We’ve established that the 100x Space Zoom on the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra is a photographic and technical marvel, but it has one secret weapon that I wasn’t aware of until lately.
I’ve used Samsung’s Android 12 big-screen Note phone intermittently for five (largely boring) months. The 6.8-inch gadget weighs 228 grammes, which is a bit more weight than my 6.1-inch, 204-gram iPhone 13 Pro. However, there is no other option if I want the best smartphone zoom photography.
I opted to bring the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra with me when I purchased tickets to see Brian Wilson (of the Beach Boys) and Chicago (of 21 top 10 hits) at the Jones Beach Theater in New York since its 10x optical and 30x-to-100x Space Zoom outperform the iPhone’s long-distance photos. Given that I had nose-bleed seats (I wasn’t going to pay $200 for an orchestra seat), the iPhone 13 Pro’s 3x optical zoom and 15x maximum digital zoom wouldn’t be enough to capture any usable images of the band performing.
Like binoculars
We’ve established that the 100x Space Zoom on the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra is a photographic and technical marvel, but it has one secret weapon that I wasn’t aware of until lately.
I’ve used Samsung’s Android 12 big-screen Note phone intermittently for five (largely boring) months. The 6.8-inch gadget weighs 228 grammes, which is a bit more weight than my 6.1-inch, 204-gram iPhone 13 Pro. However, there is no other option if I want the best smartphone zoom photography.
I began utilizing the zoom and large screen of the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra as digital binoculars as soon as the iconic, now 80-year-old Brian Wilson sat down at his all-white piano. I had the impression that I was in the symphony because to the 10x zoom. I sat down on the stage using 30x Space Zoom, then using 100X Space Zoom, I was standing on Wilson’s piano and looking directly into his eyes.
To be clear, there can be significant changes in image quality between 10X and 30X or 100X. Samsung’s 10X uses its pericope lens and prism technology to provide superior optical zoom. Just 10MP of pure image data—no interpolation. Up until you enlarge them to full size, where the details start to resemble those of an abstract painting or even DALL-E, 30X and 100X seem decent.
Watch him move
Small hand motions have a greater potential to blur your subject as you zoom in. On the other hand, the Galaxy S22 Ultra excels in both optical and electronic picture stabilization. By delivering his whole 45-minute set while seated in front of that white piano, Brian Wilson aided my cause.
But things were different in Chicago. Throughout the band’s performance, current lead singer Neil Donnell wandered the stage.
I initially didn’t bother with 30x or 100x zoom since I didn’t know who he was (longtime lead singer Peter Catara left in 1985, and since then Chicago has had a revolving door of front men).
But eventually I made the decision to use the phone’s Super Zoom to follow the strong singer. I started with 30X, but didn’t realize anything shocking until I tried 100X. The camera on the Galaxy S22 Ultra gently followed Donnell as he moved from one side of the stage to the other, even while I held the phone as steady as my 50-year-old hands could manage.
At first, I didn’t notice it. I was simply watching Donnell sing and move when I discovered the phone’s camera had latched onto him and was following him. I hadn’t even noticed the back of the stage was shifting to the left behind Donnell at that point.
But how
You must accept that the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra’s 30X and, especially, 100X space zoom are highly interpolated images where the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip-level Computer Vision is constantly at work determining what you’re looking at – is it a planet, a person, a bird – and what it might be doing. This will help you understand how the camera on the phone can track moving objects.
Samsung verified that Space Zoom uses both OIS and EIS to lessen motion and blur when I questioned them about the capability.
The tracking I noticed was a result of tracking auto-focus, which is a feature of cameras that tries to maintain the subject in focus and, in my experience, in the frame by adjusting the framing.
The Samsung phone correctly recognized Donnell as my subject when he completely filled the frame and kept him in the middle of the image despite my requests to move him out of it. I was able to take several pictures of the performer in motion because of this skill.
Even if the quality is comparable to Van Gogh’s, if I had been attempting to take a 100x optically zoomed picture of a moving subject, I doubt I would have anything to share with you.
This tracking is repeatable in a variety of still-image circumstances but fails in video, which has a 20x interpolated zoom limit.
When I returned to the city, I went to Bryant Park, which has a sizable lawn in the center, with the Galaxy S22 Ultra. People were moving back and forth at the other end, where I was standing. I would select a walker using the 100x magnification and then wait for the phone to track them. Every time, it did, but it would stop when they strayed too far from the camera’s view. I guess the Galaxy S22 ultra would have ceased following Donnell if he had left the stage.
How to handle it
Although 100X interpolated zoom isn’t the best camera for every task, it works well for astrophotography and in scenarios like concerts when you’re probably not in the front, middle, or even back rows.
What you might anticipate from computer vision is the visual quality. When it can fill in the gaps with what it already knows about a subject, the results can be impressive (Samsung’s AI knows what the moon should look like, so I think the moon looks great), but it will struggle, for example, with a relatively new Chicago singer that even I couldn’t immediately identify.
