Samsung enables RAW capture on the UW lens on some (?) models

[WilliamC]

I recently got an S20 for our hiking phone. Samsung notoriously allows RAW capture only on the main camera so I left the phone at home until I got a Moment lens and case for it.
They duly arrived last week so I charged up the phone and downloaded the system update it said was waiting.
Lo and behold, when taking the first photos of out trip yesterday symbols had appeared in Pro mode allowing me to switch between the main camera and the UW one and both are saving in RAW.
Anyone want to buy a Moment wide-angle lens?

 

[edh]

On the S10+ too

 

[WilliamC]

This might be of interest to @Teepee and anyone else with a S21 Ultra.
Samsung has released a beta version of the Expert RAW app, which allows multi-frame RAW capture on all the phone's cameras.

 

[Teepee]

Woohoo!

Being stuck with jpeg for the other lenses sucks.

Today is a good day for phone photography.

Topaz labs have their BF offer on with Denoise, Gigapixel and Sharpen AI for less than a third of normal, and Honey did another 15% on top of that

Having a play with it this morning is seeing some impressive results. Having RAWs to process on the 12mp wide and tele sensors and thus much more information should allow it to produce even better results.

Edit; wide already does raw. I'd forgotten that (don't use it much at all). And also forgotten the OP.

 

[WilliamC]

I was very disappointed with the photos I got this summer from the S21 Ultra. on zooming in, they were very blocky and lacking in detail. I was using the Expert Raw app for the photos.
I've only just got around to messing around with the phone and comparing it with the S20, and then the S21 Ultra but using the Pro setting on the standard Camera app.
Here are some screenshots from the results magnified to about 380%
S21 Ultra Expert Raw


S21 Ultra Pro mode on Camera App.


You might need to view these on a large screen but I think the difference is clear, particularly if you look at the balcony railing on the right.
Even the S20 does better than Expert Raw on the S21 Ultra.


The good news is that I now notice that the standard Camera app gives access to RAW capture on all 4 lenses, so I can bin the Expert Raw app.

 

[Teepee]

Samsungs processing is very heavy handed. It looks good on a phone screen. Viewed on a monitor they look awful.

 

[WilliamC]

Samsungs processing is very heavy handed. It looks good on a phone screen. Viewed on a monitor they look awful.

Yes, but I took these from the RAW files, with the lighting slightly adjusted; they're not the Jpegs out of the phone. Expert Raw appears to be doing some heavy processing to the RAW files, which the standard camera app isn't.

 

[Teepee]

Yes, but I took these from the RAW files, with the lighting slightly adjusted; they're not the Jpegs out of the phone. Expert Raw appears to be doing some heavy processing to the RAW files, which the standard camera app isn't.

Has Samsungs' Expert raw burnt this nasty overprocessing into the .dng file? That's rather a pain if so.

 

[WilliamC]

Has Samsungs' Expert raw burnt this nasty overprocessing into the .dng file? That's rather a pain if so.

It has and it is . But at least now RAW has been enabled for all the lenses/sensors in the standard app so I can ditch Exert RAW*.

*I've read that Samsung has just introduced an update to ER that improves image quality (I don't know if it's this particular issue), but it's only available for phones running Android 13.

 

[Thedragonsfather]

Yes, but I took these from the RAW files, with the lighting slightly adjusted; they're not the Jpegs out of the phone. Expert Raw appears to be doing some heavy processing to the RAW files, which the standard camera app isn't.

It's a camera phone. Regardless of how many miniscule pixels they've crammed onto the tiny sensor. By its nature when you zoom in (esp. by the amount you have) you are going to get just awful results.
I use my phone a lot when traveling/hiking/camping but I'd never crop in and videos can usually easily be used with those from other equipment. Supplement the phone camera with a real camera for when you need the right tool for the job.

 

[WilliamC]

It's a camera phone. Regardless of how many miniscule pixels they've crammed onto the tiny sensor. By its nature when you zoom in (esp. by the amount you have) you are going to get just awful results.

Indeed, but I think you've missed my point here; the Expert Raw app that Samsung introduced to supposedly allow you to get better image quality is giving much worse results than Samsung's standard camera app on the same phone with the same sensor.
(I zoomed in on the photos here in the hope that the difference would be visible on the photos in the post. On a computer screen, the difference is clear even without zooming in.)

Supplement the phone camera with a real camera for when you need the right tool for the job.

Which indeed I do.