I've noticed that when I take photos of people in landscape mode, the people on the outer sides are stretched and skewed, it makes them look fatter than they are. Is there a setting to stop this effect? It looks unnatural.
It sounds like barrel distortion (or perhaps keystone distortion). It would help if you posted an example.
Those distortions are common using wide angle lenses. Try a telephoto lens instead. If it is with a wide angle lens it can help to move back from the subjects. Shoot with free-space left and right of the subjects then crop it to your preferred scene outside of the camera app.
Don't use zoom beyond the optical zoom range of the camera in question, you'll get higher resolution frames that are better for cropping.
I know. I stand by what I said. If you want to take better photographs when you experience problems like this you can't leave it to the camera, especially a phone camera. The behavior isn't magic with a switch that turns it off. As described it sounds like normal optical behavior and it means you have to accept being "the photographer" in cases like this if you care to fix them, especially if you care enough to ask how. If you research the property known as field of view (FOV) on the S23U cameras I believe you will find it is wider than it is tall for the camera you were using. That FOV difference would tend to exacerbate the types of distortion I mentioned and be worse in landscape alignment than portrait alignment. The common solutions to those distortions on your phone are the same as they would be using a professional camera: they all result in reducing the subject field of view (back-off from the subject, shoot with a left/right border to be cropped or use a lens/camera with a longer focal length).
Pretty close. I tend to avoid the zoom especially when it is the camera app "digital zoom". That results in lower image detail from the camera doing a sensor frame crop and the low detail is made worse by the camera app expanding the image (usually to 12MP). I prefer to use the highest resolution sensor that will capture the detail, shoot at the minimum camera/lens optical zoom and crop it myself but not expand it. For close subjects the best zoom is moving to/from the subject. For people in a line then for a close shot the best shooting position is the center of the line. If you have control it's even better to arrange the line as a curved line with everyone about the same distance from the phone.
Taking your point about it not being a professional camera a different way. Obviously your phone doesn't have interchangeable lenses but you can just switch to a different lens when you feel like it on the S23U. It has four back cameras, two are wide angle and two are telephoto. If you use the camera app and use zoom without care the app can choose the lens for you itself. It's often better to deliberatly choose a specific camera based on the scene and only use zoom within the optical zoom range for that camera. I believe there is no optical zoom for either wide angle camera on a S23U.
I'll add the point that while reducing the field of view helps with both barrel distortion and keystone distortion. Another solution to keystone distortion is to ensure the camera is aligned with and parallel to the subject's vertical axis across the full height of the subject. Obviously a lens that's an eight of an inch tall makes that hard and the best compromise is to shoot parallel to what matters in the subject, e.g. at head height for a one or two people subject or at probably at mid torso height for a large number of people (especially if you want head to foot subject views). Another good way with a large group is to shoot from above with the phone tilted towards the people but far enough back to see faces, it makes bodies less of the content than faces. That's all more like taking care because it would probably still be worth reducing the subject field of view anyway.
Another point to consider on barrel and keystone distortion is that they have artistic use so it isn't always necessary to avoid them.
Photograph a rank of soldiers from a position close to the soldier at one end of the rank rather than the center of the rank. Barrel distortion making the nearest soldier look huge on the right of the frame can be a useful effect.
Keystone distortion is the thing you also get when you photograph a very tall building from a fairly close position and have to tilt the phone to fit the whole building in. Keystone distortion is a great effect to have sometimes when photographing skyscrapers and other large buildings from ground level and relatively near to the building. You can get keystone distortion on the horizontal axis as well. The rank of soldiers can be made to look like it goes on to infinity with a horizontal tilt that shows there's another soldier after the last one fully visible in the frame because it makes the size of each soldier smaller the further they are from the camera. If the reduction in size is fast enough it can make the rank look infinite.
Don't limit your art with rules about a "right" way to take a given scene. Apply the correct art for the scene to suit yourself.
