Leica M10 versus Samsung Galaxy Note 8

Boasting triple the number of sensors than a Leica M10 along with some fancy twin-lens bokeh processing, the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 promises much, but can it deliver when up against the best from Leica?In order to find out, I headed to Nova Scotia, which has some excellent lighthouses, particularly along the eastern shoreline. This is the Louisbourg Lighthouse.Immediately the differences are obvious. The phone is creating a rather over-contrasty, over saturated image which looks great on the web. The Leica is rather more subtle and realistically representative of the actual scene itself, though with a slightly blurred foreground due to the chosen aperture and sensor size. Note that I've cropped the images in this post to get the same aspect ratio for easy comparison. For some reason the Note 8 doesn't seem to shoot in a 3:2 aspect ratio.The Note 8 has received rather excellent reviews for its cameras (it has 3 in total), achieving 94 points on the DxOMark website. The two rear cameras are a 12mp wide angle 26mm f/1.7 and another 12mp 52mm f/2.4. This gives you some nice flexibility to shoot wide or a more "normal" 50-ish mm pictures without compromising with digital zooming. It also lets you do some funky fake-bokeh effects by taking two pictures of the same thing, using the 52mm lens to capture the subject, masking the subject, and overlaying it on a variably blurred image taken with the 26mm camera. More on this later...Happily the 26mm and 52mm lenses on the Note 8 are pretty close to my Leica 24mm and 50mm Summilux lenses, so some direct comparisons would be possible.As you probably know all about Leica M10s by now, let's focus on the Note 8 to begin with. I got it to replace my iPhone SE, which I was just finding too small. I had one of the original Note phones and really liked it, but didn't get on with Android at all back then. I have had a few more Android phones since, and the operating system has been getting better and better. I almost got a Note 7 but the problem of them catching fire snuffed that out. When the Note 8 came out I was very intrigued, and one play with a demo unit in store was enough to convince me.It is gorgeous, the screen is stunning, and Android has now matured enough to be properly usable and far more seamless than previously. The flexibility of it makes iOS look incredibly old and boring by comparison. The hi-tech cameras looked very good on paper (for a phone), so I pre-ordered and waited. I was not disappointed when it arrived. I put a DBrand skin on the back as the glass back is a bit slippy, loaded up the Nova launcher, Hexshaders animated wallpaper, and Lines icon pack and I was set.So let's have a look at the fake bokeh facility, which Apple call "Portrait Mode" and Samsung call Live Focus. To enable this mode, you need to start the camera (easy double-tap of the power button when the phone is locked) and select "Live Focus". This frames the shot with the 52mm lens and lets you adjust the background blur. You need to be about 2m away from the subject, which needs to be clearly defined for best results. It's quite spookily good, unless your subject has a "messy" or complex outline, when the masking struggles.I tried the same shot using the Leica M10, 50mm at f/2.8 (below). As you can see the phone did a pretty good job and the bokeh looks "sort of" natural, if a bit HDR-ish, and the masking is quite good unless you pixel peep (which the average punter using Facebook won't be doing).When the subject outline isn't so well defined, everything goes a bit weird as you can see below. My daughter's hair looks like it has been masked by a 3-year-old using Photoshop for the first time. I did a comparison with the Live Focus turned off as well, and a shot with the Leica to show what it should look like.  So, you can draw your own conclusions, but basically if your hair is under control (or better still, you don't have any), the Live Focus thing is actually pretty cool if you don't look too closely. Ideal for social media I'd say, though difficult for selfies at is only works on the rear cameras, not the single front one.I had a chance to do a couple of early morning landscape outings while in Nova Scotia. There's an area called Blue Rocks just near Lunenburg which has some particularly interesting rock formations, with loads of striations and detail. I set up on one of these as dawn broke, and did a side-by-side with the M10 and the Note 8. Now this may be cheating slightly, but I did use a 0.6 ND grad on the M10 (with 24 Summilux lens). It's pretty impossible to do so with the Note 8 - I did play about with the polariser but reflections from the rear surface rendered the images pretty useless.I should also note that I was mainly shooting jpeg on the Note 8. You can create DNG (RAW) files when you use "Pro" mode, but for some reason, when imported