Freaking Out Over Samsung's Space Zoom Moonshots For All The Wrong Reasons
HWM Singapore|April 2023
Galaxy S23 Ultra's 100x Space Zoom. It's basically Meitu for the moon
LIU HONGZUO
Freaking Out Over Samsung's Space Zoom Moonshots For All The Wrong Reasons

If you're a smartphone photography enthusiast, you've probably seen that spicy Reddit thread and accompanying article on The Verge with a salacious headline screaming "Samsung caught faking zoom photos of the Moon", which declared that the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra's photos of the moon were fake. Cue dramatic gasp.

Fake, with many disclaimers, because the moon shots produced by Space Zoom were computationally enhanced with Al after the photo was taken. As a GIF inside the Reddit thread demonstrates, the phone applies computational filters to "fill in" missing details and erase noise for a clearer Moon photo taken while presumably handheld.

This is not a new controversy, since Space Zoom has been around since the Samsung Galaxy S20 series, and an explanation was given during the Galaxy S21 series' run. After reviewing these old notes, we think that Samsung's computational photography is designed to flatter you and prop up your ego, but it's not fake.

It's your photo of the Moon, but with a little (a lot of) computational help.

This story is from the April 2023 edition of HWM Singapore.

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This story is from the April 2023 edition of HWM Singapore.

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