my Current Phone ( Samsung Galaxy S10+ ) has a Camera system that is mainly limited by its lack of optical zoom … That’s because it is difficult to fit a zoom lens into a phone …
this had prompted me to think about real cameras again because those take interchangeable lens and obviously have no issues with zoom …
yet when i looked at these cameras it was instantly apparent that they were falling behind smartphones technologically and it would feel maybe stupid paying for outdated technology …
so then i decided to take a second look at what phones offer TODAY and as it turns out Samsung did manage to stuff a zoom lens into their Ultra phones by orienting the lens array sideways …
( images below are for S21 Ultra but S22 Ultra is similar )
is it any good ? let’s find out …
Samsung galaxy S22 ultra, video zoom test, Busan city, South Korea.
how did i miss this shit ?
no wonder nobody is buying regular cameras anymore …
a professional zoom lens by itself costs as much as the entire S22 Ultra phone and most people won’t even notice the difference in quality …
yeah i got a little bit blindsided there … the lesson as always is NEVER ASSUME !
i assumed that lack of optical zoom was a fundamental limitation of phones - i was wrong - all it took was turning the lens array sideways and voila …
i also assumed poor low light performance was a fundamental limitation of small sensors - i was wrong about that too - all it took was computational photography stitching together multiple shots such that the noise cancelled out and only clean image remained …
it seems that if you really need that zoom you’re better off just getting the Ultra phone than getting a dedicated camera …
this zoom lens on the Ultra is a game changer for wildlife photography - without optical zoom you can’t get close enough to some bird or squirrel or whatever to take a decent picture - but now that phones go from ultra-wide to telephoto and can do low-light as well - fuck !
Samsung cancelled their entire camera line in 2016 because they realized Phones were going to obsolete them all …
I realize this all must be obvious but i haven’t looked into this since i last got my phone ( S10+ ) and at the time they didn’t have these telephoto Ultras yet or at the very least at the time i wasn’t interested in taking snaps of birds and squirrels …
i hate everything !
the pain …
OK it’s a good thing i didn’t kill myself yet because there is some serious specs fuckery going on with the S20/21/22 Ultra Camera …
namely due to “nona-binning” ( Samsung Bullshit ) their “108 megapixel” camera is actually 12 Megapixel …
but i have to run out to gym, i will have to come back to it later …
