Doin’ it wrong

A long time ago, I decided that cell phone pictures were not real photography, and were merely intended to capture moments as reminders and viewed only on small screens.

I also use the camera for work stuff, and didn’t need super-gargantuan images for my purposes there.

So when I got my current phone several years ago, I went into the camera preferences and set the image resolution to the lowest available setting: 12MP.

And promptly forgot about it.

Yesterday I accidently discovered / reminded myself that the phone can shoot at 64MP.

Which might come in handy for some of the macro photos I’ve been taking with the phone.

In other words, I’ve been doing it wrong all this time.

To wit:

12MP at 3X zoom on the left, 64MP at 4X zoom on the right. 12MP image sized up to match the 64MP image.

There are some limitiations when shooting 64MP. The camera zooms are limited to 1X, 4X, and 6X, whereas the 12MP mode allows for 1X, 2X, and 3X. There are ways to trick the camera to use 3X with 64MP, but it’s just annoying.

That said, the 4X zoom at 64MP is sharper than the 3X zoom at 12MP. Not really a shock.

But how about zooms of a 1X image?

12MP on the left, 64MP on the right. No obvious difference besides file size.

Zoom in of same region on both. The 64MP image is sharper, but I wager most people won’t notice.

This comparison shows a slightly more obvious difference:

While the crows look virtually indistinguishable, if you view the full size image, the sky in the 12MP picture (left) is mottled and grainy, most likely due to the JPEG compression.

It’s really a mixed bag, nearly a draw when it comes to non-macro photos. Sure, the resolution / ‘grain’ is worse in the 12MP pictures, but it isn’t that noticeable and the file size is about 20% the size of a 64MP image.

But macro is where it really shines. I can’t get images like this with the 12MP resolution:

This was shot at 64MP resolution, and then shrunk to 35% its original size. And yet there is no meaningful loss of detail.

So, assuming I remember to switch modes, I will be taking my closeup shots at 64MP and then downsizing them prior to posting.

Or upgrading my WordPress acccount to get more storage.

But I’m a cheap bastard, so I’ll stick with the resized 64MP images for now.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, work called and I need to deal with some stuff…