Quick comparison LG G4 vs. Nikon D610

I have got new phone with one of the best phone cameras of 2015. How does it stand compared to the full frame camera? Let's see.

Handicap disclaimer: D610 is at disadvantage here because of cropping its 3:2 output to 16:9 output. If I have wanted to get 3:2 output, I would have to crop G4 picture and I could keep D610 picture intact. Each cropping reduces number of pixels and effective sensor size thus it is disadvantage - on the other hand it may hide poor corners of some lenses.

Low light, longer exposure at lowest ISO

I shot a picture of the Prague castle with both cameras. It was already quite dark. I had a tripod with me, but I didn't have tripod attachment for phone so I felt it would be unfair to have DSLR on tripod and phone in hand or laid somewhere. In the end I decided to equalize it by using a bench on which I placed DSLR to compose and take pictures (thus the mediocre framing you can see) and then rotated DSLR 180 degrees and used its back side to lean phone on it. So I got about same framing. The LG G4 was in manual mode with JPG and DNG raw output. LG G4 has fixed aperture at f/1.8 and fixed focal length 4.42mm (per EXIF, it corresponds to roughly 28mm fullframe, but it has 16:9 aspect ratio while fullframe has 3:2; crop factor is around 28/4.42=6.33). The D610 (just NEF raw output) was used with Nikon 18-35G f/3.5-4.5. I had to rotate D610 image somewhat and crop bottom and top to get close to framing of G4. I took more than one picture of each and selected the best. Full exposure parameters:

LG G4: ISO 50, 4.42mm, f/1.8, 1.0s. OIS. Framing: not-cropped

Nikon D610+18-35G: ISO 100, 26mm, f/4.2 (wideopen) 1.6s. No OIS. Framing: rotated&cropped.

I have converted both raw files in Adobe Lightroom 5.7 to look about same. I have pushed shadows and tried to fix highlights. Look at images with LR output size 1500 pixel width:









You can probably see that one of them have some brightest highlights overexposed. That is from LG G4 - the first one. That is not a fault of LG G4 though, because to get DNG, you have to be in manual mode and I have chosen exposure parameters. On the other hand, if I exposed even more for highlights, noise in shadows would be much higher (or alternatively detail would suffer from strong noise reduction). So how is detail? Good enough for 1500x844 image. There are some sharpness differences on the sides, but it is good enough and not much visible at this resolution.

How about higher resolutions? Look at these two links, they show images with output resolution of 5MP: D610 G4.

How about at maximum resolution? Look at these two links, they show images with full output resolution (19MP for D610 instead of 24MP because of rotating and cropping): D610 G4.

Here you have both raw files to play: directory with raw files. Note that all images here are copyrighted, I grant you right to use them personally though. Lightroom XMP processing metadata is included for NEF, for DNG it is embedded. Original JPG from G4 is also included, it mainly has different whitebalance (I did not bother to set manual and kept it on auto) and darker shadows.

Daylight

Following three daylight samples are handheld in daylight with strong 3 PM sun (but at quite low angle given it is end of September at 50.0 N latitude).

Daylight 1

LG G4: auto exposure in manual mode to get DNG: ISO 50 (auto), 4.42mm, f/1.8, 1/1800s (auto). OIS. Framing: not-cropped

Nikon D610+18-35G: A-mode: ISO 100, 27mm, f/5.6, 1/500s (set by auto exposure). No OIS. Framing: cropped.

Images are converted in LR again. For G4, which does not have profile in LR 5.7, I have corrected vignetting and also tint gradient with radial filter with WB settings: in image center picture was more reddish, in corners it was more greenish.

Can you guess which is which at this size? Spoiler is below the second image.

















So what have you guessed? The first is from G4. The second is D610. You may see some tint-gradient in G4 picture which is caused by my incomplete correction of it. Camera original JPG corrects it better.

With output resolution of 5MP differences in corner sharpness are apparent: D610 G4.

