Samsung's Galaxy S20 series offers some amazing zooming capabilities, with the Ultra model going up to a whopping 100x zoom. However, if you're using a Galaxy S20, Galaxy S20+, or Galaxy S20 Ultra, you will have noticed that those zooming capabilities are not fully available when you're shooting videos.
The camera's video recording mode maxes out at 20x zoom on the Galaxy S20 Ultra and at 12x on the Galaxy S20 and Galaxy S20+, which can feel pretty limiting compared to what's possible when you're shooting still images. But did you know that it is actually possible to record videos at any zoom level – at up to 30x on the S20 and S20+ and 100x on the Galaxy S20 Ultra?
The camera app on the Galaxy S20 series (and on other Samsung phones running One UI 2.1) allows you to hold down the shutter button to quickly start recording videos, and this shortcut also makes it possible to record videos at any zoom level. Basically, if you manually zoom in to the desired level and then press and hold down the shutter button, the phone will start recording a video at that level of zoom.
Here's the procedure step-by-step:
- Open the Camera app.
- In the Photo mode, manually zoom in to the desired zoom level.
- Then, press and hold the shutter button to start recording the video. Let go of the button once you're done recording.
This method has a couple of disadvantages. It has to be used in Photo mode, as the camera app simply does not allowing zooming past 12x and 20x (depending on which phone you have) in the Video mode. You also have to keep the shutter button pressed to keep recording, so you can't just put the phone down and let it record as you would in the Video mode. Finally, you cannot change the level of zoom on the fly while the video is being recorded.
However, if you've been wondering if there's any way to get around the zooming limitation in the Video mode on your Galaxy S20, S20+, or S20 Ultra, well, this is it.
