I was trying to zoom to 100x while using 200 megapixels in the phone's camera. It worked once so I know it can do it but I forgot how it happened. Google is no help, all I find is it says to use 12m to use the 100x zoom. 100x zoom is easy to do using 12 megapixels but when you use 100x zoom in 12m and try to switch from 12m to 200m in that setting, it reverts back to 12m. I was trying to photograph a bird and was able to use 100 zoom with 200 megapixels and had it for a second but can't figure it out again. Anyone know how to do it? Thanks
Same here although with a S25U, I've only been able to zoom greater than 10x using the ST camera which is the 12MP one. The only way I've been able to take a 200MP image is with the wide angle lens at 1x zoom but any increase in the zoom reduces the frame resolution, i.e. it's not optical zoom anyway but the multiple lenses allow some evasion of that. I did a test of the same scene 3 miles distant using the 12MP camera at 100x zoom and my 30MP mirrorless camera with a lens that had 32x magnification. There was much better detail in the 30MP mirrorless camera at 32x zoom. At least on the S25U the 50MP and 12MP cameras do have optical zoom but the camera lets you exceed the optical zoom range for each, digital zoom using crop and expand. On the 50MP camera zoom beyond 5x is crop and expand digital zoom. On the 12MP camera it's 3x before crop and expand digital zoom. The focal length equivalents on a DSLR would be 24mm for the 200MP wide angle, 111mm with 5x optical zoom for the 50MP telephoto and 67mm with 3x zoom for the 12MP super telephoto. That makes the 50MP telephoto start at about twice the magnification of the 12MP at about twice the resolution and optically zoom to 5x staying over twice the resolution of the 12MP. Depending on the scene you'd do better cropping most scenes yourself from 1x zoom 200MP frames (also getting image stabilization), or the 50MP camera at no more than 5x zoom, or the 12MP camera at no more than 3x zoom. I understand the S24U cameras have the same ranges. The 50MP is probably best for long distances (equivalent to a 111mm focal length DSLR zoom with 5x optical zoom) for long distance scenes. A crop from the 200MP at 1x zoom for close scenes and get the benefit of image stabilization. There isn't a "correct" answer but the 100x zoom mode has pretty poor detail, putting aside digital optimizations I estimate is about the same as a 1.2MP camera with a 33x equivalent magnification taking into account the 3x optical zoom on the 12MP camera. Which would imply my mirrorless camera and a 32x magnification lens also has almost 25 times as much visual detail as the 12MP S25U camera at 100x zoom.
