Photographic camera

The LG G4 rear camera consists of a 16-megapixel ane/2.six" Sony IMX234 CMOS sensor with i.12µm pixels, plus three-centrality optical image stabilization (OIS) and an f/1.8 27mm (35mm-equivalent) lens. This camera takes photos every bit big as 5312 x 2988 at a 16:9 aspect ratio natively. The front camera is an 8-megapixel 1.4" Toshiba T4KA3 sensor with ane.12µm pixels, plus an f/2.0 28mm lens, that captures 3264 x 2448 images natively in 4:3 (though the camera is set to 16:9 by default).

The quality of the G4'due south camera is nothing brusk of awesome. Having switched from the Galaxy S6, likewise with great camera epitome quality, to the G4 for this review, I have lost essentially null in terms of camera allegiance. In fact in many ways the LG G4 delivers a superior camera experience with even ameliorate results, and it might just exist the best smartphone camera on the market place today.

The G4 is one of those devices where yous rarely get a bad shot from the camera. Colour quality is simply superb, featuring vibrant, well saturated colors that rival some of the shots I've taken with a DSLR. The G4 also keeps accurateness in cheque thanks to an "RGB spectrum sensor" located beneath the flash, which monitors the color temperature of a scene and then that the corresponding image is perfectly metered. During my testing this worked extremely well: in that location was never a time where I felt an image I had captured was exposed or toned incorrectly.

16 megapixels of resolution feels perfect for a smartphone photographic camera in 2022, delivering crisp imagery when downscaled to standard resolutions (such equally 1440p for the G4's display) while also giving a bit of headroom for cropping and zooming. Viewing full resolution crops reveals a great amount of detail from this camera, and although there are still some visible mail service processing artefacts to be found, LG has turned downwardly the aggressiveness of their filters in comparison to the G3 and competing smartphones.

The slap-up thing almost the G4's camera is that information technology delivers quality shots across a range of lighting conditions. The vast majority of the photos I took indoors or in relatively poor lighting were usable, and many featured great metering and color quality. Of course there will always be some times where lighting is so atrocious that y'all can't get a great shot, but the G4 performs well in an surface area where other flagship cameras have struggled.

In low light, the G4 performs well enough. I say "well enough" because it's certainly non the all-time performer in these conditions: it'south handily beaten past smartphone cameras with larger pixels, such as the HTC One M7. Even so the G4 delivers some of the best shots I've seen for a camera sensor with 1.12µm pixels, and that's downwardly to a generally excellent OIS arrangement. Many shots I took indoors at a shutter speed of 1/20s were blur and shake gratis, while at dark it was possible to get clear images at 1/4s without a tripod, which is pretty impressive.

I was reasonably pleased with the employ of an f/1.8 lens on the G4'south camera, as it easily provides the best bokeh I've seen from a smartphone photographic camera solution. Many of the close up photos I captured with the G4 had creamy, pleasing background blur, and although nosotros're still not hitting the same levels of bokeh as DSLR lenses, nosotros're certainly getting closer.

The f/1.8 lens generally provides crisp imagery that's not besides soft and non too sharp. Occasionally when I was shooting macro images, I institute the depth of field was a piddling narrow, and if I was shooting on a variable-aperture lens I would probably shift up to f/2.0 on those occasions. Withal the f/one.eight lens is suitable for basically all other situations, and provides a two-thirds-of-a-terminate light advantage over the G3's f/2.two lens.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the quality of the front-facing camera, which tin accept some decent 8-megapixel images in the right conditions. Like many selfie cameras, information technology suffers in low light, and LG'due south decision to button for pixel count over pixel size sees it, in dark conditions, fall behind competitors such as HTC that optimized for the latter instead. But mostly speaking I call back LG did a pretty decent job with the selfie camera on the G4.

Moving on to software, and again LG has washed a great job in this area. The capture interface is unproblematic and piece of cake to use, with functionality more often than not being split betwixt an machine and manual shooting mode. The machine mode is what I would employ most of the time, considering it meters so well and will even enter HDR mode automatically, but at that place are plenty of reasons to swoop into the manual mode on some occasions.

In the transmission way, you get full control over ISO, shutter speed, focus and exposure, which allows you to really optimize the photographic camera's settings for the shooting atmospheric condition. What I really like most this style, though, is the extra data information technology provides along the meridian border, including white balance, shutter speed and ISO information along with a histogram. You likewise accept the ability to shoot in RAW if y'all want to have ameliorate control over the image for post processing purposes.

In that location are a few extra shooting modes that tin be found while shooting in auto way, including dual shot (which takes a photograph using the front and back cameras simultaneously) and a panorama mode. In selfie manner you can adjust "beauty face" controls via an on-screen slider. If yous desire to practise anything else, yous'll need a 3rd party app, which mightn't be every bit fast to access as a mode within the camera app, merely information technology does simplify the camera app's design.

Every bit for video, the LG G4 can shoot 2160p30 at a surprisingly depression bitrate of 30 Mbps, 1080p30 at 18.5 Mbps, 720p30 at 13.5 Mbps, or 720p120 slow motion at 24.9 Mbps. All are recorded in High profile H.264, except 720p recordings which are Baseline profile. All audio is recorded as 156 kbps AAC stereo.