Up close with the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge's camera (pictures)

Samsung has taken the wraps off the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge -- two different sized phones, but both packing the same camera, which is what we're taking a closer look at here.

The most important thing to note about the camera is that the resolution has dropped from 16 to 12 megapixels. That might sound bad but there's a good reason behind it. The pixels on the sensor are physically larger than before, allowing them to capture much more light.

The lens has a wider aperture too -- going from f/1.9 on the S6 to f/1.7 on the S7. That allows it to take in more ambient light from a scene. Pair that with the larger sensor pixels and the S7s are shaping up to be formidable low-light shooters.

Samsung showed us this demo of both the S6 and S7 taking controlled low-light shots. The image previews on the screen certainly looked brighter on the S7, and had less image noise too (a common problem with low-light shooting on any type of camera).

The camera interface is much the same as you'd find on the Galaxy S6. It's straightforward to use and easy to see where the different settings are.

Key tools such as high dynamic range (HDR) and a variety of live filters are kept in view on the left hand side.

There's a range of creative filters you can use to spice up your images, or you could just shoot normally and use your normal photography apps to add some flair afterwards.

12 megapixels is now the maximum resolution you can shoot at. Sure, you lose a few pixels over the 16 megapixels of the Galaxy S6, but hopefully the low-light boost will make it a good trade-off.

Video can still be shot at 4K resolution, however.

There's a 5-megapixel camera on the front of both the S7 and S7 Edge. As shown here, it makes you look wonderful every time.

The large, super-sharp screen of the S7 Edge really lends itself to taking photos.

Autofocus speed has also been increased, and indeed I found the S7 locked on to subjects extremely quickly. I'm looking forward to seeing how much this helps when taking action shots.

There's a flash on the back of course, for those times when the brighter aperture just doesn't cut it for your low-light snaps.

Samsung has also managed to slim down the camera bump on the back of the phone. On the right here is the Galaxy S6, on the left the new S7 with the less protruding lens.

There's a bunch of different shooting modes too, including panorama and burst modes.

And there's a manual option too, which lets you fine-tune settings such as ISO and white balance.