corporate video production on the Samsung galaxy S7 camera phone This week I ended a long term mobile phone relationship with Apple on account of the new Samsung Galaxy S7. Two main reasons. Samsung’s support of VR and the camera. The camera is seriously seductive. I took it out on a shoot for a corporate video production in London to put it through it’s paces. No, I didn’t turn up in front of a corporate client and start shooting everything with a mobile phone but I did strap it to the top of my old workhorse the Sony FS100. Having a back up camera on top of the main one is always a good idea I think for important video shoots. So how did it deliver?
The Samsung galaxy S7 camer Smart phone cameras have always been a bit of a wind up for any serious video production work. They are never great in lowlight, have limited memory and are slow to transfer the footage. They are mostly designed for point and shoot which is fine as this is mostly what people want to do with smart phone cameras. Over riding the automatic Controls is sometimes possible with third-party apps. The Galaxy S7 has full manual control built-in with a reasonably effective user interface.
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Video Resolution up to 4k The camera shoots up to 4K resolution video footage which certainly isn’t unique among smart phones these days though is very welcome. Few people actually ever deliver anything in 4K though the extra resolution allows me to crop and reframe the shot substantially in the edit. This is useful considering the lens doesn’t have an optical zoom. There are a variety of resolution options 4K, 2.7K, Full HD, HD and VGA.
The Galaxy S7 camera lens The lens is a fixed aperture F1 .7. This has the lowest f-stop I’ve seen on any smart phone camera and is a welcome addition. It’s allows decent lowlight performance and gives a slightly shallower depth of field than other smart phone cameras for a touch of that filmic DSLR look. It’s also a bit wider than other phone cameras I’ve seen. When taking stills it’s very wide though once you start recording video the frame crops to a very usable semi wide. This is very usable for me. My last iPhone had too narrow a field of view limiting its use. The lens also uses optical stabilisation which for me is a deal breaker. The only iPhone to use stabilisation are the 6 plus and 6S plus which are too big a phone for my taste. The Samsung galaxy S7 also uses what it calls video stabilisation in some modes.
This seems to be a software stabilisation offered by Samsung which can be used in addition to the optical stabilisation though not in the 4K mode. I suspect I’d want to leave this alone for the most part and do any extra software stabilization within an editing program. Frame rate / Slow motion I sometimes film at higher frame rate’s so I have the option of doing subtle slow motion in the edit though I rarely use extreme slow motion. The galaxy S7 films at 30 frames per second as standard though has a full HD option at 60 frames per second which is all I need for most of my slow motion requirements. It also has a slow motion mode at 120 frames per second though decreases the resolution to 720p HD (1280 x 720). This could be useful for effects and creating smooth pans. Dual Pixel Autofocus The Galaxy S7 is the only camera to include dual pixel autofocus, a feature sometimes seen in modern high-end DSLRs. This makes for very fast and accurate autofocusing. It also includes a variety of focusing methods to try to ascertain what the user wishes to focus on. It includes a useful selective focus option where you can touch the screen to focus on a particular object. It also includes tracking autofocus which attempts to focus on a moving object. Although I mostly use manual focus when shooting, an accurate autofocus system is very useful when using a stabiliser like a steadicam or glide cam. It’s also useful for the run and gun type shoots I often do around London where I don’t have much time to think. I find the autofocus works very well. Manual controls on the galaxy S7 camera
The lens is fixed at an aperture of F1 .7 so to maintain any decent exposure on a bright day the shutter speed compensates which can make the video look slightly unnatural. If anyone came up with an ND filter for the camera this would solve the problem. Apart from that the camera has manual control over pretty much everything I need on a day-to-day basis. ISO up to 800 which along with the F1.7 lens is enough to shoot in moderately low light conditions. An auto exposure over ride is another useful addition as is an exposure
and focus lock. When manually focusing the screen jumps to an expanded focus mode digitally zooming in to be able to see the correct focus. A very useful feature that I have on my DSLRs and bigger video cameras. Settings can be changed on the fly using on screen sliders which works nicely and intuitively.
Removable storage
This innocuous little feature is probably it’s biggest selling point for me. If you’ve ever had to faff around with Apple iTunes trying to transfer large video files (such as 4K), the option of a removable SD card is a godsend. It also gives you unlimited shooting time unlike smart phones that limit you to relatively expensive RAM memory. It works perfectly. I simply shoot to the card and then put it straight into my computer to import into an editing program. Just like I would for any other camera.
And if you’re filming in a rainy place like London, UK It’s waterproof! I was always paranoid about filming with my old iPhone in the rain for fear of the slightest drop of water destroying it. The Samsung galaxy S7 is apparently waterproof down to 1.5 m so you could in theory film underwater with it though I haven’t tried. It’s a great camera for shooting video and stills as well as being a great all-round phone. I run a corporate video production company in London, UK and can see this phone finding all sorts of uses in my daily shooting kit. If I can muster up the courage I might even consider filming a whole promotional video with it.