Here is full output resolution (20MP for D610 instead of 24MP because of 16:9 cropping): D610 G4.

Here you have both raw files to play: directory with raw files. Lightroom XMP processing metadata is included for NEF, for DNG it is embedded. Original JPG from G4 is also included, it mainly has different colors.

Daylight 2

LG G4: auto exposure in manual mode to get DNG: ISO 50 (auto), 4.42mm, f/1.8, 1/1300s (auto). OIS. Framing: not-cropped

Nikon D610+18-35G: A-mode: ISO 100, 27mm, f/5.6, 1/250s (set by auto exposure). No OIS. Framing: cropped.

Images are converted in LR again. For G4, which does not have profile in LR 5.7, I have corrected vignetting and also tint gradient with radial filter with WB settings: in image center picture was more reddish, in corners it was more greenish. I tried how much shadows can be pushed. It does not make super pretty picture in this case, but this is more a test than art. In LR shadow slider was +100 for both D610 and G4. Highlight slider was -67 for G4, -100 for D610. You can see that original non-pushed image looks better, but pushing is often useful to see details in shadows so it is interesting to see how much can be ISO 50 image pushed and what will be noise or detail destroyed by noise reduction.

Can you guess which is which at this size? Spoiler is below the second image.

















So what have you guessed? The first is from D610. The second is G4. You may see some tint-gradient in G4 picture which is caused by my incomplete correction of it. Camera original JPG corrects it better.

With output resolution of 5MP differences in corner sharpness are apparent: D610 G4.

Here is full output resolution (20MP for D610 instead of 24MP because of 16:9 cropping): D610 G4. You will certainly see some noise in pushed shadows of G4 image, but for smaller output sizes stronger noise reduction could be effective to eliminate it. D610 (along with D600, D750, D8xx) is hard to match or beat in dynamic range, even by a lot of other DSLRs.

Here you have both raw files to play: directory with raw files. Lightroom XMP processing metadata is included for NEF, for DNG it is embedded. Original JPG from G4 is also included, it mainly has different colors and it does not have pushed shadows.

Daylight 3

LG G4: auto exposure in manual mode to get DNG: ISO 50 (auto), 4.42mm, f/1.8, 1/900s (auto). OIS. Framing: not-cropped

Nikon D610+18-35G: A-mode: ISO 100, 27mm, f/5.6, 1/320s (set by auto exposure). No OIS. Framing: cropped.

Images are converted in LR again. For G4, which does not have profile in LR 5.7, I have corrected vignetting and also tint gradient with radial filter with WB settings: in image center picture was more reddish, in corners it was more greenish. For G4 picture, I have pushed shadows and restored highlights compared to fresh profile in LR, but ended up with about same highlights as G4 out of camera JPG, and slightly less dark shadows.

Can you guess which is which at this size? Spoiler is below the second image.

















So what have you guessed? The first is from D610. The second is G4.

With output resolution of 5MP differences in corner sharpness are apparent: D610 G4.

Here is full output resolution (20MP for D610 instead of 24MP because of 16:9 cropping): D610 G4. For G4, noise in pushed shadows (tree shadow) is almost not visible, but weak corners are.

Here you have both raw files to play: directory with raw files. Lightroom XMP processing metadata is included for NEF, for DNG it is embedded. Original JPG from G4 is also included, it mainly has different colors and it does not have pushed shadows.

Conclusion

LG G4 has a nice camera given its convenience of being always available in pocket. It has somewhat weaker optics in corners than in center, not much visible in Full HD 1080p output, but visible at higher resolutions. It is hard to tell if this is really a fault of optics or OIS. On G4 the OIS cannot be turned off. It has quite good dynamic range for a small sensor. However what makes G4 standout above current phone cameras is definitely user interface of the camera app. That was very intuitive for me and pleasant to use. Only thing I missed in it is exposure bracketing while in manual mode to (get DNG of several exposures at one click of button).

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