That night at Cherry Springs State Park made me swear off phone cameras forever

I was up there last August for the Perseids, had about 30 people around me all set up with their fancy gear. I tried getting a Milky Way shot on my Galaxy S21 and every single frame had that weird warped star edge thing going on. A guy next to me let me look through his 15 second exposure on a proper camera and I just felt dumb for even trying. Has anyone else just given up on phone astrophotography after seeing what real gear can do?

2 comments

2 Comments

jake_torres682d agoTop Commenter

Yeah actually the warped stars are from the phone trying to fix lens distortion, not the sensor quality itself.

grace_gonzalez462d ago

Have you tried using a dedicated astrophotography app that stacks multiple short exposures? The S21 can actually pull off decent shots of the Milky Way if you lock in manual focus and use a tripod, but the built-in camera app does mess up the star edges. I spent a summer messing with different settings on my old phone, and the warped edges are usually from the lens correction software fighting with the bright pinpoint lights. It's not as good as a real camera, but you can still get some nice results if you take the time to tweak things.