The S24 Ultra has minor hardware tweaks over the S23 Ultra. The 200MP sensor now has better color reproduction and overall better tuning. It can capture much faster thanks to a faster capture time, and the critical reception around cameras was mostly positive.
However, the camera system is not perfect. The S24 series is currently very inconsistent with camera performance. According to reports on the Samsung Community Forum, the camera sometimes oversaturates the images. Adding saturation to a photo makes it look visually appealing and eye-pleasing. However, it only applies if done in a subtle manner. Too much saturation makes the photo look highly unrealistic, and it doesn’t represent the scene well.
Even if you shoot with a natural color profile, the photos end up having an unnecessarily high amount of saturation. Sometimes, it adds a weird, warm tint and turns the entire photo yellow. There’s also a problem with focusing and the blur. When taking photos of gourmet scenes or food, the S24 blurs out some portions, and it’s totally out of the focus plane.
Some on the forum claim that enhancements on 50MP mode and 200MP mode completely ruin the photos. The AI over-brightness images look overexposed and unnatural, especially the faces. The AI recoloration of images completely misses the mark sometimes, and the images even end up as monochrome images sometimes as a result. The processing is better with the 12MP mode, which doesn’t do as many enhancements.
It’s quite odd that Samsung’s 24MP mode only works in Expert RAW mode. You cannot shoot 24MP mode images normally. The iPhone is apparently much better at low-light, and many posts in the forum express severe disappointment with low-light photos. Since it’s so inconsistent, many also report that images are actually too cool and extremely desaturated to the point where they look unnatural and almost monochrome, with no green for leaves and no blue in the skies.
The images are allegedly filled with noise, and the background doesn’t have enough details. There are focusing issues, and the camera system also struggles with green hues. We hope Samsung fixes all these problems soon with a software update. A lot of these issues are related to processing.
