One of the most useful new features of Galaxy S20 is the camera zoom: up to 10x hybrid optical zoom, and 100x Super Resolution zoom. Samsung called it Space Zoom and registered a trademark for it.
Actually, the camera in S20 Ultra probably is the only reason for you to migrate to Galaxy S20 as explained in this post.
This Galaxy S20 guide explains the details of Galaxy S20 hybrid optic zoom and super-resolution zoom, the differences between these two zooms, and their relationships with the optical zoom and digital zoom.
Please note, Galaxy S20, S20+, and S20 Ultra have different camera configurations as explained in this page. 10x hybrid optical zoom and 100x Super Resolution zoon can only be found on Galaxy S20 Ultra. Galaxy S20 and S20+ only have 3x hybrid zoom and 30x super-resolution zoom.
You may check this guide to learn to use the new Galaxy S20 camera app and this guide (coming soon) on how to use the hybrid optical zoom and super-resolution zoom.
What is the optical zoom and digital zoom?
When taking photos or shooting videos, you may want to change the focal length of the photo. Sometimes you want to take a “close-up” (zoom-in) photo or wide ones (zoom-out).
This has been easily implemented on the cameras using a lens with controllable focal length. Even most sub-$300 point-and-shoot cameras are equipped with a lens which can offer 10x to 30x optical zoom.
But for smartphones, these traditional lenses cannot be used due to thinness fo the smartphone. The higher zoom levels usually mean a longer (thicker) lens.
So, up to now, the flagship smartphones usually stop at 3x optical room simply because of the thickness limitations fo the phone.
The zoom achieved through changing the focal length in the optical system is called “optical zoom”.
You should not be confused the optical zoom with the digital zoom, which can be found in almost all smartphones.
Digital zoom does not special hardware. In plain terms, it works in two stages:
- Crop the centre part of the photo.
- Resize the cropped photo to the size of the photo.
So, basically, the digital zoom is just an image editing.
When resizing the cropped photo, the actual “pixels” captured by the camera sensor cannot be increased. The software has to “create” some pixels to fill the space.
Of course, some vendors may use … Read the rest
