LG G5 first impressions for still photography

I got my LG G5 yesterday, since word is that tomorrow (4 April) Verizon's going to start charging an extra $20 US for each new device.

First impressions: very nice.

First surprise: the rear image sensors are both 16:9: 5312x2988/16Mpix (main) and 3840x2160/8.5Mpix (ultra-wide). If you want 4:3 on the rear cameras, you're going to be cropping to 3984x2988/12Mpix (main) and 2880x2160/6Mpix (ultra-wide). The front camera is 4:3: 3264x2448/8Mpix. Annoyance: the cameras don't offer a 3:2 crop -- it's either 16:9 or 4:3.

Both rear cameras offer DNG+JPG as an option, while the front camera offers only JPG. I don't see a DNG-only option.

The provided camera app

Next surprise: the provided camera app is really usable. This is my third LG smartphone -- the first two were a Lucid and a G2. The camera apps on those were too basic for me. The app on the G5 is pretty nice, and while I'll probably keep Snap Camera installed for the occasional special need, I'll be using the G5 camera app for most of my shooting.

The provided camera app offers three modes: simple, automatic, and manual. The "simple" mode is point-and-shoot: just point at your subject and tap the screen to snap the picture. The only controls you have are pinch to zoom and switching between the two rear cameras -- you can't even switch to the front camera for a selfie in this mode. The app does show the AF point grid, with the points in focus colored green.

The automatic mode is standard fare but very nicely done. You can select any of the three cameras, the flash mode, the aspect ration (16:9, 4:3, and 1:1), timer, face detection, steady-shot, 1/3rds grid lines, 9 optional film emulations, and HDR mode. HDR (multi-exposure blending) mode is normally "auto," and in the simple test I made it worked really well -- but that was a simple test of a fixed scene.

Automatic mode also offers panorama, time-lapse, movie frame grab, and a couple of specialty looks: multi-view (a collage of 2-4 images from multiple cameras at once) and "popout." The popout feature strikes me as a gimmick -- it superimposes a somewhat reduced-size image from the main rear camera centered over a background obtained from the ultra-wide camera; the background can optionally be fish-eyed, monochromed, vignetted, and/or blurred, while the superimposition can be the same rectangular aspect, can be "shadow-boxed" or "pillar-boxed" by the background, or can be circular or hexagonal in shape. Having seen too many TV news reports featuring amateur video taken in the vertical aspect, where they use the blurred pillar-boxed technique to fill the screen, I'm unclear where I'd ever use the popout feature.

Manual mode gives a nice range of control. On the main camera, you've got Kelvin white-balance (or auto), manual focus (or auto), exposure compensation plus or minus two stops, ISO settings from 50-3200 (or auto), manual shutter speed (from 1/4000 to 30 seconds), and AE-Lock. Caution: selecting manual focus seems to remove the option of switching back to Auto focus/tap focus -- the only way I've found to get back to Auto/tap focus is exiting and restarting the app. Also, using manual ISO or manual shutter speed puts you into AE-Lock mode, and if you want them back on Auto again, you'll need to shut off AE-L mode.

Readouts in manual mode are: histogram (rather tiny), WB, focus mode, exposure compensation, ISO, shutter speed, and aperture (always f/1.8 for the main camera). A horizon/level indicator is an alternative to the 1/3rds grid -- you can't have both -- which isn't available in the other modes. There also are combo indicator/selectors for main/ultra-wide and for flash mode.

Manual mode for the ultra-wide camera is similar, but that camera doesn't offer manual focus and the aperture is f/2.4.

There are a number of selfie-related features for the front camera, but I haven't delved into those. I'm not a selfie kind of person.

Interestingly, I can't find anywhere that the provided camera app uses the Android scene modes. Ditto for the Android effects (monochrome, sepia, aqua, etc.) and post-processing modes (mirror, autocolor, enhance). Monochrome and sepia conversions are handled by the film emulations.

All of these photos are of the same subject. There may be slight differences in the angle, since the phone was hand-held.

Ultra-wide camera:

Reference image with main camera

Ultra-wide camera. I don't know why it's exposed noticeably brighter -- I wasn't paying attention

Some examples of "popout":

Vignette popout

Fisheye popout

Blur popout

I'm sure you can imagine what the B&W popout would be like. The four popout effects can be combined any way you want, including no effect. Personally, I find "no effect" to be a bit disorienting because the images almost liine up.

Note that the popouts are only 8 Megapixels, since they're based on the ultra-wide camera.

HDR example:

Reference image, again

HDR (multi-capture blending) activated

The HDR isn't compelling for this subject. But it does a nice job for interior shots with bright windows. And it captures so quickly it feels like only one capture was made.

fabianfred2 wrote:

Is this camera an upgrade from their LG v10 model?

Reportedly the main camera is the same unit as used on the V10. The ultra-wide rear camera is new, of course -- the V10 has an added ultra-wide in the front, but I don't think it's the same as the G5's ultra-wide rear camera. As far as I know, both of the V10's front cameras are 5 Megapixels, while the G5's ultra-wide rear camera is 8 Megapixels. The G5's single front camera is also 8 Megapixels.

Very useful, thank you!