We installed it Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra100x Space Zoom is a a photographic and technical marvelbut he has one trick that I didn’t notice until recently.
I use Samsung’s Note-in-disguise with a large screen Android 12 phone for five (mostly uneventful) months, but not consecutively. A 6.8-inch device at 228 grams is a bit heavy, especially compared to my 6.1-inch 204-gram iPhone 13 Pro. However, whenever I want to get the best picture possible with a smartphone zoom, there is no other choice.
When I bought tickets to see Brian Wilson (opens in a new tab) (with the Beach Boys) and Chicago (opens in a new tab) (with 21 top 10 singles) on Jones Beach Theatre (opens in a new tab) in New York, I decided to carry the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra with me because its 10x optical zoom and 30x to 100x spatial zoom spoil the iPhone’s long-distance photography capabilities. Given my nosebleed seats (no, I’m not going to pay $200 for an orchestra), if I wanted to get decent shots of the band on stage, I couldn’t rely on the iPhone 13 Pro’s 3x optical zoom and 15x digital zoom .
Like binoculars
As soon as the legendary, now 80-year-old Brian Wilson ran up to his all-white piano, I started using the zoom and large screen of the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra as digital binoculars. With 10x zoom, I felt like I was sitting in an orchestra. With 30x Space Zoom, I sat on stage, and with 100x Space Zoom, I was on top of Wilson’s piano, looking him in the face.
To be clear, the differences in image quality between 10X and 30X or 100X can be quite dramatic. The 10X uses Samsung’s periscope and prism technology to deliver superior optical zoom. No interpolation, just 10MP pure image. 30X and 100X look decent unless you zoom in to full size where the details tend to look more like an abstract artist’s interpretation or even DALL-E.
Watch him move
The further you zoom in, the more slight movements of your hand can throw the subject out of the frame. However, the Galaxy S22 Ultra does a great job with optical and electronic image stabilization. Brian Wilson helped my cause by performing his entire 45-minute set sitting behind a white piano.
Chicago, however, was a different story. Current vocalist Neil Donnell roamed the stage throughout the band’s set. Initially, because I didn’t know who he was (longtime vocalist Peter Ketaro left the band in 1985, and Chicago has had a string of frontmen since then), I didn’t bother with the 30x or 100x.
However, in the end I decided to go after the powerful singer with the Super Zoom phone. At first I went up to 30X, but it wasn’t until I tried 100X that I noticed something startling. Although I held the Galaxy S22 Ultra perfectly still – or as still as my half-century-old hands can manage – the phone’s camera happened to follow Donnell as he walked from one side of the stage to the other.
I didn’t understand it at first. I just watched Donnell sing and walk and it wasn’t until I noticed the back of the stage move to the left behind him that I realized the phone camera had caught Donnell and was following him.
But how
To understand how the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra camera can track moving objects, you have to admit that the phone’s 30x and especially 100x spatial zoom are highly interpolated images, where Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Chip-level computer vision is constantly working to figure out what you’re looking at—a planet, a person, a bird—and what it can do.
When I asked Samsung about this feature, they confirmed that Space Zoom uses OIS and EIS to reduce shake and blur. The tracking I’ve seen is a product of tracking autofocus, where cameras try to adjust the framing to keep the subject in focus and – in my experience – in the frame.
When Donnell filled the frame, the Samsung phone correctly assumed he was my subject and, without asking me, kept him in the center of the frame as he tried to move out of it. This opportunity allowed me to take a series of photos of the singer in motion. Van Gogh quality, sure, but if I tried to take a 100x optically magnified image of a man in motion, I probably wouldn’t have anything to show you.
This tracking doesn’t work in video up to 20x interpolated zoom, but it does in a number of different still image scenarios.
When I returned to the city, I took the Galaxy S22 Ultra to Bryant Park, which has a huge lawn in the middle. I stood at one end and focused on the other end where people were walking back and forth. Using the 100x zoom, I would select the walkers and wait for the phone to track them. This happened every time but stopped when they got too far out of frame. I guess if Donnell left the scene, the Galaxy S22 ultra would stop following him too.
What to do with it
A 100x interpolated zoom isn’t the right photography tool for every job, but it’s effective for astrophotography and in situations like concerts, where chances are you’re not sitting in the first, 10th, or even 50th row. .
Image quality is what you would expect from computer vision. In situations where it can fill in the gaps with what it knows about the subject, the results can be impressive (I think the moon looks great because Samsung’s AI knows what the moon should look like), but it will struggle with e.g. a relatively new Chicago singer that even I couldn’t easily identify.
If you want to compare all the best smartphone cameras and find out which ones push the optical zoom envelope, read our review the best phones.
https://www.techradar.com/news/wait-samsung-galaxy-s22-ultra-space-zoom-can-follow-moving-objects/
