Making the most of your Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra cameras? Here’s how

1. Samsung Galaxy Store apps for truly Ultra camera settings
2. Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra photo samples
3. More about Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

Samsung Galaxy Store apps for truly Ultra camera settings

A big part of Samsung’s Ultra-tier Galaxy S phones is that the rear cameras can produce great photos with little effort, right out of the box. But did you know Samsung didn’t include all the possible settings in the default Camera app, because there are simply too many? You can pick and choose what you need via its other apps to push them further, or get greater camera control in the settings.

Here are the apps on the Samsung Galaxy Store that can help you maximise your camera settings. As a sweet bonus, we even had Samsung’s Visual Solution team walk us through the capabilities of these apps, and accompany us on the photo session below.

The best part of it all? it’s free of charge. (Well, you already paid for the phone… might as well use it.)

Note: Samsung’s self-made app store, Samsung Galaxy Store, comes pre-loaded on your Samsung phone. Find the app simply called “Store”, which contains some downloads that are unique to Samsung handsets. Please be careful and verify the apps before downloading.

Expert RAW

Maximise camera settings on Samsung Galaxy phones — Expert RAW.

Screenshot: HWZ

Expert RAW grants full manual control that many amateur and professional photographers can’t live without. It’s the “other” Camera app by Samsung, but you get to control ISO (noise handling), aperture width (in f-value), shutter speed, exposure (using EV values), white balance (in Kelvins), on top of manually selecting the exact rear camera to shoot with (main, ultrawide, and both telephotos if it’s an Ultra model).

Go deeper, and you can even shoot in RAW (linear DNG, 16-bit) or select the image size (in megapixels). It even includes both Zebra Pattern and False Colour tools for monitoring brightness levels, a manual focusing slider, a virtual aperture menu for precise bokeh (creamy blur) control, an adjustable ND Filter, and three classic metering modes (spot, centre-weighted, matrix).

Users who love taking photos of the nighttime sky would also benefit from this app, because this is where Samsung hides its Astrophotography tools.

Honestly, it’s only missing focus peaking (used to ensure accurate sharpness levels) for it to be a truly robust package, but that’s also fixed in another app, as seen below.

Link to app (Samsung Galaxy Store): Expert RAW

Camera Assistant

Camera Assistant is also an app for highly granular camera control, but in a different way. It presents its menus and options like a classic Settings app, but the features offered aren’t for pedestrian users.

Here are some examples of how powerful the settings can get with Camera Assistant:

You can place new or different zoom shortcuts into the default Camera app
You can toggle on/off automatic lens switching, so you always shoot on your preferred rear camera
You can toggle on focus peaking in Pro photo and video modes, and even select the colour of your peaking
You can make autofocus perform faster or slower, along with the sensitivity required
You can turn off distortion correction for a stronger fisheye effect

The list goes on. In a way, it’s an app where visual solutions devs use create really specific settings, based on user feedback and requests. If you have an uncommon shooting preference, this app might have the answer.

Link to app (Samsung Galaxy Store): Camera Assistant

Galaxy Enhance-X

AI-powered editing doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing. The Galaxy Enhance-X lets you specify the aspects you want corrected (brightening, blur and haze fixing, face touch-ups, and more) with a single tap on the screen.

It draws on both professional editing and AI smarts to achieve that sweet spot. This is where you find edits similar to those of full photo-editing suites, but with simplified controls and computational smarts to fill in the rest.

Oh, and it works on videos, too. Go wild.

Link to app (Samsung Galaxy Store): Galaxy Enhance-X

Gallery Assistant

Gallery Assistant is helpful if you feel that the default Gallery app’s controls are a little bare, or if you are using your photos as image assets elsewhere.

It can reduce image file sizes, flip/invert the orientation of your photos, save them as PDFs or print them out, and even let you extract subjects to use as stickers later on. There’s also the option to add watermarks using Gallery Assistant, much in the same style as Chinese Android handsets.

