We’re treated with some great smartphone cameras this season, between HTC’s Ultrapixels, Samsung’s Isocell technology, and Sony’s large sensors.
One area where smartphone makers have focused their attention is low-light photography. And rightly so – no matter how great a camera is in broad daylight, in most situations lighting is not ideal, hence the prevalence of grainy, smudgy and generally poor images we see every day.
But what’s the best camera for nighttime photography out of the current crop? A user of Taiwanese website ePrice managed to get his hands on an Xperia Z2, LG G Pro 2, Samsung Galaxy S5, and HTC One (M8), and pitted them against each other in a quick low-light photo test. Here’s a sample of the results.
Click to enlarge. Order, from left to right: M8, Galaxy S5, G Pro 2, Xperia Z2
The results from all competitors are quite good, a testimony to the advance in camera quality from the past years. But each device manifests its strengths and weaknesses. The HTC M8 makes the most of the light in the scene, but tends to overexpose bright areas and details are low. The Galaxy S5 takes well-balanced shots, but images are not that clear. The G Pro 2, with its optical stabilization, takes the clearest shots, but the images are very yellowish. Like the Galaxy S5, the Xperia Z2’s shots are a bit on the fuzzy side.
Head over to the source for more shots and details (in Chinese). What do you make of these samples?
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