Galaxy S25 Ultra vs Professional Camera - Portrait Mode

All right, it's that time of year again. We got the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, just came out. We're doing portrait mode versus a real camera. We've got a deal, yeah? Let's do it. Here we go. Three, two, one. Let's take a look at them. The camera has way more like contrast, eh? I'm gonna add a little bit more blur to these photos because I feel like three isn't quite as close to F2.8 that I'm shooting on the camera with. I want them to look as close as I can get them. Something similar, but maybe you're almost straight on with me and then maybe you're looking out the window. Change the exposure. Hi. All right, I'm gonna switch to the 3X camera. This is 67 millimeters, so I'll get it close to like between 70 and 50. It should be pretty close there, yep. I wanna get more of that window and frame. Maybe chin down a little bit more, yeah. Three, two, one. Hold that. Three, two, one. Nice. So the 3X camera is actually using the 3X camera where the 2X is just a crop of the main camera. And I feel like the details do look a little bit more processed on that 2X camera, but let's talk about the specs. From what I can tell, it's still that 200 megapixel F1.7 main camera, a 50 megapixel F3.4 5X periscope camera, 10 megapixel F2.4 3X camera, and they've now upgraded the old ultrawide camera to be a new 50 megapixel ultrawide F1.9. In terms of design, it's basically a flat rectangle. The corners are rounded, but it's still very boxy. And like the S24 Ultra, they're still using titanium construction. It's rocking an amazing 6.9 inch LTPO OLED 120 hertz display that can hit a peak brightness of 2,600 nits. And it's also sporting the latest and greatest Snapdragon 8 Elite processor with 12 gigs of RAM or 16, depending on which market you're in. Sick. Okay, I'm gonna get a little closer. I kind of want to get up under. Three, two, one. Keep holding. Three, two, one. Nice. Yeah, we have like this whole brown and cream. All right, we're going back to the 3X. Look at me just sitting down here. Can you flip around so your back shoulder is facing me? So you're facing that way? Maybe chin down just a little bit. Yeah, here we go. Three, two, one. Hold that. Three, two, one. Nice. I like that a lot too. The colors are really nice. All right, now I'm gonna switch to the 5X camera. Actually go down a little bit further, almost to the end. Make sure these are the same framing. Pretty close. All right, here we go. Three, two, one. Keep holding. Three, two, one. I try and get them as close as I can because I can't take them at the same time. Because if I do this, the lens is in the shot. Like the edge of the lens gets caught in the shot. All right, let's do something where we get like more depth in the room. So maybe you're standing about here and then we shoot into that corner. You can do like right arm up maybe. Kind of like up on like that, something like that. Yeah, look that direction. Yep. Perfect. Okay, here we go. Three, two, one. Keep holding that. Three, two, one. I'm always blown away with how good portrait mode can be sometimes. Starting to heat up. I can feel it getting hot. Snapdragon 8 Elite against the yellow. It's kind of fun. This lighting's nice. I like this lighting. All right, here we go. Three, two, one. Hold that. Three, two, one. So the one thing I'm noticing about the S25 Ultra is how fast it's processing the portrait mode shots because it's got that new Snapdragon 8 Elite in it, which is probably the best part about this phone is the fact that the processor's so good. And so when you take the portrait shot, pretty much when you go to preview it, it's already done doing all the processing. Just like the 24 Ultra, it does an amazing job for portraits. It does a really good job at hair cutout. If we look at this one image, for instance here, how good of a job it's doing on the hair strands and everything. I think it's actually using the exact same cameras that were in the S24 Ultra, except for the ultra-wide, which we're not using in this video because it's just for portraits. But because it's got the new processing, it should be able to do a little bit better of a job. Oh, there's also something else I wanna show that I haven't heard too many people talk about. And when you go to the Expert Raw, there has this new, like, they're calling it like a virtual aperture, which is basically what Apple already has built into the iPhone when you can change the f-stop for the portrait mode. But they're not really calling this portrait mode. It's just a virtual f-stop. So we can try that out. And the cool thing is it's actually a raw file. So it's, this might be the first time you're getting a portrait mode blur effect in with the computational raw file. So that's kind of exciting. It only works on the main camera though. So we'll try that out and just see how it looks. So you can go right down to F1.4. And so we'll try that out. It also has a virtual ND