Link to app (Samsung Galaxy Store): Gallery Assistant

In case you’re wondering, Good Lock Labs is actually owned by Samsung. Its developers have a little more freedom to create optional but powerful utility apps that are more targeted at Galaxy mobile users, without cluttering One UI or precious storage space.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra photo samples

Besides speaking with Samsung’s Visual Solutions team (the folks reponsible for designing and engineering Samsung’s phone cameras), we also has the opportunity to try out and judge the imaging quality of the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra.

On paper, widening the aperture sizes of two cameras between generations doesn’t sound like much. The 200MP main camera went from f/1.7 to f/1.4, and the 5x zoom 50MP telephoto camera went from f/3.4 to f/2.9. According to Samsung, the wider apertures allow another 47% and 37% more light into the sensors, respectively.

However, serious photographers know that the lighting captured by an imaging sensor largely determines the final result and quality of photos. We absolutely had to try it out.

Be sure to tap the arrows to see different image samples shot with the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s variety of cameras.

Disclaimer: Photo samples below are taken from the phone’s camera, with file sizes downsampled to reduce bandwidth demand. No other edits were made. Please do not reproduce the images without permission from SPH Media Limited.

San Francisco City Hall

The San Francisco City Hall is a popular location for wedding photography, owing to its deep history in the city’s social progress, its grandeur that pays homage to different architectural styles, and the use of both natural and man-made lighting for maximum romantic vibes.

Galaxy S26 Ultra did justice to the venue. The phone’s excellent detail retention and handling of brightness brought out the expressions of every bride and groom, as well as the finery of pillars and lamps, across key zoom ranges. In the 10x zoom f/2.9 sample above featuring an Asian couple, you can even find all the folds in the bride’s all-white gown, and the lamp still retains the decorative details on the handles.

Palace of Fine Arts

First built in 1915, then rebuilt throughout the 1960s-70s, and retrofitted in 2009, the Palace of Fine Arts lives up to its name with its dream-like lagoon surrounding its Roman-inspired ruins that convey the tragedy of a once-beautiful world.

Galaxy S26 Ultra’s colour rendition brought out the subtlety of wear and wildlife that contribute to the venue’s magnificence (Samsung even chose this place for its Galaxy S26 series Unpacked event).

Worth commenting on was the phone’s bokeh handling. When we focused on the statues carved into the pillars, the bokeh teased out the pillar carvings by using the trees that dot the place.

Near Huntington Park

The grounds that frame this residential square (next to Grace Cathedral) were the ideal spot to try out the Galaxy S26 Ultra in situations with dramatic contrast, and the phone has proven capable of great dynamic range. While the extremes are slightly over- and underexposed, the photos still retain most of the details of the surrounding sky, fountain, and even buildings, with great clarity and colour.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SF MoMA)

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra photo samples — Main camera (no zoom), f/1.4

Photo: HWZ

Olafur Eliasson’s One-way colour tunnel (2007) in SF-MoMA is a prismatic challenge for the cameras on Galaxy S26 Ultra, given that it’s uniquely built to refract its colours when viewed from specific angles and directions. The phone captured what the naked eye sees very closely, no doubt thanks to its excellent software algorithms and sensor quality.

Portrait shots

We’ve also experimented with selfies/portrait shots in both landscape and portrait orientation with the Camera app’s built-in Portrait mode. The blur effect (bokeh) includes an adjustable strength (0 to 7) that lets the user control how much background clarity is needed to contribute to the subject’s focus.

More about Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

The collection of photo samples does tell us that the wider apertures (which let more light in) make shooting with a Galaxy S26 Ultra a lot easier, having tried them across a variety of environments and scenarios. When you also consider that the ultrawide and 3x zoom cameras did not receive the same upgrade, it’s surprising how consistent the shots turned out, across different cameras.

Then again, the phone starts at S$1,828 (256GB), so it better be this good after all.

If you want to learn more (or buy) the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, be sure to check out our following articles as well.

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Making the most of your Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra cameras? Here’s how