Full-Frame vs. Smartphone (don't laugh...)

Probably my most influential blog post in the last 18 years - the one where I got the most number of people to re-examine long-held beliefs about what they thought was true - was the "Full Frame vs. Small Sensor (don't laugh)" post from 2017, where I pitted my 42 megapixel Sony A99 II against the tiny 20 MP RX100 V point-and-shoot.  When enlarged to poster size and scrutinized, nobody could tell which camera took which image.  

I was reminded of that when I started putting my new smartphone, a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, through its paces.  This phone's two claims to fame are optical zooms on two of its lenses, and a whopping 200MP sensor on a third.  Check out these shots of the replica of the Mayflower ship taken at 200 MP resolution from far away (as always, click on any image to view larger and sharper):

And the 100% crop of the above:

Yowza!  That's pretty incredible for a phone.  I wonder what the quality difference would be if I pitted this new engineering marvel against my other engineering marvel, the Sony A7R V?

So I started doing some experiments, and learning about this phone's strengths and weaknesses.  My biggest curiosity involved the online "experts"' dismissal of the phone's 200 MP mode, saying "Well, those are tiny pixels so they are sure to be of inferior quality to [whatever camera the pundit was paid to promote that week].  So let me start by running down the important stuff:

• There are four cameras on the back of the S23 Ultra, measured in "X" (magnification relative to the "Wide camera" 2nd lens) rather than traditional 35mm equivalent focal length.  The specs and equivalent focal lengths for each lens are:
• 0.6x (13mm equivalent, 12 MP) 
• 1x (23mm equivalent, 200 MP but pixel-binned to 12 MP by default.  Can be configured to shoot at native 200MP or a pixel-binned 50MP.)
• 3x (optical zoom from 23mm to 70mm equivalent, 10 MP although it produces 12MP output)
• 10x (optical zoom from 70mm to 230mm equiv, 10 MP although it produces 12MP output) 
• When you zoom in past 10x (like to 100x, for example, which should be avoided at all costs), the phone performs a "digital zoom" - cropping and upsizing, practically guaranteeing poor image quality.  So I never go past the 10x setting.

I've been saying for years that pixel peeping is not a valid way to evaluate image quality.  It's more meaningful to blow it up to poster size and view it from a reasonable distance.  And so I did two tests:

Which took which?

1) This family picture; one taken with the A7R V (61 MP) and the other with the S23 Ultra's main camera at 200 MP.  I used photoshop to make the two images' color and saturation look as close as possible.  Then I brought the enlargements to a local camera club and asked attendees to look at the subjects and guess which camera took which picture.  The room was split - and in listening to explanations as to why a choice was made, it was clear that nobody really could tell.  (Well, one person could tell instantly by ignoring my instructions - more about that in a minute.)

2) During a recent visit to the Thomas Edison Museum in Menlo Park, NJ, I took two images with my phone; one at 200 MP and the other at the native 10 MP (whose output somehow ends up at 12 MP) and blew them up.  (Below.)  Keep in mind that this is in poor light so you'd expect the 200 MP image to be significantly worse than the 12MP version, which had been pixel binned for sensitivity and cleaned up via the phone's algorithms.  

The fact is they're hard to visually distinguish when printed.  The photo club had the same difficulty discerning the difference too.  I sort of knew that result was a possibility, but I was still surprised by how close they were.

Pre-Emptive Strike

I'm anticipating a flood of angry emails from serious photographers, protesting this experiment and saying that big cameras are more versatile / have faster AF / have greater resolution at 200mm / allow for the decisive Moment (smartphones generally don't) / have a better user interface and ergonomics / have a viewfinder / can do wireless flash / can zoom seamlessly when shooting video / hold up to scrutiny when pixel-peeping / allow wedding photographers to charge more / etc.  And of course all of that is true.  But those people are missing the point of this exercise, which is LOOK AT HOW CLOSE THE PHONE IS TO THE BIG CAMERA!!!  In two weeks someone will come out with another phone that will no doubt be even better.  And don't get me started about Night Mode in most smartphones, which allows you to take sharp handheld pictures at night without a tripod (really, it's brilliant).