filter. We're not gonna use that for this, but it's kind of cool. All right, so I'm now in Expert Raw. I'm just gonna put this at F1.4 just to see what it does. And the 2X is like a 50. Maybe come out off the wall a little bit so we can get some more depth. Three, two, one. Keep holding that. Three, two, one. But the thing is you can't change the f-stop afterwards like you could in a JPEG file. And the cool thing is that the raw file, you can do a lot in editing afterwards too. So jumping into Lightroom here, we're gonna take a look at that DNG and the JPEG because it also takes a JPEG and a DNG. You can see the color difference here. So this is the JPEG. I'll pop the info up here so you can see that's a 1.3 megabyte JPEG. And then that is a 17.3 megabyte DNG. Now, I don't know if you get a lot more information in this DNG. Obviously it's being considered as a raw file, but as you can see when we get zoomed in here, it's very over-processed. It looks basically like the JPEG if I switch to the JPEG here. I'm not seeing any extra detail at all. And if we lift the shadows, it's putting a lot of blue into the shadows, kind of like it would if it was the JPEG. So I don't really know how much of a raw file we're really getting here because it is some kind of computational thing. Now, the cool thing about these raw files is that if you want to drop in some presets, like I have my Classic Ports presets here, they look really nice on the raw files. They won't look quite as good on the JPEG. Obviously you can make some tweaks, but if we warm this up just a little bit, add a bit more contrast. Now, if I was to copy this and paste the exact same settings over the JPEG, it's not going to look quite as good. Still looks okay, but if we compare these two side by side, you can see the color tone and stuff looks nice on the raw file. But I guess if we tweak the JPEG, we could get it close. But the nice thing is we're getting these DNG files with maybe more color information, but overall you're not getting any more detail. All right, let's go back to portrait mode. I just wanted to try it because I haven't seen too many people talk about that. Did you want to bring your right hand up to the frame again? Like kind of up to the... All right, here we go. Three, two, one, hold that. Oh, I'm not even close to where I'm supposed to be at. Nice. The lighting's so nice there. It's all about the lighting, you know? Should we swap lenses real quick and try a 1X camera? Maybe you could like reach out to camera. Something like that. Okay, here we go. Three, two, one. One more of those. Three, two, one. Nice. Yeah, because that really shows the foreground blur. Oh yeah, wow. That's cool. All right, I need my lens back. I need that lens back. Nice. All right, here we go. Three, two, one, hold that. Three, two, one. Do you want to do one where you're looking off the back of your shoulder too? If you flip around so your back's to us. Boom. Leveling shot. All right, we got it. Overall, I think it's doing a really impressive job when it comes to the hair cutout around the subject. This has always been the most obvious giveaway in a portrait mode shot versus a real camera. Now that 2X camera, as I mentioned, has still a very processed look to it when you zoom in compared to the 3X or the 5X cameras. In terms of improvements, I don't really think it's much better than the S24 Ultra because it's also a really good phone. End of the day, if you have an S24 Ultra, I don't think it's worth the upgrade getting the S25 Ultra unless you want that higher res ultra wide camera and that new processor. I kind of feel like Samsung's pulling an Apple and just giving these drip feed updates now because there really isn't a lot of competition here in North America to really get them to push any big boundaries. All right, guys, that was it. That's the S25 Ultra versus the real camera in portrait mode shootout. Thanks to Delia. Thanks to Milos. Thanks to Nicole for doing makeup. If you like this video, give it a thumbs up. If you dislike this video, give it a thumbs down twice. Don't forget to hit that notification bell and we'll see you in the next one. Bye. All right, so we're gonna do a little shootout here with the S25 Ultra, the iPhone 16 Pro, and the Pixel 9 Pro. We're working on another video, which will be coming out after this one where we're comparing all three of these phones, but we wanna get some portrait shots, so we're gonna do it. All of these phones have wicked screens, like really good screens in them. All right, so the Pixel will only give us a 2X portrait. Three, two, one. And then give me the iPhone. And then three, two, one. All three phones in portrait mode? Mm-hmm. This has more warmth. The iPhone looks warmer, yeah. Of course, the iPhone doesn't zoom in as far. You have to pinch zoom it. I'd say the Samsung looks the most natural. Yeah. But the iPhone definitely isn't. Like, I like the colors on the iPhone better probably. All right, we're gonna go ahead Bye.