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I had three flagship phones on three different tripods, all aimed at the sun, which was rapidly crowding out the obtrusive moon. All I wanted was one or two good eclipse shots.
It turns out that photographing a solar eclipse with a smartphone is not so easy. In fact, it is quite difficult to find a process that can be reproduced without cauterizing the retina. But I did it. I grabbed the best smartphones money can buy: an iPhone 15 Pro Max, a Google Pixel 8 Pro, and a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, and prepared for 180 minutes of heavenly excitement.
This last choice may catch some people’s attention. After all, this is a now aging flagship Android smartphone without modern image processing or even the fastest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip found in the Galaxy S24 Ultra (Gen 2 for the S23 Ultra) is. However, one feature that other flagship smartphones don’t have is 10x optical zoom (which the S24 Ultra doesn’t have either).
Throughout this effort, I decided not to use any enhancements and allow my phone’s zoom lens to perform at its best without any digital wizardry. I’ve never pinched to zoom. I simply pointed each cell phone at the eclipse and pressed the shutter.
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I noticed that it doesn’t work except right after I run this. The sun’s rays will naturally erase all cell phone exposure. It’s not like I’ve never taken photos of the sun before. I’ve taken quite a few photos with my iPhone, and to overcome overexposure, tapping on the sun on the screen speeds up the exposure, reduces the light, and makes the sun more sharp.
Solar eclipses wreak havoc on smartphone exposure controls, and the more the moon blocks the sun, the clearer its light becomes. My solution is simple and you may have seen it elsewhere. I picked up his Celestron eclipse glasses and carefully placed his one sunglass lens film over each cell phone’s zoom lens. If you’re having trouble determining which camera is zooming, open the Camera app, select Maximum Optical Zoom, and place your finger over each camera’s lens until you see your finger on the screen.
Solar sunglasses helped reduce harsh glare. I then tapped the screen and adjusted the exposure until I could see the sun getting the Pac-Man treatment from the moon. In most cases, the result was a very orange-looking sun.
For the next hour or so, I switched from one cell phone to the next, repositioned my tripod, and took photos to align with the sun.
There were a few non-smartphone-related glitches (90% where I live), such as clouds just before the peak, but it was more successful than expected and the smartphone was able to cope with this challenge most of the time. He gave it to me.
Not all smartphone cameras are created equal
You can see some of my comparisons above and below (I’m using the best of all the phones in the shot above). No resizing or corrections were made, other than cropping as much as possible for side-by-side viewing.
While the iPhone 15 Pro Max and Pixel 8 Pro shoot at 12MP (the latter binned from a 48MP sensor, meaning 4 pixels are combined into each), the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra’s 10X zoom camera only shoots at 12MP. It is 10MP. I think these numbers affect the overall quality.
The Google Pixel 8 Pro matched the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s 5x zoom, and sometimes looked sharper than the iPhone or Galaxy S23 Ultra, but I had the most trouble getting properly exposed shots with the Pixel 8. did. It was also the only phone to force a long exposure after exceeding 90% peak coverage. The good news is that some of those long exposures managed to capture some of the cloud cover that provides the most atmosphere and blocks the full view of the eclipse.
Things got even more interesting with the iPhone 15 Pro Max and its 5x Tertrapism lens. The eclipse looks a little closer, but more vivid, than on the Pixel 8 Pro. There are a few photos where you can see clouds on the iPhone 15 Pro Max, and they are very beautiful. As with all cell phones, this image capture process was a bit hit and miss. The color changed from orange to almost black and white and it was hard to focus. I was really happy when I managed to take some decent photos.
The Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra’s 10x optical zoom brought me thrillingly close to the eclipse. It was certainly easy to get the exposure and focus correct. At first glance, the S23’s images are better, but upon closer inspection there’s quite a bit of grain, with some looking almost like paintings or rough canvases.
As I took a closer look at all the photos, I noticed how each phone’s camera uses ISO settings to manage image capture and quality. The iPhone 15 Pro Max ranged from ISO 50 (very slow light capture) to ISO 800 (super fast for super bright situations and action shots). Unsurprisingly, those at the higher end of the spectrum are as grainy as those on the Galaxy S23 Ultra, which ranges from ISO 250 to 800.
The Google Pixel 8 Pro has a wide range from as low as ISO 16 to an incredible ISO 1,536. I used it to photograph the sun for 90% of the eclipse behind the clouds. Aesthetically, this is one of the better shots.
If I had to pick a winner here, it would be the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra by the nose. Additional optical zoom allows you to see more detail before graininess appears.
The iPhone 15 Pro Max was a close second, but only because it was easier to get decent shots. I also think that if it had a larger optical zoom, the iPhone’s powerful image processing might have surpassed his Galaxy a year ago.
The Google Pixel Pro 8 has some great photos, but it also had a lot of bad ones because it wasn’t able to capture the converging sun and moon properly. They also suffered the most in terms of exposure. Still, I’m impressed with the ISO range and the clarity of some shots.
The iPhone 15 Pro Max and Google Pixel 8 Pro also deserve special mention for capturing two of my favorite shots. They aren’t the closest or the clearest, but they add an element of fantasy atmosphere by capturing some of the clouds.
If I live long enough to see another solar eclipse (there will be one in the American Midwest in 2044), I plan to find a special eclipse filter for my smartphone and try it again. By then, we should see his 200x optical zoom camera with a 1,000MP sensor.
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