The fifty megapixel cellphone is upon us

[sir pball]

The latest crop of top-end phones is kinda blowing my mind…my vanilla Galaxy s23 shoots 50MP, the Ultra model is 200MP. In something you can slide into your pocket. Yeah, the Ultra is $1500…priced a measly 100MP Hasselblad lately? I'm not being entirely sarcastic…

Top image, full shot; bottom, 100% 1024x768 crop. Samsung Galaxy S23, f/1.8, 23mm equivalent, 1/147s, ISO25.

Also, cat tax; meet Adora Belle Dearheart.


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[Diamond_Dog]

1. WOW.

Incredible photos!

[sir pball]

9. Please, "one photo".

Last edited Fri May 12, 2023, 08:57 PM - Edit history (1)

The second is merely a crop of the first, it's that detailed…I have a cheap Indian print shop that can do an 18x24 for $50, I kinda want to do it just for fun

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Wow! Amazing shots. Thank you for them, and for the data! n/t

[sir pball]

10. Of course! Share and Enjoy!

If you're a photo rat you might want to consider a Galaxy, since it looks like even the iPhones aren't using these sensors yet. Not kidding when I say if it weren't for the changeable lenses I'd ditch my DSLR.

[Major Nikon]

3. I realize this is tongue in cheek

But on the half serious side you just can't compare the sensor on the Hasslebad to any cell phone just based on the number of pixels. If you compare it to film a lower ISO translates to finer grain and a finer grain is capable of more detail (to a point of diminishing returns), but this is no substitute for the size of the format. Medium format is capable of far more detail than 35mm. The same goes for pixels. You can pack more in a given area, but eventually you reach the point of diminishing returns. The Galaxy s23 has an impressive sized sensor for a cell phone, but the $30K+ Hasslebad is still about two and a half times larger and the end result is going to be far more impressive.

[sir pball]

5. The Hassy sensor is much larger than 2.5x, and it has innumerable other advantages as well.

Last edited Thu May 11, 2023, 07:42 PM - Edit history (2)

The Ultra uses a 1/1.3" sensor, 70mm^2; the H6D-100 uses a 53.4x40mm sensor…2136mm^2. Pixel pitch, which is I'm sure you know is the really important metric, is 0.6µm for the phone vs. 4.6µm for the camera. Plus the Hasselblad has interchangeable lenses (some of the finest glass ever made for that matter), a far wider ISO range, far more image controls, works with strobes, and and and.

All in all, you're quite right, there is no real comparison between the two…except that I don't have an H6D in my pocket literally every moment I'm outside the house. The best camera is the one you have with you; the current crop of mobiles fulfills that aphorism and beyond.

[Major Nikon]

11. The popularity of 35mm followed much the same path

Leica made a compact 35mm rangefinder and while the quality wasn't the same as medium or large format, the idea you could take it with you anywhere revolutionized photography. And so it goes for cell cameras. I think the increase in quality is nice, but it looks like they are returning to billing the number of pixels as an advertising metric which doesn't always translate to creating better images.

[sir pball]

13. It's about all they have left to differentiate, I think

The big flagship companies, Apple Google and Samsung, have gotten their computational photography to the point where there's no practical difference between an iPhone, Galaxy or Pixel; all they have left are gimmicks like 50MP (it's really not that useful for day to day shooting, 95% of the time I'm in normal 12MP mode) and "Star Mode" or whatever the iPhone does that has people snapping the Milky Way left and right.

[Major Nikon]

20. I think sensor size would be a better thing to point out

A 1.3" sensor in a cell phone is pretty amazing. It's basically 35mm. And that's a lot easier to understand from a layman standpoint. All things being equal the less you have to enlarge an image, the better the end quality is going to be.

[sir pball]

21. It's not 1.3", it's "1/1.3 inch"

It's an extremely screwy method of measurement, not even as simple as "the diagonal is 1/1.3 inches"; it's basically completely random.

Per the Wiki, 1/1.3" is 9.6x7.2mm with a 12mm diagonal, so it's less than half of the DX sensor in my D5100, let alone my 35mm film. That said, it is pretty big for a mobile but the iPhone 14 and (I think) newest Pixel are the same…because it's all the same Sony sensor. Hard to differentiate when you all use the same product

[Major Nikon]

23. Sounds like the measurement system I use with my first wife

[sir pball]

26. ...

[mike_c]

4. I don't want to participate in a hardware argument...

...but I have never owned a smart phone with a camera, so forgive my ignorance. My wife has one though. Nothing like the OP describes as far as I know. Obviously there isn't any industry standard for offering interchangable lenses, etc. Are you able to shoot in manual mode or some equivalent, controlling shutter speed, aperture, and ISO manually, or is it in something like permanent auto mode? Are there any other camera controls available? Can you capture a RAW image format of some sort, i.e. obtaining the data right off the sensor for post-processing with third party software, like Photoshop? Do they capture 16 bit color data? Or do they lock you in with 8 bit JPEGs only?

