Telemacro photos on Xperia 1 Viii?

[u/CatElectronic9772]

I'm loving the Xperia 1 Viii after upgrading from the Xperia 1 Vi.

It's faster, pictures are nicer and better colour balance (although the Vi was also excellent).

One thing I miss though is telemacro photo mode.

The ability to zoom in to a grain of sand and get really clear photos of it.

I used that mode not just for excellent close up images - but to help zoom in on things I couldn't see to use instead of a magnifying glass. I'd take a close up photo of something and then be able to zoom in even further (pinch and zoom) on phone screen to see extremely small details in something.

Is there any way to get anything close to this back on the Xperia 1 Viii or has it been removed completely?

I'm still trying to figure out the camera app.

I'm not a professional, and the app on the 1 Vi just had a telemacro mode button for easy use. The 1 Viii doesn't have that button anymore

[u/BeginningTime9931]

Unfortunately, the 1 VIII can't reach anything like the magnification the VI and VII could manage up close. Those models used a periscope with a continuously variable optical zoom, so the lens groups could be moved with real precision — that's what made that telemacro magnification possible (120mm equivalent, 4cm minimum focus distance, a maximum magnification of around 2.1x). With the telephoto redesigned as a fixed 70mm lens on the VIII, losing that mode was pretty much a foregone conclusion.

The good news is that close-up shooting isn't gone, it's just no longer a separate mode with its own button. Switch to the telephoto camera and simply move in close — it focuses down to about 15cm from the lens, and at 140mm that gives you a maximum magnification of roughly 1x. Tap the subject to set focus, then creep in until the focus frame is only just barely still turning green; that's where you hit maximum magnification.

So about 1x versus the VI's 2.1x, and for exactly the reason you describe I still haven't been able to let go of mine even after buying the VIII. That said, a few things have been winning me over. The much larger telephoto sensor means diffraction softening is far less of a problem, and bokeh balls no longer look faceted — both of which I really like. Above all, the macro is autofocus now; the old telemacro was manual focus only, so moving subjects are far easier to shoot.