Wide Angling

Yesterday's blip (along with all of my blips this month, will be shot with the camera on my new smart phone. Unlike most of you, I have rarely used phone cameras. This was because I had always written them off for poor picture quality, cumbersome operation and imprecise control. 

In recent times, the quality of published blips, shot with phones, has frequently surprised me. Accordingly, now that I have a contemporary 48mp phone camera at my own disposal, I thought I'd find out what it can really do. Where practicable, post processing will be done using Snapseed (on the phone itself) and at the end of the month I'll decide whether the whole approach is a viable sometime alternative to my proper cameras and Photoshop.

Right now I harbour some doubts. I have this overarching impression of working submerged in a tank of treacle while wearing boxing gloves ...... buuuuuut time will tell.

Today I fiddled with the wide angle option. The exif says that it offers a focal length of 2mm. Now Samsung does not publish a crop factor but the internet suggests "6" for a typical smart phone sensor. That would imply a full frame focal length of 12mm or 6mm for m4/3 sensors. Gee. it is even more impressive when one realises that the image is basically rectilinear - as opposed to "fish eye". Of course without a proper spec from Samsung, those figures remain an educated guess. Nonetheless I anticipate playing with the wide angle setting quite a bit. Could be useful.