Edit: I just realized I'm writing this on a Samsung Android tablet with a camera of sorts built in. I have no idea what it's capable of.

[sir pball]

6. Yes, any good phone will have a manual "Pro/Expert" mode

Full manual control (besides aperture&focal length as phone lenses are fixed) is available on most any phone, if a bit hard to find in the menus sometimes. The image above was shot in "Expert Raw" mode using automatic exposure, saved in DNG raw format and processed via Lightroom and Photoshop in the same workflow as for my DSLR images and film scans.

I can't speak as to what your tablet camera can do; tablets don't usually get the really high end cameras so you won't get the same detail but you should have the control at least.

[mike_c]

7. wow!

That IS cool!

[sir pball]

8. Honestly, I usually just let the phone do the work.

The demo shot was a well-lit scene that I knew I could develop well so I shot pro-raw, but for 99.5% of my daily phone shots I leave it in totally automatic let-the-phone-do-its-thing mode…and get better results than I ever could even with my DSLR on a tripod. HDR and low-light shooting, in particular, have benefitted tremendously from "computational photography" where the software is as important as the hardware – now that phones have enough processing power to make the NSA blush, a little 50MP shot is easy to make look nice.

Of course it's possible to do better in a situation where you can set up a stable, proper camera and take a few exposures to merge, or have a big ol' sensor that will go to ISO 102,000, or have a sheet of Velvia 8x10…but not only are those far more expensive and complex than a cell phone, you can't slip them into your back pocket and that's the most important feature of any camera. If you don't have it with you, it's not much good, innit?

[Grumpy Old Guy]

12. I have the S23 Ultra.

I bought it a few months ago when my Note 9 started giving me trouble. I still haven't put the 200mp feature to good use yet. However, I've really been impressed with the zoom range of the five lenses. It goes from ultrawide to telephoto in about a 30 to 1 ratio with decent quality. Obviously it can't match the quality of a full frame or crop sensor camera, but it's still a kick to carry around in my pocket.

[sir pball]

14. If the 200MP is like the 50MP, it's not actually as useful as it seems

If you have a brightly lit, stable scene as above it's great, but when you're getting over ISO200 or shooting moving subjects, you just end up with a ton of not-so-great pixels. About 95% of the time I'm in 12MP (50 for the Ultra) "normal" mode. I do envy you the zoom though, I almost went with the Ultra just for that.

[Grumpy Old Guy]

17. The zoom was the deciding factor for me.

I'm a real fan of ultrawide lenses. This one is great, so far no distortion at all. The telephoto is great too. I'll have to wait and see about the 200mp.

[sir pball]

18. I love the ultrawide, I would have gotten the Ultra for that

Thankfully that one is available on all the models so I was able to save a few hundred bucks. For me it was far more of a game changer than the tele, I use it all the time!

[edhopper]

15. Lens apeture still matters

just saying.

[sir pball]

16. Less so with mobile cameras, though

The actual focal length, not the 35mmEq, is so small on a mobile phone (I think the s23 is 3.8mm but I cannot find it for the life of me) that the depth of field is essentially infinite regardless of the aperture; that combined with the completely fixed lens design that makes optimization a breeze means it's more or less a non-issue, unlike say an actual 105mm lens with a diaphragm. Sure, it's somewhat limiting insomuch as a shallow DoF has to be faked in software, but it beats lugging around my Nikon!

[edhopper]

19. That is very true

Last edited Sat May 13, 2023, 11:47 AM - Edit history (1)

I was thinking about the difference between this and a true large telephoto or macro lens. The amount of light coming into the camera is important.

But you are also right about the focal length.

For the average person, these camera phones are perfectly good. But if you are a more dedicated photographer....

[sir pball]

22. Even straight up professionals are using mobiles more and more

The ever-polarizing Ken Rockwell publishes a lot of shots off his iPhone, and he's far from the only one…basically, if it's a shot you'd take with a moderately, or better yet ultra, wide lens (my phone has a 12mmEq lens and it's AMAZING), your phone is as good if not better than anything short of an MF rig, especially with the postprocessing it automagically does.

Don't get me wrong, I like taking my DSLR out, and don't even get me started on 35mm, but my phone has always been the best camera I've owned since I've always had it with me…and it's rising to the level of an objectively Good Camera.

[Hekate]

24. I love the name of your cat...

GNU Sir Terry Pratchett

[sir pball]

25. You should meet her brother...

Havelock…full name Havelock Vetinari, Lord Patrician, Snugglebutt.

Seriously, he's the most aggressively cuddly cat I've ever met..

eta GNU Terry Pratchett

[Hekate]

27. Oh, that face just says "Assassin's Guild"!

[sir pball]

28. An even better one - she does love that sunbeam.

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