I took over 1,000 photos and videos with the S25 Ultra for the entire month, not just to test out the new Ultrawide lenses and the LOG recording, but to uncover that hidden feature that Samsung didn’t even tell us about. Some I found were game-changing, but some were a complete surprise!
Rear Cams (Ultrawide, Main, Portrait)
Ultrawide Lens
Starting from the ultra-wide lenses, the overall dynamic range and the natural pop from each shade of the colors were indeed nicely produced. There were no lens distortions at the edges, but while these are all default at 12 MP, if you zoom in close, you will still get some very nice details.
But if you really need that extra oomph, you can switch to the 50-megapixel mode, which you can change in the app.
Speaking of the app, once you switch to the 50-megapixel mode, you can change between three zoom modes: 0.6x, 1x, and 5x, so you can choose accordingly over there.
That is, of course, if you really want that extra amount of detail. Otherwise, you can just go with the 12-megapixel mode, which is plenty great.
Main Lens
The image processing made these main lenses super pleasing to the eyes, as it was produced very close to how the area was perceived in real life.
So yeah, gone are the days of Samsung having too saturated images, which seems to be what vivo is doing nowadays instead.
During the day, you can go all the way to its zooming capabilities, where you will get some decent results.
But while you can zoom all the way to its max 100x zoom, I would say that the best results would be at the max zoom of 690mm or 30x zoom.
Portrait (Human)
As expected, the rear portrait mode was flawless on humans, and I was really surprised that even at a very wide 23mm or 1x zoom, the subject-to-background blur was on point where the camera knew the exact focus to nail. This was done without any compromise on the edge detection, of course.
The same could be said for the 2x, 3x, and 5x portrait zoom as well, where the shallow depth of field was just flawless.
Even with so many things going on in the background of this 23mm or 1x zoom image of me on California Street in San Francisco, the way it naturally gave that nice flowing bokeh around me was really nice—definitely the best portrait mode photos I’ve seen on any smartphone as of now.
Portrait (Objects)
For objects, though, if there are too many subjects in a frame, it does struggle a bit to figure out which to keep in focus. But once it does figure that out, you’ll get some excellent results. Once again, not oversaturating the colors, making it as natural as how it was in real life.
But if there’s one area that didn’t particularly give me a wow factor, it was the macro shots. Not only was it not so easy to nail the focus, but the overall image processing wasn’t the best. Here’s where I think the vivo X200 is the best when it comes to this particular macro feature.
So, if you only need to take macro shots on your phone, this is probably not your best option. Well, for me, I don’t take many macro shots, so this was fine.
Front Camera
Switching over to the front camera, the regular selfie turned out really lovely with great skin tones. The camera didn’t blow out the background at all, maintaining the sky’s dynamic range very well.
The portrait selfie does indeed look like someone just came in front of me and changed the lens to a higher F-stop value to give that amazing shallow depth of field.
As for this up-close picture of the top of the Battery Spencer view of the Golden Gate Bridge, once again, the color accuracy was on point as I was taking this towards the evening when the skies were a bit more faded and a little more grayish, where it did capture that exactly as how it was perceived in my eyes.
Samsung Nightography
Samsung claimed that this new S25 Ultra has some improved Nightography features too, so naturally, I had to try that as well.
The ultra-wide lenses did as great as their daytime shots. But what’s interesting is that in this particular picture in the middle of the ice rink, it was pretty overexposed right in the middle, but after taking the shot, the way the image was processed after taking the shot, it was nice and it was very evenly lit.
As for the outdoor nighttime photos, the reflections on the ground and the overall balance of the highlights in the middle of the image of the shopping center area of the light was also evenly accurate too.
But what’s even more interesting is the fact that you can either use the regular photo mode or the dedicated night mode in the camera app. But why? Or what is the difference?
Well, the dedicated night mode will give you a limit of zoom to only up to 10x, whereas the regular mode obviously goes up to the max value of 100x zoom.
So is there a difference between the night mode and the non-dedicated night mode? Well, let’s compare for you to see.
As seen side by side with the ultra-wide lenses with it (night mode) off and on, you can see how the skies were lovelier and smoother in night mode, and the overall details on the buildings for the ultra-wide and main lenses were very nice and pronounced.
So yes, this all comes down to the fact whether or not you really need that zoom beyond 10x zoom, otherwise just stick to the dedicated night mode, as it will give you the best.
