Tigerlily's camera - what the new Samsung Galaxy S8+'s photos are like

Modern phones have all but replaced the little cameras that people sometimes used. Even if 'compact', those cameras were bulky, and might be noticeably heavy as well. They certainly weren't chic. They were generally a nuisance to carry and a fiddle to use. And the results might not, in unskillful hands, be worth the trouble of carrying them around.

To be sure, enthusiast photographers (like myself) would invest in superior and very capable cameras, which, for their small size, would produce excellent results. I have owned a long string of compact cameras like that. They have been small enough to pop in my bags. And carrying them has never been a waste of time, because I see interesting and arresting things to shoot everywhere I go. And I take pictures at home all the time too. I take so many each week - indeed every single day - that I must always have a camera with me.

But, of course, if I wasn't seeing shots all the time, my camera would just be an unnecessary weight in my bag. And I'd probably leave it home. As most people would.

But the advent of mobile phones with built-in cameras has completely changed the game. Mobile phone ownership is getting close to universal. Nowadays anybody can take a picture, as casually as may be, with every hope of getting a decent shot that - because it was taken with a phone - can instantly be sent to family and friends as part of the whole social network thing. The phone makers have made casual photography easy, rewarding, and a lot of fun.

And yet, hitherto, I haven't myself done much with my mobile phones. For me, three problems have got in the way:

1. Image quality
The image quality of phone cameras hasn't been good until quite recently. If the pictures are off-colour and lacking in detail, you do tend to give up and use a proper camera instead. I tried out each of the cameras on my previous phones, with mixed results. The earliest of these was the Nokia E71 I bought in 2009. It turned out pictures with inaccurate colours and not much resolution. Shots like these...

On the whole the Nokia camera did not deliver, and a proper compact camera was a far more appealing prospect.

That was in 2009. Each successive phone has done better. My Samsung Galaxy S5 from 2014 (the one now being replaced in 2017 by my S8+) could turn out shots like these:

What a difference a few years make! Much better colours and detail; and subtler tonality all round. But then, even with the S5, two further issues made me reluctant to use a mobile phone for photography:

2. Tricky handling
Flat rectangular slabs - which is what modern touchscreen smartphones are - can't be gripped securely: the latest metal-and-glass phones are thin fragile slivers of technology that you'd definitely not want to drop! You can't use these phones in situations where they might be knocked out of your hand. They also lack the external physical controls (such as buttons, dials and levers) that so much add to the usability and fast handling of 'proper' cameras.

Modern smartphones do have in their favour (a) light weight and easy portability; and (b) a large bright screen on which to compose the picture. And the right case and clever software can both help with keeping hold and taking a great shot.

3. Getting the shots off the camera, for processing on the laptop
Only an enthusiast who takes a lot of shots (and wants to tweak them all subtly) is concerned with this. Ordinary mortals rough-edit their much fewer pictures on the camera, and store them either there or up in the cloud. But when caravanning the cloud is often inaccessible, and if I have taken two hundred shots in one day, getting all those off the phone for careful editing on the laptop is a real problem!

In the past it's been insurmountable - unless I connect a USB cable between phone and laptop, and cut-and-paste them across. But would the cable socket on the phone stand up to constant use? Bluetooth remains far too slow.

But things have improved. I have noticed that, given a good 4G signal, it doesn't take forever to upload a batch of (say) fifteen phone shots to Dropbox, and then download them from there onto the laptop. It's even faster when using Wi-Fi. So, for a limited number of shots, it is nowadays feasible to shoot them on the phone but process them on the laptop.

So much for what past camera phones were like. What can Tigerlily do? Is she going to supersede my Panasonic LX100 camera?

My answer: I am greatly impressed, and I think that for many shots Tigerlily will indeed now become my main camera. Not for everything. Not for the kind of shot that requires a large sensor for particularly detailed and subtle rendering. Nor for telephoto shots. But for most shots of nearby subjects - and provided there are not too many of them to get off the phone - Tigerlily will now be the convenient and sensible choice.

Let's do some comparisons.

