I have a similar photo done on S22 ultra on March 6 this year, and neither look like your (position of lower right mega crater but also the rest). So its not simple 'photoshop-into-predefined-nice-image'.

I can clearly see that most folks here don't actually own discussed devices (which is fine, its US-based HN, a bastion of iphone and many Apple employees dwell here and uncritical appreciation of Apple is very evident in every single related thread). I've used its 10x zoom extensively over more than a year, it simply blows all other phones away easily for that kind of situation (more than those rather weak 3x zooms available everywhere). Family photos, wild animals, nature, anything you want to come closer, otherwise the scene is tiny dots in the center like on other phones. It works really well for what it is, with obvious unavoidable physical limits.

Overall this phone made me put my fullframe Nikon D750 away on a day I bought it. I took it 'just to be sure' on vacation to Egypt last year, didn't touch it a single time. Most often it doesn't produce strictly as good images but a) they are good enough to be viewed on phones side by side easily, basically as good as fullframe there and sometimes even much better, ie handheld photos in the night of dark scenes, fullframe is utterly lost without tripod, and b) it weights 0 and takes 0 extra space (and cost 0 instead of many thousands for modern camera with big sensor), since I have phone with me always anyway.

Tried exactly the steps as author of article, couldn't reproduce it a bit, tried various mega zooms, his various original photos, dark room etc. Blur remained blur, nothing added. I mean at this point everybody acknowledges any decent phone is painting quite a bit (ie iphone taking other side of bunny than reality, thats a fine example) and I am sure Samsung is doing their part as they have the literal android flagships.

Orientation is because photos were taken months apart.

This is to get an idea of quality, with the APS-C camera having a much larger (26x area) sensor and better optics to work with.

My impression is... S21 Ultra "space zoom" is, at best, a good party trick. But if you zoom in, the quality is still nearly garbage. Not an objectively "great photo of the moon."

You realize that these photos are to be compared with other phones and not some apsc on tripod, thats a ridiculous premise for everybody understanding 101 of photography that not even Samsung during any release was claiming to beat.

It still shows you much more details than visible via eyes, so yeah its a party trick (what else would moon shot on phone be), but pretty darn great at that (I haven't seen so many people with :-O since iphone 1 release when showing this... then they quickly try their top iphones and xiaomis and end up consistently with a small white blob).

There is one aspect that this phone wins at easily - it can take that moonshot (TBH it can be a bit sharper than yours) while handheld, pretty consistently. Good luck trying that with your apsc with such a long shutter, it will consistently end up in just a blur. Software often beats raw hardware even these days.

Not going to argue with you, but here's a shot I took handheld with the APS-C.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1010562706237038633/1...