Does the Galaxy S24 Ultra take good photos of moving pets? 😼

There are a lot of great camera phones out there today, and the latest smartphones can often take great photos that are far better than what was achievable even a few years ago. But when you add a moving subject to the mix, such as a jumping child or a noisy pet, you can run into some problems.

Samsung phones are notorious for missing the mark time and time again in situations like this, so I was curious to see how the Galaxy S24 Ultra would perform. Has Samsung fixed the infamous shutter lag and motion blur when taking photos of moving subjects, or has it rested on its laurels knowing that its S Pen-toting flagship has no real competition? Was it?

Since I can't (and won't) share photos of my kids, I chose cats as my next best test subject. I put the Galaxy S24 Ultra and Google Pixel 8 Pro (the most reliable cameras I've ever used) to the test on her two adorable furry friends. This is my discovery.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra's camera works best when your pet is stationary.

Let's start with the positives. As long as the fluffy mischief-makers were still, the Galaxy S24 Ultra's camera worked very well. I could point out small details for hours on end (the S24 Ultra's colors are more vibrant, but it also has added sharpness, and the Pixel's photos look a little more natural), but most of them are It is irrelevant for use. Are any of these photos satisfying? Yes. The incident has been resolved.

…But if it moves even a little, it's not so good.

Everything changed when the two kittens started moving. With the slightest movement, the Galaxy S24 Ultra rendered a blurry photo. The sad thing is when you think, “Oh, I took the picture on time,” only to realize that the image wasn't as good as you thought. I tried it with a regular lens, a 5x telephoto lens, and a 3x portrait lens, but the results were the same.

I wanted to know if shutter speed was the culprit, and sure enough, the Pixel was twice as fast as the Galaxy in most cases. The shutter speed for each photo below is shown in parentheses. Compared to a similar photo taken a second ago with a motionless cat, Samsung doesn't seem to change the shutter speed when motion is detected, whereas the Pixel cuts the shutter speed in half to adapt. . By not pursuing faster snaps, Samsung captures more movement when the subject is moving, and therefore becomes blurry.

This, along with the Pixel series' Face Unblur (now also available for pets), makes the Pixel a great camera experience for anyone who loves taking photos of people, pets, and children. In comparison, Samsung's cameras are surprisingly unreliable. I don't understand how the world's leading Android brand can provide such a terrible camera experience to the people and animals we love most.

For scientific purposes, I plan to test manual capture on the S24 Ultra in the future to see if faster capture fixes the blurring issue (it should). However, be realistic. No one would think of setting the shutter manually. phone speed. Especially not when taking pictures of moving subjects. In this situation, you need to snap it as soon as possible. The only time it makes sense to set it manually is if you're having a good photo session with your kids or pets and you know you can maintain the same speed for a while. Otherwise, it won't be possible with random snaps.

3x telephoto portraits are great in most cases

Besides shutter shake, I was also very interested in the benefits of a proper portrait lens. Galaxy S24 Ultra features two telephoto lenses: a large 5x 50MP and a small 3x 10MP. This is the first time I've owned a phone with two optical zoom options. I think the main cameras on modern phones are too wide, so I wanted to see how useful his standalone 3x lens would be, since he often zooms 2x/3x in his photos. right.

The answer is “very”. Portrait shots taken with the 3x lens are amazing. Check out the beautiful shots below.

Compare what you get when using portrait mode with the S24 Ultra's 3x telephoto lens to a Pixel 8 Pro's portrait photo with a 2x crop (from the main 1x lens) from literally the same distance. Samsung's 3x lens allows you to get closer to your subject without losing detail when cropping. And most importantly, it provides the correct telephoto lens focal length (and distortion).

However, one issue I ran into is that Samsung doesn't properly identify the subject for portraits, blurring the cat's face while keeping the cat's body and back in focus. To spot the differences correctly, you need to click on the samples below.

Sure, you can manually change the focus point and fix your photo, but not everyone knows that you can do it. More importantly, retouching these photos takes time. Samsung needs to improve detection to focus on the most important parts of the portrait.

Overall, I think this has relieved me a lot. It would be great if the Galaxy S24 Ultra's camera worked well for live subjects. Capture stunning snaps perfect for displaying on social media or on your phone's display. Additionally, personally, my ideal photo would be a soft-focus shot of the Pixel 8 Pro, with a color profile somewhere between the very natural, muted colors of the Pixel and the more saturated, vibrant colors of the Samsung. It is something that has.

But I'm worried about a scenario where the S24 Ultra fails. You don't want to use this as your only camera when taking photos of pets or people. Because pets and people can't be expected to stay still all the time. And because I definitely want to take candid mid-motion photos of my husband making silly expressions, my friend's dog smiling, or the neighborhood cat showing its teeth. It would be disappointing if 20-30% of those photos were blurry. That's my problem with the S24 Ultra. An unreliable camera is a terrible camera.

What do you think about the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra's performance with pets and moving subjects? Let us know in the poll or in the comments section below.