I reviewed the Official Samsung Lens cover a few days ago. Click HERE to recap.
I was asked by OneTwelve in the comments to see how much zoom vs loss of quality could be achieved with the telephoto lens. And then try and see what the quality would be like from video frame grabs. If you aren’t aware, if you record a 4K video, you can extract 8mp photos. All the frame grabs were taken from the 4K Telephoto footage shown below.
So below is a photo without any lenses attached. This is to provide a perspective of the whole scene.
And now 4K video with no lens attached.
Attaching the telephoto lens and the clock tower is much closer now, but there is softness around the edge of the photo.
And below is 4K video with the telephoto lens attached. As mentioned above, I extracted 8mp photos from this 4K video.
Before I show some 4K frame grabs, lets see what the telephoto lens can do just snapping normal photos. First up a photo with digital zoom at 4 x zoom.
And now with 8 x zoom with the telephoto lens. Impressive really.
Ok, now to extracting frames from the 4K video with the telephoto lens. This is 2 x digital zoom.
Below is a 4K video frame grab, telephoto lens attached at 4 x digital zoom.
Below is 4K frame grab at 8 x digital zoom with telephoto lens attached. Now the quality has dropped and is not as good as just simply taking a photo rather than frame extract.
Finally just to show what the wide angle lens does. No zoom. Just a photo. Notice how much more of the scene is captured. Refer to the first photo for comparison. The S7 was in exactly the same spot when snapping this wide angle photo.
Overall the telephoto lens does a reasonable job. Photo quality is ok and video reasonable. There is softening on the edges but I am happy with this.
Thanks for trying out the idea but how i wish you also included 1080p grabs.
Am still wondering whether frames grabbed from 1080p video in 16:9 at 4x digital zoom will be sharper than similar zoom at 4k ?
4k in 16:9 aspect does not allow much headroom for digital zoom on the s7e.
2x digital for a total of 4x actual just crosses the limit when examining at the pixel level. Despite some class leading pixel interpolation.
4x digital shows more artifacts. Find the output to be mostly identical whether sotc or grabbed from video. Same with 8x.
To see whether the lens is worth it, the first two shots make the case if one looks at the clock tower and compares the shot without lens and with. Blowing up to 200% is no match for the 2x with the telephoto.
The wide angle looks good here too, not seeing as much softening at the edges compared to earlier shots.
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Thinking you can get sharper stills with up to 2.5x digital zoom at 16:9 if you choose the 3.7MP resolution rather than the default 9.1MP.
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