Accessories An inconsistency in photo-shooting with phone camera

[smasheroO16]

Hello — I bought my wife a Samsung Galaxy S7 about a year ago. She took it to London, England, on a holiday, and with it, took a photo of Trafalgar Square, from the edge of the Square and looking right across it to Nelson's Column. In the far distance was a clock-tower. The whole tower was hardly visible, so far off was it (perhaps the distance would be about a mile, but I don't know for certain. However, it certainly must have been several hundred yards). Yet, when she showed me the shot, she was able to zoom in on it enough to see, not only the distant clock-tower, but also the clock-face, and could easily read the time that was showing on it. (She always uses HD setting for her pictures.)

Today, she wanted to take a photo of some goldfinches, feeding at the bottom of our small garden, which would have been only about 23 feet away from where she stood. Yet, though she magnified the shot as much as she could, afterwards, the birds showed up "woolly" on the photo, when she zoomed in. (The foreground of the picture was sharp — her hand had not trembled, or anything like that.) She has remarked that there is no zoom facility on her phone camera, so she just shot the picture as she would have taken a picture of our living-room. We are two innocents where technical matters are concerned, so my questions are:

Why did the clock-face magnify so very well, when the birds, at such a closer range, were blurred? Also, is there some function (zoom shot?) that she does not know about, and ought to use? If so, I cannot find it.

I should be most grateful if someone out there can help me, or clear the matter up, at least. Thanks in hopeful anticipation!
smasheroO16

 

[mikedt]

Suggest you attach the photo(s), so we might see what problem might be.

 

[smasheroO16]

"I believe it is a function of the focus that is automatically set when you take a picture. In the first picture the focus was set to optimize all distant objects, while in the 2nd picture the focus was most probably an object much closer to the camera resulting in relative fuzziness of all background objects." (posted by Snakeyeskm).

Thanks for responding, Snakeyeskm. This morning, I took another look at Settings > Applications > Camera, and, for the first time, I realised the significance of "TrackingAF" (of course, it's Tracking AutoFocus, but until today, I did not know what it meant). When I turned this on, I did what the setting suggested, which was to tap, in the scene being shown by the camera, at the distant object (the bird-feeder), and clicked to snap the picture. The result was a great improvement on what had previously been shot. Even though the birds could then be zoomed in on with greater clarity, the sharpness, when enlarged, was not as good as a dedicated camera would have taken. However, I suppose that for a phone-camera for general use, it is pretty good. At least, I now know how to do a "zoom" photo. Thanks very much for your input.

There is no need now, mikedt, to post the photo, but thanks for replying, anyway.
SmasherOo