Samsung Galaxy Ace 3 – Camera

Like its predecessor the Galaxy Ace 2, the Ace 3 includes a 5-megapixel main camera with LED flash and autofocus. Up front there’s a very basic 0.3-megapixel VGA front-facing camera to serve up grainy-looking selfies and which is an adequate place for video calling.

The camera UI has a good selection of automatic and manual features, but can’t really match the comprehensive snapping modes on the S4. There’s a selection of Smart modes to choose from including Best Photo, Panorama, Sound & Shot and Continuous Shot to take 3 pictures per second. For more manual control you can adjust metering, ISO sensitivity, white balance and exposure, though these options seem a bit much for a cheap phone with a limited camera like this.

Image results are on par with other 5-megapixel smarphone cameras like the Moto G and the Xperia where bright, well-lit conditions yield the best-looking photos.

Shots from afar produce colourful images, but there’s still a noticeable amount of noise. Without optical image stabilization, and an autofocus that’s slow to jump into action, images often come out blurry especially when you are trying to take action shots.


The Ace 3’s 5-megapixel camera produces good colours but struggles to focus

When you need to get up close the Ace 3 actually musters up an impressive Macro performance and can capture good levels of detail, although you do have a wait on your hands for the autofocus to sharpen up.

In low light conditions, the LED flash does a respectable job brightening up shots, but the night shot below shows its struggles with bright light sources.

For close-up shots the Ace 3 does a good job and will be sufficient for Facebook pictures of a night out but other than that you’d be better off sticking to a standalone camera.

Samsung Galaxy Ace 3: Video quality

For filming, the main camera shoots 720p HD video at 30fps. There’s very little in the way of additional features to boost the quality of footage although you can shoot still images at the same time. Footage is reasonably detailed although the slow response of the touch focus makes it difficult to get stable, good quality video.