Its a question photographers have been discussing for some time, how long until the phone replaces the DSLR? Let me get to that first, not yet, but the LG G4 takes us significantly closer.

Three Little Letters

The first thing on the wish list is to be able to shoot RAW and the G4 allows us to do just that. Saving images as both jpeg and Digital Negative (DNG), an open raw file format.

You can see here that these two images, despite being taken at the same time, are very different in size, the DNG file being almost FIVE times as big, thats five times the data, a far broader range of luminance.

Three Modes

The LG G4 has three camera modes; Simple, Auto and Manual. For those wanting a pretty decent point and shoot the first two will do you just fine, but for those of us that have been dreaming of a smartphone camera that we can alter the setting of, Manual is a gift from heaven!

Diving into Manual

Once in Manual mode a whole host of icons and information is presented to you;

1. Settings menu for flash, camera (front or rear) file type and access to further settings.

2. This is the currant settings, from left to right; Histogram, White Balance, Focus, Exposure, ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture.

3. Tapping one of these icons brings up its control (4) In the screenshot above this is setting the Exposure Compensation.

Focus

Here you can see the Manual Focus controls that give amazingly sharp images from approximately 5 cm from the lens.

Exposure Compensation

While in Manual Mode Exposure Compensation becomes available, in the image below I’ve used this to prevent Sian from being in silhouette in front of the bright window.

Shutter Speed

With access to the shutter speed I can shoot at 1/6000 sec to 30 sec. In the following shot I used just a couple of seconds (at 11pm I thought I’d call it a night, but expect long shutter pics to crop up soon!)

Conclusion

The camera on this phone is good but its great in manual. The control is exceptional and a joy to use. I found that shooting on a sunny day was tricky, the screen is very reflective so i ended up putting a cover over me and the phone,not really progress!

For me, the best smartphone camera I’ve tried yet.