[Galaxy S III General] danarama:
Samsung Galaxy S3 Vs Nikon D5000 DSLR

Why?

I have a week off this week and while my fiancee is working, I thought I wpould charge my camera battery and have a practice. I am a really amateur photographer. By that I mean I own a nice DSLR (Upper Entry-level) and a couple of lenses but I've never really taken much time to get used to it. Today was a great oppurtunity.

Whilst I started taking snaps, i thought "Wouldn't it be cool if..." and here we are.

Disclaimer - Scientific conditions.

Mode:

Whilst I am only an amateur, I am familiar with my camera and its modes. Although I usually shoot in manual mode, adjusting the aperture and shutter speed as I see fit, for a reasonable degree of accuracy, I decided to use Auto mode. This is also what I used on the SGS 3.

Where as I tried to maintain Automode, I did slip into landscape mode a couple of times on the DSLR. Unfortunately I do not recollect which images were taken in each mode. It was mostly Auto though.

Zoom:

I stuck to my 18-55mm lens on the Nikon and used digital zoom on the SGS3. Although these can never be compared, as this is more a "look what the SGS3 can do" thing, I didn't think that should matter.

MegaPixels:

I set both top their top resolution. The DSLR is 12MP so obviously the detail is better when shown on a huge billboard. On a screen which is smaller than that, it shouldn't be noticable. remember, a HD display (1920x1080) is less than 2.1MP

Galaxy Resolution - 3264×2448 pixels

D5000 Resolution - 4310×2868 pixels

Image format:

The SGS3 takes images in .JPG format by standard. The DSLR took them in .NEF (Nikon RAW) and was converted afterwards. Converting RAW to .JPG on a computer (I used UFraw command line tool on Linux) gives a little bit better quality than letting the camera save as .JPG directly

Conclusions

Obviously this test was just for fun and was never intended to show that the SGS3 would be better than an upper entry level DSLR which even now, 3 years after release, can cost upwards of £500 GBP with a basic 18-55MM lens. Well guess what?! It's not better than the DSLR but hey, we never expected it to be.

What you can tell from the images is that where some of the DSLR images were a bit dark in auto mode, the SGS3 had some nice and bright shots. You can clearly see the difference in quality on some shots, but in others, not so much. I was very surprised at how well the SGS3 took pictures and how nice some of them did look, even compared to the superior DSLR, some of the pcitures the SGS3 took looked nicer, if not better.

Slightly related, but the experience of previewing the image taken was MUCH more enjoyable on the SGS3 with its bright and vibrant screen. You can instantly tell if the image will come out blurry or not, which with the DSLR was really tricky. You cna onyl really check if the photo is framed as you expected.

All in all, the SGS3 is a fantastic little camera. It may not be able to keep up with the big boys but it was never intended to. I would never be disappointed whipping it out of my pocket to capture an "of the moment" photograph. I am very impressed.

Further diclaimer

As mentioned, I am not a photographer. I am sure there are others out there who can do much better than I did with both devices. Remember this is just for fun.

I haven't scientifically analysed the outputs of both devices and used any software or anythign like that. If anyone is into that, please feel free to post results here. I would definitely be interested. All I have done, is used my eyes.

The Images

Each photo tells you if its SGS3 or Nikon from the properties but essentially, the first image is always the SGS3, the second is always the D5000

https://picasaweb.google.com/101616642112510848507/SamsungGalaxyS3VsNikonD5000DSLR

...and some highlights: