The new Samsung S24 Ultra 5x lens does 10x… with a crop!

When it became clear that Samsung’s new Ultra smartphone would drop the 10x prime lens for a 5x optical module, people imagined it would use digital trickery to reach the same focal length… but it’s a simple crop!

Samsung announced its new S24 family of smartphones, which rely on AI for almost everything, photography and video included. One of the unique features of previous Galaxy Ultra models is their 10x prime lens, which offers a coverage that’s identical to a 230mm lens on a conventional 35mm system. When the first rumors suggested that the Ultra’s unique feature was about to be dropped, many believed that Samsung was making the wrong choice and was simply following the trend for 5x optical systems in recent smartphone models, counting on the power of AI to cover the missing magnification.

While the news confirms the rumors and the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra effectively comes with a 5x prime optical lens, giving it a focal length around 120mm, half of what the previous models offered, the ability to reach the same coverage – that’s 230mm –  has not been lost, and contrary to what some believe and have written, it’s not the result of any AI trickery or resampling… but a simple crop!

Samsung clearly shows it in its Samsung Unpacked video, in the section “The Artful Awakening”, which uses the Louvre Museum as  backdrop to show what the S24 Ultra can do… although even Samsung does not seem to be able to clearly explain what its smartphone does when it comes to text. The reading on the video indicates that the 50MP sensor used offers “5x Optical Zoom and 10X Optical Quality Zoom”, which is a bad use of the terms because… the S24 Ultra does not have zooms but four distinct cameras –  with 13, 24, 67 and 111mm, effectively – which cover, in same cases digitally, the focal lengths between the two extremes of the coverage, that is 13 and 111mm.

It’s a simple crop!

Now, how did Samsung get to the 230mm (10x) used in previous models? The video states, about the new 50MP module, that  “this fresh new lens even delivers top notch optical quality in 10x zoom”, and then goes on to add this revealing note: the Galaxy S24 Ultra captures 50MP images with the new 5X optical zoom lens… then crops the center of the image on the screen to create an impeccable 12MP image, with no loss in image quality”.

It’s so simple, yet – some – people seem to not understand how it works. While there may be some AI trickery used to get perfect pixels in the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, the way Samsung found to get results like those of the missing 10x camera is nothing new, it’s just a crop. It’s a process common in photography and one that was actively used in the original analog APS – Advanced Photo System concept (a discontinued film format for still photography first produced in 1996), which in fact cropped areas of the image – in camera – to create different aspect ratios.

Nikon DSLR cameras with DX and FX format are a good example of this type of solution. DX refers to the APS-C size sensors first used by Nikon in its digital cameras, a digital variant of the APS, as it was difficult to get sensors in the 35mm format. When full frame sensors were made available, later, Nikon used the term FX to refer to them. While Canon opted to create lenses – EF-S mount – for its APS-C system not compatible with full frame sensors, Nikon decided to offer backward compatibility, so lenses built for DX could be used with FX camera models. In that case the FX camera automatically adjusts the image frame to cover the area of the DX sensor, meaning lens coverage extends by, in Nikon’s case, 1.5x. So, a 400mm offers the coverage of a 620mm lens. It effectively crops out parts of the image, without changing, in any way, the pixels remaining, meaning the image is acquired by a completely optical process.

Samsung says: above 10x  expect “image deterioration”

Although Samsung’s crop in the 24 Ultra is made on the image at the capture stage, the base idea is the same… a simple crop to gain focal length. It’s not much different from picking an image shot with the full resolution of the 50MP sensor and cropping it, as desired, on your computer. The difference is that the camera does it for you, making the entire process simpler… and similar to what the original APS system did: people not used to make panoramic photos were amazed at the potential… although it was nothing more than a crop of the original frame!

What makes this possible now is the use of a 50MP sensor (a 1/2.6″ sensor, bigger than the 1/3.52″  used on the 10x lens in the S23 Ultra), which offers, in simple math, five times the number of pixels of the 10MP sensor used in the 10x module used by Samsung previously. In fact, the resulting images are a simple crop of the central area of the sensor, 12.5MP, against 10MP, which already points to a gain in the number of effective pixels used. Add “better pixels”,  some AI trickery to it, better software and probably a good optical 5X lens system and you’ve the ingredients to make the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra a clear winner. It’s a pity, though, that Samsung did not upgrade the sensor resolution on the 3x lens, which continues to use a 10MP sensor…

Only real world tests will demonstrate the efficacy of the new 5x camera module – and no, I am not buying a S24 Ultra to test – but it’s evident that the whole package offered is more attractive to photographers and videographers, as the set of lenses covers – optically and digitally  – everything from 16mm to 230mm easily, and even beyond, to the 100x Samsung’s marketing continues to promote. I would say, though, that 30x – in a mix of digital and optical – still works  (it does on my S22 Ultra) for an astounding 690mm focal length… on a smartphone! Samsung does warn users, though, that “zoom distances past 10x zoom may express some image deterioration.”

All videos can be slow motion!

Videographers will love the new Instant Slow-Mo, which makes it possible to watch any video, even those not shot in slow-mo, at a slower frame rate. The new ProVisual Engine analyses each frame of the original video and generates AI images to add in between frames. Also, for the first time on a Galaxy smartphone, users can “film 8k video with optical 5x zoom” as Samsung notes.

Recording 8K videos is only possible with the 200MP and 50MP cameras, but 4K 60fps videos can be recorded using any of the cameras on the phone, and that includes the selfie-camera. Video capture in the S24 Ultra uses, as well as photography, the most recent technologies from Samsung, including Quad Pixel Autofocus for the 50MP telephoto camera. According to Samsung,  Quad Pixel Autofocus can detect phase differences in both horizontal and vertical directions, which translates into faster autofocus speeds and more reliable focusing.

The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra comes with all the other functions you hope to find in a smartphone, like Samsung’s updated version of Nightography as well as a series of new editing options for photography and video that explore AI (Galaxy AI editing tools that put the power of post production in your pocket), but the essential aspects of this new model for photographers and videographers looking for their next smartphone camera are those covered here. If all works as Samsung suggests, the S24 Ultra may continue to use the title of “most versatile smartphone camera” that previous models from Samsung received.