Remember throughout that while Tigerlily's camera and the Panasonic camera both have about the same number of pixels, the Panasonic's are larger and are better targets for the incoming light rays. In other words, more photons make it onto the Panasonic's sensor, and therefore it always has the potential to produce a superior result. But the difference is remarkably small. Take these shots of an omlette I cooked the other evening. The Panasonic first, then Tigerlily:

This was under flourescent light. Barely any difference - even when I got close-ups side-by-side on the laptop screen. Panasonic left, Tigerlily right:

Some days back, I went to the remote hamlet of Up Marden, deep in the West Sussex South Downs. There's a simple church there. It was a cloudy afternoon, and within the hour the weather degenerated into heavy rain. The light was iffy. Here's myself, taken with the Panasonic:

And here are three similar shots taken with Tigerlily - using her front lens, the one used for selfies, which has only eight mega-pixels, and not the twelve that her main rear lens has:

I hadn't at that point quite got the hang of selfies with Tigerlily! Still, to my mind the results using her are just as good as the Panasonic's. Tigerlily has rendered the blue-green 'aqua' colour of my jacket more faithfully - the Panasonic's result is too blue. In general, I'd say that Tigerlily produces more faithful colour-rendition right across the board. If you ramp up the magnification, you can detect a little smoothing of skin detail on my face in Tigerlily's output, but you see this only if you indulge in unreasonably close scrutiny.

I was facing a pair of SAS graves. I shot those next. First, the Panasonic, then Tigerlily:

Tigerlily's version is cooler, but that reflects the sort of day it was, and the kind of light found in this shady spot. Now look at this laptop-screen close-up comparison of the left-hand grave with blue flowers. Panasonic left, Tigerlily right:

Click on it to enlarge further. It's clear that Samsung has tweaked the software to enhance all edges, and in particular recognise and make very clear all letters and numbers. Tigerlily is going to be the better device for photo-copying documents of all kinds. This will of course be at the expense of subtlety, and at high magnifications you can easily see the classic sharpening 'halo' next to each edge. But for most purposes I'd rather have clear detail in my pictures, and not blurry lines.

Last night, at dusk, I stood in my back garden and took pictures looking into my lounge. The Panasonic, then Tigerlily:

Despite the low light level, Tigerlily has, taking the scene overall, produced better, more accurate colours. The seat under the window is green, not blue. Now the close-up laptop-screen comparison, and you'll notice how Tigerlily makes all the detail much clearer - look for instance at the birds on those plates, and the clock, barometer and framed photo in the hall (visible through the doorway). Panasonic left, Tigerlily right:

Hmm. Tigerlily's increasing the contrast and/or strong sharpening has washed-out the colour rendition somewhat. On the other hand, the extra detail in her picture gives you better information on what lies within my lounge.

Finally the Michelin road atlas test! It's an atlas from 2000, and for years I've used it for controlled lens tests, most often with a tripod. Always this page of the lower Seine, west of Rouen. These shots were hand-held in today's morning light. First the Panasonic, then Tigerlily:

And here are two different laptop screen comparisons. Panasonic left, Tigerlily right:

So very similar! I really don't know which is 'better'. Once again, the Panasonic produces a warmer rendition, which is actually down to my deliberate tweaking of the white balance. I could do much the same to Tigerlily's rendition if I wanted to. But I'm not going to: I rather like the 'cleaner' result.

Tigerlily has taken some very decent shots - and in some cases, cracking shots - in indifferent light. These, for example:

I have tried her out in telephoto mode. It wasn't a success. Digital zooms never produce nice pictures, only mushy detail. It's best then to regard Tigerlily as a fixed focal length machine, and use my legs to zoom in and out with. Or call in the Panasonic. 

So what do I do now? 

Let's make a list of reasons to love using Tigerlily for much of my everyday photography:

# It's one device. Tigerlily does so much else. Her camera integrates with all of that.

# Her camera is easy-to-use, and has a particularly large and bright screen for composition. 

# She produces great pictures in most kinds of light - the right colours, with very good detail in them.

# The pictures are easily (though not necessarily very quickly) transferable to the laptop for proper editing, using Dropbox, a USB cable, or a variety of other methods.

