The Samsung Galaxy S23 may get new hyperlapse astro photography feature, says tipster
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The Samsung Galaxy S23 may get new hyperlapse astro photography feature, says tipster
You may be able to shoot long time lapses with rumored Astro Hyperlapse feature
➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: Stars get in your eyes
🔭 Galaxy S23 Ultra may be capable of astro hyperlapses, according to leak
🌝 Hyperlapses make sense after “Made for moonlight” promo leak
✨ Astro hyperlapses can create clips showing movement of the stars at night
👍 This could portend a huge leap forward for Samsung’s camera tech
In the noise of surrounding the Samsung Galaxy S23 colors leaks, it can be easy to miss smaller tipster reports, and yesterday I missed a cool rumor surrounding the Galaxy S23’s astro photography abilities.
The Samsung Galaxy S23’s focus on night photography may include a new feature called Astro Hyperlapses, according to a January 10 tweet by prominent Samsung leaker Ahmed Qwaider:
The rumored feature falls right in line with the alleged promo materials we reported on in our Galaxy S23 exclusive colors leak story, which featured the phrase “Made for Moonlight” and showed images of stars and the moon overlaid on the lenses of the camera.
But what is an astro hyperlapse?
Hyperlapse, which Samsung Galaxy phones have been able to for some time, is something like the combination of a time lapse and a video. Like a time lapse, it takes many pictures over time, but instead of putting all of the pictures together at the end to create an image that shows, for example, a still city scene with streaking lights, it combines them linearly to create a video.
As the name implies, an astro hyperlapse simply applies this concept to astrophotography. This is how you get images of the night sky with streaking lines showing the movement of the stars over time.
If Samsung has managed to pull off night photography well enough to do this, it says a lot about the light-gathering capability of the 200MP shooter revealed by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 leak from December 2022.
Most night photography on cell phones is accomplished through a combination of machine learning and long exposure photography. This compensates for the small size of smartphone lenses by gathering light slowly over a few seconds, then processing the image to account for small movements by the person holding the phone.
If Samsung has created a big enough lens and gotten its image processing down to the point it can do this with stars in the night sky – a very difficult proposition, given how little available light there is – it could mean big things for a series of phones already known for having among the best cameras in the business.