Frequently Asked Questions

"Wouldn't this test be even more relevant if you had used phones that use Sony's 1"-type sensor (famously used in the RX100 series of point-and-shoots)?"  The answer is Yes, but I opted for the Samsung because their Image Enhancer feature handles high dynamic range images better than anything I've seen from any big camera, making difficult lighting look just like your eye and brain remember seeing it, without needing to shoot in RAW and postprocess.  Most of the other phones that can do that (Vivo X90, Xiaomi 13 Pro, Sony Xperia 1V (although in online reviews the Sony seems to be the weakest in that area) don't have the same 10x native focal length and/or don't play well with North American cell phone providers, so I didn't spring for any of those.

"Yeah but is 10 MP enough?"  National Geographic has published lots of images taken with 10 MP cameras.  Full-page images from Cuba taken with my 6 MP Konica Minolta 7D graced the pages of Photoworld magazine back in the day.  And I have plenty of poster-size enlargements taken with my 10 MP Sony A100 back when that camera was considered state-of-the-art.  

 

The photo of the girl above was taken with an Alpha 100 and a Zeiss zoom.  People were amazed at how sharp and detailed it appeared when enlarged.  10 MP!!

This photo at Mt. Blanc also was taken with the 10 MP A100.

At the end of the day, though, nothing is as satisfying as shooting with a real camera with high-end optics, knowing that the quality of your shots are second-to-none.  

So Which Camera Took Which Picture?

(What, can't you tell? :-) )  Family picture: Image 2 was the A7R V.

Edison Museum: Image 2 was the 200 MP image.

Here's a link to a .zip file that has all the original images so you can pixel peep (188 MB).

How was that one person able easily identify the family picture?

If you look at the background instead of the subjects, the smartphone has considerably greater depth-of-field.  That's the quick give-away.  (Yes, you can add gaussian blur to match them better...)

Footnotes

1) I was surprised at how small the Thomas Edison museum was, especially since he was the Elon Musk of his day.  (Yeah, Edison had a slimy side as well.)  Our museum guide demonstrated one of his wax cylinder phonographs, which was quite loud.  "That was a problem for a lot of people back then" the docent said, "So people started to stuff socks in the speaker to quiet it down.  Hence, the phrase "Put a sock in it!" was born.

2) The S23 Ultra can't switch between lenses when shooting video, so if you start wide and zoom in to 10x, it will do a digital zoom which will look awful.  If you start at 3.5x and zoom in to 10x, it will look great.  Now you know.  More details here.  (In my opinion the video quality isn't there yet for smartphones.  Of course if I really want to do a wide to long zoom, I'll just break out the right tool for the job - my RX10 IV. :-) )

Six Weeks

And now for something completely different.  Let me tell you about the most interesting six weeks of my life. 

In the early 1980's, I was a photographer for a children's performing ensemble called "A Show Of Hands", which did precision sign language along with singing and dancing. They were very talented.  The group toured Switzerland in 1985 and made intense friends there with members of a Swiss children's theatre group called A.F.A.T.  I was there to document it all.

Three years later, I went on a similar photographic excursion to the Soviet Union, where I documented a Peace Child cultural exchange between Soviet and American high school students.

In a fit of both nostalgia and insomnia, I've compiled a short 22-page picture book talking about the six weeks in 1989 which brought these and many other significant experiences together. They were:

• A trip to Switzerland to visit some of the kids from A.F.A.T.
• A trip to Germany to do work for the European Space Agency
• The Peace Child Soviet Reunion in Detroit
• Voyager Spacecraft Neptune Encounter at JPL (that was a big deal back in the day)
• Moving into my first condo
• And more...

You can download the booklet here:

https://friedmanarchives.com/~download/temp/Six_Weeks.pdf

Be sure to look at the last two pages, showing a timeline of just how busy I used to be outside of work, and why my mom always complained that I was burning the candle at both ends in my 30's.


Until next time,
Yours Truly, Gary Friedman

(Unless you count the image processing techniques used by the Samsung phone, which is known to use such algorithms on the faces.)