into Lightroom 6.8, the DNGs look absolutely awful. They are "muddy", seemingly blurred and very noisy despite being at ISO100, and are generally a mess. It seems that Lightroom doesn't have a converter/profile for the Note 8 which is why, but they are unusable for this review. Adobe's Camera Raw camera list shows the Samsung S8 and S8+ supported but not the Note 8 which is probably the reason.The Note 8 is doing a pretty good job here. Clearly it's struggling with dynamic range without an graduated filter on board, but the results are pretty decent and crispy, if a bit oversharpened. Detail is lacking compared to the Leica, but I'd expect this to be the case. With double the number of pixels, a much larger sensor, and the world's best lenses, I would expect the Leica to be superior! Plus the Note 8 shot was handheld - point, shoot, done.I'd really like to play with the Note 8's DNG files properly. With the DNGs I did take, and ignoring the bad conversion issue, it looks like there is plenty of scope to pull back blown highlights, increase shadows and so on. I didn't do much low-light photography either, as in the evenings we were in a bar or restaurant and not fussing with our cameras.Turning to sensor size - the relatively tiny sensor of the Note 8 can be used to great effect when getting close in to a subject and wanting to keep everything in focus from front to back. It's great having a full-frame sensor and exotic lenses, but if you can't get the shot you want with them then it's kind of wasted. So for macro or close-up photography with front-to-back sharpness, the Note 8 is actually very good indeed. An example for you... I know I'm not exactly comparing like-for-like, using a 90mm lens wide open on the Leica and the 26mm lens on the Note 8, but you get the picture. I sort-of like the Leica shot but the Note 8 shot is more impactful. Very easy to do as well.Which brings me on to usability. The Leica is a model of simplicity. Mrs T has now got the photography bug. She has an Olympus EM1 and now understands how, by removing all but the essential controls, the Leica is a thing of beauty. The Note 8 is a phone that does many things, but is still a rectangular slab. How does is compare when it comes to actually using the thing?Firstly, it's not as big as I thought, and slips into a jeans pocket with no problem. It's tall and thin, making it easy to hold (apart from being slippery without a skin). The camera is simple to trigger - just press the power button twice and there it is. You can switch between the two rear lenses just by pressing a x2 button on the screen - quick and easy. You can switch to the front camera by swiping down. Tapping anywhere on the screen gives you metering at that point.Pro mode (plus panorama, slomo, hyperlapse etc) is enabled by swiping to the right. Pro mode automatically records  a DNG and a JPEG for you, though you can change this. You can set it to manual focus, adjust the shutter speed, ISO and white balance, as well as multi-point or single-point focus. No aperture adjustment unsurprisingly. The default aspect ratio is 4:3 but you can also use 1:1, 16:9 and a gorgeous all-screen encompassing 18.5:9 which looks GREAT on the Note 8's display. A nice touch is that you can move the shutter button around the display if it's not in a very convenient position for a particular shot.I found myself using the phone a lot more as time went on. In fact, I started to just leave the 90mm on the Leica, and use the Note 8 for anything that I'd otherwise use the 24mm and 50mm Summiluxes for. Call me lazy for not changing lenses, but the pictures from the Note 8 are really very decent, and it is rather convenient!In summary, the Note 8 impresses. Having two lenses and two sensors is much more useful than I thought it would be. The image quality, at least the jpegs, is really very good (for a phone). I hope Adobe get on with the DNG format soon, as I think the files will be quite impressive. It's usable, the display is stunning, and you can make calls with it, record video and do all sorts of other stuff. I was surprised by how close the Note 8 pictures were to those from the Leica. OK, it's a crazy comparison to do in the first place, but maybe not so when you think about it. The phone is producing extremely usable images in a fairly effortless way. The Leica rewards you like no other camera. It is supremely gorgeous, small, the images are sublime, and the lenses are second to none. I carried it everywhere in Canada, but often would just reach for my phone to take a "snap" without having to think about it too much. The combination of the Note 8 and the Leica is pretty effective.Would I give up the Leica - absolutely not, but it's great to know my phone is so capable.Finally, before I forget, here's a comparison of the 26mm on the Note 8 and the exotic 24mm Summilux on the M10 at f/1.4. Got to give the win to Leica here.