Streets of Old Delhi through the lens of Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge

Old Delhi refers to the once sprawling city of Sahajahanabad. The city was built by Emperor Shah Jahan. The city stands separate from New Delhi but now only the ruins speak of the lively city of Sahajahanabad. The city is mainly populated by Muslim community as it was since inception. They say about Switzerland that you can click in any direction and you will get a beautiful picture, I say in Chandni Chowk you can randomly shoot pictures and every frame will get a food pictures. Nothing connects us better than food, the gastronomic glue that binds foodies of the world. Here are some of the places I have eaten at, pictures from there and my views. I have tried to list the below places, as we walk from Chandni Chowk Metro Station end to Red Fort. Old Delhi is shaped almost like a quarter circle, with the Red Fort as the focal point. Old Delhi impressed upon me as a rich and colourful city with a medieval ambience.

When a new phone hits the market the first thing many buyers do is scan the spec sheet and what improvements the device has made over its predecessor or over other competitive brand. Buyers/Reviewers often compare the Processing power, screen resolution, charging options and memory are all obvious areas for growth but almost all flagship devices have better processing power but fail in terms of Camera. Often I find that the camera is the first thing I test on a new smartphone or a review unit. We took Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge for a quick photography ride at old delhi to find out can a smartphone camera replace a professional DSLR?

TechTalk about the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge

Samsung has decided to scale back from the 16 megapixel snapper seen on the S6 to a 12 megapixel variant on the newer model. Less pixels means bigger pixels (1.4um) which consequently permit more light to enter, drastically improving low-light shooting. Compared with its predecessor Galaxy S6 Edge improvement in camera might not sound like it on paper, and is now better-suited to taking photos in challenging conditions. The S7 Edge took a much better photo than the iPhone 6S – the color balance skews very warm, a trend that is true about most Samsung phone cameras.

One of the most prominent new features of the S7’s camera is that both the rear and front-facing cameras now have big, bright, f1.7 apertures. This gives Galaxy S7 edge the ability to shoot images with extremely shallow depth of field. There’s selective focus that takes a near-focus and far-focus shot of the same scene and it also features tracking focus to fix your focus on a moving subject.

The S7 captured image shown below has a much more accurate color temperature, is sharper, and there’s much more detail in the shadows of the photo. Like its predecessor (Galaxy S6) had a tendency to overexposed its images, and the same seems to hold true with the S7 phones.

We put Galaxy S7 to a casual real-world test during our shoot. I picked an intersection at old delhi near Chandni Chowk and waited for cars, autos and e-rickshaws to hit the cross walk before pulling the phone up and trying to take a picture. The wider angle lens helped to capture the whole scene of the crossing in one frame.

The S7 Edge’s camera app is faster which might be because of much lighter and cleaner TouchWiz UI and Android Marshmallow. The camera app can simply be launched by double-tapping the home button. This reduces the waiting time to an extent, So now by the time the phone is out of your pocket and in front of your eyes, you can already be shooting.

We have been using Galaxy S7 edge for about a month and there’s nothing I can fault the camera at. The photos were taken with the most basic automatic modes, and we tested a few things like low light performance, camera speed, video quality, and more.

No phone camera’s autofocus is going to be reliable all the time, but the S7 Edge’s is fast and AF never ditches. Image quality on the Galaxy S7 is excellent and the camera resolves plenty of detail. Noise, while present, contributes to adding texture instead of getting in the way. Colors are vibrant, dynamic range is good, Overall we are quite impressed with the photo quality of the sensor, especially in low light.

Samsung’s camera app always has been simple to use. You can also use the “pro” mode that lets you adjust settings like shutter speed and ISO, and lets you shoot in RAW. Motion photo is available, too, it captures a three-second video before you’ve pressed the shutter and embeds it within the .jpg file. Unfortunately, you can’t play this Motion Photo anywhere else apart from the Galaxy S7/S7 edge.

I’m not a big fan of digital zoom, but sometimes it is necessary. The default way to do this is by pinching the screen. However, in the Settings menu you can also choose to control zoom using the volume keys. I find this particularly useful when in a crowd.

The Exynos variant of Galaxy S7 Edge in India os equipped with Sony IMX260. But does it matter which one did you get?
You can use AIDA64 app to check which camera sensor does your S7 has. Just navigate to Devices you’ll find a Camera ID field that says either SONY_IMX260 or SLSI_S5K2L1 (this is the Samsung one). We had a look at the images posted on the web and it seems the differences are very minor. The results indeed some differences, but there’s no clear winner.

Nearly all the photos we took came out looking phenomenal. It nails almost everything one would want their pocket camera. I love photography and I always carry my to capture each and every moment. If I’m going for a trip I am always confused “Should I take my DSLR or not. If I take it – I’ll have some amazing photos and If I don’t I might not have perfect crispy memories .” But Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge has solved my problem of carrying a DSLR with me all the time. Now I just need to take out my phone – double tap the home button and I am Ready.

The camera on the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge is hands down one of the best I’ve ever seen on a smartphone. Hopefully Samsung’s continued dominance in this field will finally convince other manufacturers – and Google itself – to devote more effort to making sure that their snappers are quick as well as quality.