The S24 Ultra has two zoom lenses at two different magnifications. This allows for excellent portraits at two focal lengths, and the 3X is a sweet spot. It’s also a good range for object shots/ product photography, close-up photos of plants and flowers, and more.
The hardware of the 3X telephoto has been the same ever since the two-year-old S22 Ultra. The S24 Ultra also has the same 1/3.52″ 10MP Sony IMX 754 sensor. The sensor is the weakest part of the hardware on the S24 Ultra, and it’s even worse than Samsung’s own 1/2.76″ 50MP JN1 sensor, which has support for dual gain.
Despite this, Samsung’s processing is extremely strong, and it redeems the weak hardware. Portraits are typically good, and while indoor shots are noisy, they’re still usable. However, there are reports on X that the S24 Ultra has downgraded the processing of the 3X telephoto camera, and its overall performance is very weak.
You don’t even have to zoom in to see the poor processing on the 3X telephoto. Judging from the images in the post, the older S22 Ultra and S23 Ultra models perform much better with the same sensor. To add to the confusion, those models have older chipsets, resulting in weaker ISPs.
It was taken at the organic 3X focal length and wasn’t sensor-cropping. Samsung’s image outputs at 3X did not improve in all conditions, but it’s a massive downgrade in some conditions. The colors on the S24 Ultra are incredibly dull, the details are crushed, there’s no distinction between the black and brown hues, and the entire photo is noisy and grainy.
Using Night Mode fixes the problem to an extent. However, it’s not an ideal solution and is still behind the other models. It’s mostly a downgrade in image processing in low-light scenes. This was after the new camera update that would massively improve the cameras. It’s not just with one sample in one scene, but the S24 Ultra consistently performs worse in almost every indoor or low-light scene at 3X compared to the S23 Ultra.
Images from the S24 Ultra are much noisier, and the output is consistently worse. Since this is a software processing issue, Samsung can easily fix it with a future update.