# Her camera has no mechanical controls - it's all done with screen taps and slides. There's nothing to wear out. 

# Samsung will undoubtedly refine the software, and make the camera perform even better.

# If I leave the Panasonic at home, my bag is noticeably lighter and emptier!

And reasons not to use her for everything:

# Her telephoto shots are unsuccessful. Too much degradation of the image.

# Her camera hasn't got a large sensor, so there's a limit on how good her tones and colours can be even at her normal focal length. 

I've already gone out twice with only Tigerlily in my bag, and I've not yet felt that I've made a big mistake doing so. I've therefore decided to leave the Panasonic home for a couple of weeks, as an experiment, just to see what issues arise. For instance, I know I can't operate Tigerlily's camera one-handed. If a common situation arises where that matters, then it will be a reason not to relegate the Panasonic to Fiona's boot. I can easily carry both devices, and may have to.

Fulfillment: Tigerlily arrives, and is set up

Wow, I haven't put out a blog post for six days! Some must think I have died in my sleep, and will only be found - mummified, presumably - months hence, by accident.

No, rest assured that it would never happen like that. I'd be discovered pretty quickly. Local chums would get concerned; and Jackie next door would let herself in with the set of keys I have given her. I'd probably still be warm to the touch, possibly not beyond revival, who knows.

Here's the reality: my 'radio silence' is partly down to a busy social life, and mainly on account of getting my new smartphone up and running in short order. Together these things have crowded out the best opportunities for post-writing. But today's different, and it's time to catch up. I have several topics ready to write about, but it seems sensible to follow-on from the last post, and get the 'phone report' out of the way.

Some will be dismayed by this infatuation with tech, and ready to skip it all until I get on to such things as fashion, or relationship issues, or where else I went on holiday. Others will be eager to know what my first few days with Tigerlily have been like. Is the honeymoon going well, or are we already sundered hearts? Read on, and discover the true story - exclusively on this blog, nowhere else.

So, that's my hand, and I was holding Tigerlily, my new Samsung Galaxy S8+ phone late on the afternoon of her delivery, which was last Friday, 28th April 2017. As you can see, she had already acquired the red custom lock-screen that my old phone, Demelza (an S5 from 2014) had sported. And she was at this point charged up and Internet-capable - though still without telephonic abilities, as her nanoSIM was not yet active. (That was changed before the 28th April was over)

Though billed by over-reactive big-girls-blouse tech journalists as a phone of terrifying size, you can see that's it's really only the screen area that's impressively big. True, Tigerlily is taller than Demelza; but still about the same width. So she's easy to hold securely. The short fingers on my own diminuitive left hand can curl around her side edges without the slightest difficulty. (I honestly don't know why these tech journalists make such a fuss. They exaggerate for no good reason at all, simply to sex up their articles with overblown language)

In fact, my S8+ is smaller than the photo suggests, because she is nestling inside her Tech21 case, which of course adds a little girth.

Here now are some pictures, showing how the size of my phones has increased over time.

I first bought a mobile phone in 2001. It was a horrible-to-use plasticky thing by Sagem, but it was only to make rare voice calls with. Then in 2003 I got a more-capable (but only slightly less horrible-to-use) phone by Philips. Thankfully in 2004 I turned to Nokia, using a succession of identical basic models that were still cheap, and still rather plasticky, but oh-so-much nicer to use. And you could quite easily text with them, too. (I discovered the joys of that, although there was almost nobody except M--- to text)

The first picture shows the type of Nokia I used for the five years from 2004 alongside Demelza, bought in 2014. They are from different universes.

Even my first smartphone, a Nokia E71 bought in 2009, was extra-terrestrial. What, a colour screen? The Internet as on the desktop PC? Emails? A music player? Headphones?

And it had personality. The days of throwaway lumps of plastic were gone. This phone deserved a name. I called her Joanna.

