Okay i came to this thread because it's the best place to make some inquiry about this issue which i believe it's not !
First, to get everyone on the same page check the specifications of the camera sensors we have on the S24 Ultra. You should have gathered more informations about it BEFORE buying it if you are deceived.
Main Camera
| Quad | 200 MP, f/1.7, 24mm (wide), 1/1.3", 0.6µm, multi-directional PDAF, Laser AF, OIS
10 MP, f/2.4, 67mm (telephoto), 1/3.52", 1.12µm, PDAF, OIS, 3x optical zoom
50 MP, f/3.4, 111mm (periscope telephoto), 1/2.52", 0.7µm, PDAF, OIS, 5x optical zoom
12 MP, f/2.2, 13mm, 120˚ (ultrawide), 1/2.55", 1.4µm, dual pixel PDAF, Super Steady video |
| Features | LED flash, auto-HDR, panorama |
| Video | 8K@24/30fps, 4K@30/60/120fps, 1080p@30/60/240fps, HDR10+, stereo sound rec., gyro-EIS |
First thing to understand here is that the 200 MP sensor is NOT optical zoom which is why the pictures seems garbage. It's because the picture is resized after the shoot and that's what we call digital zoom sensors.
This sensor is focal 1.7mm which is made to capture a wide aperture with more light, less shallower depth. It's not made for magnyfing objects, using this sensor to capture a specific subject is not recommended. You should use it preferably at night or low luminosity and also for a landscape shot where the AI/software image processing can really extent it's capability.
If you want to get the maximum detailed natural pictures you should use the 50MP sensor in Pro/RAW mode and export the RAW file (unprocessed) and if you're not satisfied with it's size/resolution you could use AI to upscale it to fit your print version's dimensions. But as a picture it's very much not needed to show in displays of a phone (social media included because depending the weight of the file, they're almost everytime compressed).
If you bought this phone for the 200 MP sensor for pictures and are deceived, just send it back and keep your older phone because the resize processing is of course not intended for natural shoots. (Well it's a phone... for the same price you can get a way better camera from Nikon or Canon which takes way better photos than any phone on the market...)
Secondly, there are benefits of the 200MP sensor for movies. The use of the face/object follower, the quad resolution (shooting at 8k but zoomed 4k or 1080p), the stabilizer and the fast object catching uses those digital zoom processing and render pretty good results but is not something you use in everyday life. It's more for content creators and specific use.
Another time, it's a phone, not a real camera made for filming. But i'd say it's amazing for something this small to be able to capture 8K movies@30fps with all those features available.
Now, according to your taste there are workarounds for pictures to get the most out of this phone without being left over.
First you should install Camera Assistant which has very good settings to prevent the picture to be too much processed. Also you could use Camera RAW or Photo Pro mode to get unprocessed pictures as RAW files and of course you can't use the 200MP sensor in these modes because this sensor is not optical zoom. That's not an issue, it's normal behavior since RAW files comes unprocessed which can only works with optical zoom sensors.
There are plenty of tutorials out there explaining detailed informations about the sensors and how to uses them you only have to take some time to learn how they work and setup your own taste first and keep the settings saved so you don't need to reconfigure after every launch of the camera app.
And those who don't like the overbrighted output, just turn off SuperHDR from the gallery. It's HDR metadata in the photo, if you send this photo to another device that is not an S24, you will never see this bright output anyways. It's special Samsung tonemapping that has nothing to do with the picture itself but it's metadata inside which are not visible without samsung S24 display screen, it's related to how the display of the phone shows the HDR content of the picture. (Well happily, they made this feature possible to be disabled)
I'm seriously ashamed how ppl can be so harsh like that without even knowing what they're talking about just because it's not working out of the box and/or as expected without even gathering information of the product and how to uses it properly before buying it.
Thanks you for reading and sorry if you're not satisfied with your phone, keep the older one and just go buy a Nikon D810 mounted on it with a very good camera lens and stop complaining about a phone that's not professionally made for Photography...