I also used this particular night mode in a very low-light area, and yes, it did turn out great for both the ultra-wide and main lenses.
But another surprising factor was the night portrait mode. Even though there’s no such thing as a night mode for the portrait mode, the results on humans were as good as the daytime shots.
This was also the same for objects, and this further solidifies the fact that the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is indeed the Portrait King!
I am also super glad that the nighttime selfie photos looked great, from the regular selfie to the portrait selfie.
Video Performance
[Check out all the sample video footage in my YouTube video]
Next, allow me to show and talk about the video performance on this phone. One huge improvement is how the lenses switch seamlessly in the camera app without having any weird color shifts, and that weird color shift is something that most smartphones tend to do.
Just like the images, the ultra-wide lens, when it comes to video, was really great, maintaining the dynamic range, especially on a really bright day. The color reproduction for the skies was once again on point.
As mentioned, the consistency of the colors remained great from the main lens to 2x, 3x, 5x, and 10x, all the way to the max 20x zoom as well.
Being a Samsung flagship, the S25 Ultra can go up to 8K 30 FPS, where there are three lenses of this particular 8K mode, which is recording in 8K ultra-wide, 8K main, and 5x zoom.
But of course, the main new highlight is the LOG recording on the S25 Ultra, which looks really amazing at 4K and even at 8K as well.
If you’re wondering if this will do a Sony A1 mirrorless camera and overheat when it is recording 8K for long periods, well, you’ll be glad to know that it didn’t overheat at all.
Speaking of LOG footage, if you want to learn how to work with this LOG footage and you don’t know how to color grade them or don’t use any professional-level software, well, it’s simple.
Just play the video in the gallery app, swipe up, and then you’ll see the option to correct color—and you’re done! After that, you can choose to save the copy within the app as well.
But before going into the stabilization, one huge area of improvement is the portrait video. Even with many people in the background, it still managed to figure out which is the main subject, and the subject-to-background blur, as usual, was super amazing—even at 2x zoom mode.
Then the 8K stabilization was really nice and looked very natural for the ultra-wide lenses. So was the main lens too, but you do see some level of jitter at 5x zoom for stabilization, so keep that in mind.
As for the 4K video stabilization, the ultra-wide and the main lenses had some gimbal-level stabilization, and the same could be said for the 2x and 3x zoom. But, once again, not so much on the 5x zoom mode.
To test out the dynamic range, I took a video directly towards the sun. Yep, and at 4K resolution, it still holds up very well.
As for the front camera, the dynamic range was maintained very well. Even though it was extremely bright, the way it balanced off me as the subject, and the background was also really nice to see.
So that was the daytime video quality. But how about the video performance at night?
Now, I would say that the main difference that you would notice is the fact that at 8K, you won’t be able to record in HDR, where you’ll see quite a difference in brightness.
But, quality-wise, you can see a difference in how the 8K ultra-wide and the 8K main footage at night looked way better, especially in how amazing the blacks and the darker areas were.
Switching over to 4K video recording, it looked great up to 10x zoom, but the best results for me are up to 5x zoom, without considering stabilization, of course.
The LOG footage at night was surprisingly also really good too, even up to 5x zoom.
But here’s where I discovered the secret—you can actually record up to 4K log at 120 FPS! Something that even the iPhone 16 Pro models cannot do. Well, you can’t even do 8K recording, of course.
But yeah, here’s where this wins over smartphones like even the vivo X200 Pro. Even the vivo X200 Pro can’t do 4K log at 120 FPS, where it could only go up to 60 FPS.
So, I was surprised that Samsung didn’t mention this, as this is definitely one of the best things that the phone has compared to the previous S24 Ultra and other smartphones as well.
Now, stabilization on the LOG footage at night for 4K ultra-wide and the 8K ultra-wide was really great. So was the non-LOG footage for both 4K and 8K at night as well.
But the only area where I felt it was not as good was the front video recording at night. While the image stabilization at night for the front camera was flawless, the quality in more low-light situations—especially if there were lots of streetlights—you will see some level of grain in the darker parts of the image.
So, did the Nightography improve on the S25 Ultra as Samsung said it did? Well, hell yeah, it did!
Final Thoughts
With better portrait mode night shots and crazy good video, Samsung really delivered.
But the real question is: how does this compare to other flagships? That is exactly what I’ll be testing next, so stay tuned for that!