By 2012 it was time for an ungrade. I still hadn't exploited the full potential and usefulness of a smartphone, but this time I could. I chose well. It was a Samsung Galaxy SII (or S2), which I named Eloise:

Note that faux-leather sleeve on the right. It did such a good job of preserving Eloise from knocks, scuffs and dust that I used the same sleeve with Demelza. And, although Tigerlily is way too big for it, I have now made - that is, cut and stitched-together by own my fair hand - a black leather sleeve for her, based on this design. More on that in a while.

Eloise was the second in Samsung's flagship Galaxy S series. She was a quantum leap forward from Joanna. A full-sized, beautifully sharp screen, so that all apps, and all photos, looked wonderful. And I could have maps!

I could also have Dropbox, card games, and many other new things.

Demelza, my next purchase in 2014, was still essentially an S2, and none the worse for it - but on steroids. She was supersized:

And this was Demelza compared for size with Eloise:

But now Tigerlily dwarfs them all. Here she is alongside Demelza:

Let's cut back to Tigerlily's delivery. It all went smoothly. As last Friday approached, I noticed things changing on the Vodafone website, as my account was incrementally amended. A good sign. Then I got an email from their courier, DPD, on Thursday evening, saying that they'd deliver next day as originally hoped for. (My goodness, what kind of gigantic logistical effort must have been going on in the background!) Next morning, a delivery update from DPD, with a time slot quoted: 1.00pm to 2.00pm. The courier arrived at 1.35pm. Absolutely bang on time. It was the same chap who had delivered the Tech 21 case on Thursday.

Here's an unpacking sequence:

She was definitely a lilac shade of grey! This was sans the Tech21 case, of course. Let's continue. The box contained other things:

The flat tear-drop shaped bit of metal was the handle of the pin needed to open the card tray.

Waiting in the wings were (a) the blank new nanoSIM I'd already ordered; (b) another in the box (which I used instead); and (c) the Tech 21 case. The case was nicely packaged, and looked very good:

But three other things first. One: what was the state of the battery? I switched Tigerlily on:

Well over half-charged. Right, next step then. I saw that I could carry out what Samsung termed a Smart Switch. All you did was to link old and new device with the supplied USB cable, plus adaptor, select on Tigerlily's screen which things you wanted to transfer, then tap the 'do it' button on her screen. Simples.

And so successful! All apps and files that were compatible with Tigerlily's Android 7.0 (Nougat OS) crossed over intact, settings and all. Wow. What a time-saver. She was at this point 80 to 90% set up. Three apps didn't make it. One was my Cribbage game app, a pity. But no doubt the developer would fix the problem soon. (I could still play the identical Windows 10 version on Verity, my laptop) One was Days Since, a simple app that told me how many days had passed since various events had taken place. I could easily live without it.

The only serious casualty was my vital To-do List app, which helped me organise my life. I'd need to find a substitute fast, and then drop everything while I set it up.

Well, I found one. A very good free app called Tasks To Do Pro. Here's two screenshots of the rest of today (it's now midday) and what's coming up tomorrow, to give you a flavour:

That's right. 303 tasks had to be set up! Essentially I had to devote part of Saturday and a lot of Sunday to it. But without a to-do list, I can't keep track of even weekly tasks, let alone the ones that crop up monthly or at longer intervals. So a to-do list app is very important to me. In fact, I've relied on electronic to-do lists ever since buying my first Palm organizer in 2000.

Why so many tasks? Well, a lot of them are connected with the intricacies of preparing and packing the caravan at holiday times. I don't want to leave anything important behind, and I want to configure the loading tasks so that things get done in the right order and on the right day. So an app that lets me categorise and prioritise, and set up repeats, is a jolly good and useful app. I love this one.

Back to Tigerlily's general setup.

I'd checked the state of the battery. I'd populated the device with almost every app and setting that Demelza had had. Now it was time to insert the SIM card (for telephony and mobile Internet from Vodafone) and the SD card (for my music and photos, and most of my mapping). These were very small cards: a nanoSIM and a microSD. You had to press them into a little tray, then push that into the device. First, though, you used that special pin to release the tray:

How very small and fiddly these cards had become!

