Mishka's Studio - A comparison of two cameras - part2

So last month, I spent the better part of the month comparing my newest S8 Galaxy cell phone camera, and discovered that it does so much more - like work like a little computer. It's really cool, because these little computers are just the shizzle nowdays, and everyone has them. Heck I bought a MS Surface pro tablet PC and it just overnight replaced my laptop like that. Just goes to show you, that given enough time, these little devices will rewrite the rules on how we go about our lives.. but I digress..

I remember the days of film cameras, and then someone showed me a 1MPIX camera and it's really small and grainy pics..what a piece of crap it was, and one advantage - NO FILM!

I did not have to buy film from Walgreens, and have my "pics" developed by someone with a religious agenda! - I mean, the digital age came on strong - from large cell phone, underperforming laptops, large and uninpressive cellphone camers etc.. and now days, Qualcomm and Intel chips changed the way we do things. So given enough time, even electric cars may become fashionable, but I am still digressing..

So the time has come to see who wins for the overall trophy - based on the many pics I have taken with each camera. Mind you, the D750 is a very good high end camera, just replaced with the awsome D850!!, and the high end Samsung S8 still holds up in about every way. So let's go over the Nikon's strength:

Overall pics are very nice, great DoF/Bokeh and warmth that the Samsung cannot touch. Although I shoot in manual (yes manual), I use raw format which I discovered does not sharpen or color correct like the Samsung does, giving the appearance of softer shots, as seen in my previous blog. The real issue is dragging the heavy DSLR around when at the beach makes people look at me funny. Yup I should leave that 300mm lens at home for bird watching. When I take the cell phone at the beach, people don't even blink an eye. In fact the stigma is there with the larger camera, as if I have some sort of bad creepy fetish.. Not so with the little S8. I could just pretend to be on the phone like everyone else is nowdays - oblivious to the world around them, and just snap a few pics here and there - no-one cares.. So the large size matters.

The S8 takes the perfect shots, mind you a little sterile like book perfect. Shoot a scene in auto, and it's about as good as my Nikon, even better in some ways, but like a computer playing chess, is no comparison to the art of a human playing the same game..

So in reality for many pics, I like the S8 over the Nikon, and can be creative it its shooting modes. For my Coverdoll shoot, I used both cameras, but shot about 10X as many pics as the Nikon - but the Nikon shots were really NICE! - so I find they both compliment each other, and that's where I justified keeping both for shoots. It's a happy medium.

I seriously thought about using the S8 most of the time, but I really had to come up with a reason to keep using the Nikon. What I found after studying the shots of the Nikon was they felt nice and warm and had a feel of creativity which I felt compliments my style. I process the pics in PS, so I can achieve anything given the time, but the Nikon gets me there a bit sooner. With the S8, I import, change to color balance, create a DoF and Bokeh, add some color to skin, smooth out skin and then it looks like the Nikon - but that's what the Nikon's "flaws" get me right out of the box.

Oh, and the little S8 can shoot in 1/16 of the light compared to the Nikon and still be in focus! The Nikon does need a long exposure and a tripod and some back light illumination. The same scene can be shot with the S8 at 1/10 shutter speeds with NO camera shake issues at all. In fact many pics at 1/10 exposure needed one second exposure on the Nikon and that made creative shots difficult with the Nikon on the tripod. The handheld S8 exposures were always perfect. So I think there's some special camera lens adjustment in the S8 that compensates the little lens for vibration - like the VR lenses do for Nikon, except to a larger degree for the S8. It's amazing what technology does!

So for the winner - it's a tie and that's my summary and i'm sticking to it!

Here's a few pics of Heather

Click on image for gallery