Pressing them in was not quite as easy as it looked. But it was finally done, and I could reinsert the tray. Ah, the old 64GB microSD card was recognised! I had feared it wouldn't be. But all was cool.

Now the Tech 21 case could go on. I expected to remove it again only when fitting a larger-capacity microSD card, later on this year. Meanwhile, Tigerlily would be protected from damage, apart from her screen. (More on the solution to that in a moment) The case did somewhat mask her gorgeous finish - but better this than an accumulation of scratches and dents. She'd never now slip away from that pristine, mirror-like state:

It was getting late in the day. But the setting-up wasn't over yet!

Having established that every mp3 music track was on board and playable, the next job was to install Samsung's Music app (I didn't want to use Google's Play Music app) and configure the graphic equalizer in order to coax the best possible sound from Tigerlily's mono speaker. Out of the box this speaker sounded OK, certainly louder than one on Demelza; but once tweaked to suit my hearing it would sound a lot better! First, though, I tried a procedure in the Music app that required you select your age group, and then to listen to beeps at various sound frequencies. While doing so, you told the app whether you could hear the beep or not. The equalizer would end up configured to match your particular hearing perfectly - in theory. I thought the result for me was way too tinny.

It didn't matter. I would use the configuration that had sounded good on Demelza. I'd taken a screenshot of it, and transferred that to Verity. The new equalizer on Tigerlily wasn't identical, but it was still easy to move the sliders into the right position, using the screenshot for reference. Then I played a couple of tracks, to judge whether the speaker was sufficiently improved:

It didn't necessarily follow that a great sound from the earphones meant a great sound from the speaker, nor vice versa. The performance of the speaker was more important to me, as I did most of my music-listening in the bathroom while washing or showering. So getting the speaker to sound right was the priority.

Then I considered which earphones to use. The online reviews had praised the bundled AKG earphones. But I thought they were lacking in the bass department and, overall, didn't give the same nice well-rounded sound that the Samsung earphones supplied with Demelza had, even though those were now three years old and presumably nothing very special in the first place. But they were (to my hearing) unmistakably the better earphones. So I put away the AKGs, and stayed with the older set.

It really was getting late! I needed to eat. I went onto the Vodafone website and set the SIM Swap in motion, which would transfer all Vodafone's services on my existing phone number from the SIM in Demelza to the new one in Tigerlily. It was all done within the hour. Now Tigerlily was fully alive and kicking!

I still faced two tasks. One was to recreate all my tasks on the new to-do list app. That was for Sunday. The other was to make a sleeve to slip Tigerlily into when not actually being used, and, in particular, when she was in my bag. It had to be hand-made, because such things are no longer sold in phone shops. The sleeve would be of black leather. It would protect the entire device, but especially the screen. This would be my Saturday-afternoon job. I wanted it all done by the early evening, when I was eating out. I had two sources of black leather ready for cutting, trimming, fine shaping, and sewing together. Both had been waiting a long time for this moment.

Plan A was to recycle the leather sleeve I'd bought for my Sony tablet in 2012. The tablet itself had been junked in 2016. Its sleeve seemed very suitable for re-use:

But it didn't work. The lining was pinstripe cloth over a thin layer of foam plastic, and the 'leather' now seemed to be faux. It wasn't easy to sew close to the edge without tearing the alleged 'leather'. Huh. I thought the partly-finished result disappointing, and gave it up.

But I still had Plan B. I'd made an unwise boot purchase two years before. The boots didn't quite fit. However, they were made of quite nice genuine soft black leather, and so I put them away, knowing that one day I could cannibalise them for the sleeve I now wanted to make. Which I now did. And this, after two hours' effort, was the result:

As you can see, the new sleeve is very similar to the old one, only bigger. And now, after a few days use, it has settled down and is a flatter fit. I wouldn't get any prizes for the hand-stitching, of course - it's not even primary-school standard - let's say 4/10 - but hey, it absolutely does the job, and should last forever.

So that's the tale of Tigerlily's initial set up. The next post will deal with her photographic capabilities, which I think are impressive.