Why You Can Trust CNET Blizzard Bound: A Photojournalist Takes the Galaxy S24 Ultra to Tahoe
I put the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra's cameras in action under the most extreme conditions.
- 2021 Graphis Photography Awards, Gold Award, Journalism, 'The Doorway' Graphis Photography Awards, Silver Award, Portrait, 'Cast of film '1917'' Graphis Photography Awards, Silver Award, Environmental, 'Upper Lola Montez' ND Awards, Architecture, 'Taj Mah
The Galaxy S24 Ultra has four rear cameras with a wide range of lenses: wide, ultrawide, 3x telephoto, 5x telephoto.
The streets are quiet in a residential neighborhood of South Lake Tahoe, California, and I'm standing in three feet of snow on an unplowed street at the base of a 100-foot-tall ponderosa pine tree. The snow continues to fall and pile up around me. I'm wearing an old pair of leather hiking boots, heavy DaKine gloves and have the new Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra tucked into my North Face ski jacket.
Sounds like the perfect start to an adventure.
All the photos you see in this story were taken on the S24 Ultra. Below is an image I shot at lake level, an elevation of more than 6,200 feet, during the relentless storm. Blinding winds and blizzard conditions shut down nearly everything.
I took this photo as I was heading over the Echo Summit into the Lake Tahoe Basin.
Storms didn't just flurry, they roared in with a jest of deceptive tranquility that could quickly turn consequential. The weather made the act of simple human survival transport me out of a world of modern convenience and made me feel like I was a pioneer in a vast, indifferent wilderness.
I arrived after three days of continuous blizzard conditions. Lake Tahoe was in the middle of getting hammered by a historic storm that ended up dumping more than 10 feet of snow on the Sierra Nevada Mountains by the time it ceased.
And I was stuck right in the middle.
Here's a snowed in tractor trailer truck on Interstate 80 captured with the S24 Ultra. The blizzard shut down travel across the Sierra Nevada mountains.
A storm of this magnitude on a major travel corridor such as Interstate 80 requires patience. Traffic came to a halt. We passed dozens of stranded tractor trailer trucks buried in the accumulation on the winding road into the mountains. The closure of Interstate 80 earlier this month disrupted logistics and deliveries in nearly every industry.
A Tahoe local's modern survival instinct for a storm like this doesn't just include food, water and shelter; it means skiing and snowboarding too.
Read more: Best Samsung phone for 2024
For a photojournalist, this storm was a unique opportunity to capture great images, albeit with more adventure than my usual day to day. At points, I struggled to even move through the mountains en route to find some skiing.
The blizzard was originally forecast to let up Sunday morning, but three days after the storm began, the snow kept falling.
A photo of a road being cleared in South Lake Tahoe from a massive blizzard.
Homes, cars, and just about everything else were buried by the storm.
My family and friends had hoped to go into the mountains to ski, but first we had to scoop shovel after shovel of heavy Sierra snow. Our dreams of riding blissfully down frosty mountaintops were waylaid by sore shoulders. Most roads in the area were either closed or impassable. The winds gusted to 100 mph, forcing ski resorts to close or operated minimally.
Rugged chaos like this is where a mobile phone comes in handy for photography. I'm able to easily carry the S24 Ultra and its powerful cameras and zoom lenses in a jacket pocket. The Ultra has two separate telephoto cameras, one with a 3x lens and the other with a 5x lens. Basically, I had one of the best camera packages to work with for challenging high-contrast outdoor conditions.
In the face of the massive storm, every plan we made was provisional.
With everything shut down, we passed the time building snow forts and diving into the fluffy white stuff, which just seemed to grow bigger and bigger. In the image above, you can see the S24 Ultra's primary lens did a great job freezing the motion of the kid flying through the air. The image has a wide range of contrast, with detail in the bright whites of the snow as well as the black jacket and the shadowed parts of the tree.
Samsung's rendering of exposure on the S24 is impressive. The contrast appears natural and the cameras produce even tones with subtle variations visible. Take a look at the roadway in the image below, which was shot on the ultrawide camera. The image shows an impressive array of tones.
An Amazon truck stops to put on snow chains, as the driver prepares for Interstate 80 to reopen.
Friends visiting from the East Coast had their meticulously crafted, grand vacation dreams melted away by the whims of this harsh nature. Everything was now in a bewildering flux, as the status of roads, reservations, and, just about everything else, shifted hour by hour.
We watched and waited, and nature just laughed. As the storm lengthened, it only grew stronger. Every expectation was a draft subject to revision, and the only certainty was the unexpected.
After three days of an extreme closure, Interstate 80 eventually opened to vehicles with four-wheel drive or chains. Ten-foot snow walls created a travel corridor that buried road signs.
Snow walls ten feet hight along Interstate 80 covered road signs after a three-day closure.
Two days later, the clouds parted, traffic was allowed back on Interstate 80, and we were able to continue up through the mountains to Truckee, California. Our destination was Palisades Tahoe, a ski resort located in the Olympic Valley in the Sierra Nevada range.
I took the Galaxy S24 Ultra out to the slopes and shot it in the bright morning sunlight. The white balance and color rendering are excellent, as you can see in the various ski jackets in the unedited image below, shot on the ultrawide lens.
Not only are the colors accurate, they look realistic and not oversaturated like photos from previous iterations of Samsung Galaxy cameras. The exposure is good, with only minimal highlight clipping. I shot directly toward the sun, yet there's still detail in the shaded sides of the trees and in the people standing in line at the lift.
The storm passed and we got up early to shoot on the mountain and get some turns in.
During an evening walk in the Olympic Valley, I captured the image below with the Ultra's 3x telephoto lens under lower light conditions. The photo shows a good level of detail and low noise in the blacks. The image is well exposed, with detail in the foreground snow, as well as preserved detail in the darker parts of the trees and the trees in the background farther up the canyon walls.
An evening walk in the Olympic Valley, as seen by the S24 Ultra's 3x telephoto lens.
After settling in for the night, we were woken early the next day by the sounds of avalanche mitigation blasts echoing through the mountains.
Though the bulk of the storm had passed, less intense snow showers and high winds continued. The resort's lift operations were impacted, with lifts on delayed openings and most of the upper mountain remaining closed.
An unedited action shots captured with the Galaxy S24 Ultra's 5x telephoto lens.
The S24 Ultra struggled to grab focus when I attempted to capture some action shots. There was a noticeable delay between pressing the shutter button and capturing the image.
I found it a challenge to keep a moving skier in the frame. Panning lagged on the screen and the Ultra's zoom lenses suffered from digital bounce making it difficult to track the skier as he moved. You can see in this unedited image shot with 5x telephoto lens that I was able to get a few great shots. The image is sharp and has good detail in the shadows, and it even captures the smaller bits of flying snow well.
I love the image below of the Palisades Tahoe Aerial Tram, shot with the 5x telephoto lens. It shows off the cameras' ability to capture an accurate exposure and a wide tonal range. You can see a strong contrast between the brighter whites in the background and the tram in the foreground. Notice the wide range of tonal detail coming through the clouds in the trees in the bottom right corner.
The Palisades Tahoe Aerial Tram taken with on the S24 Ultra's 5x telephoto lens.
The Galaxy S24 Ultra's 5x telephoto camera has a 50-megapixel sensor. And the photo below shows what it's capable of. There's detail in the contrast variations of the moguls' bright white tops and the deeper blacks in the troughs. Notice the texture and fine details in the wispy, blowing snow coming off the peak.
Gusting winds and moguls on the peaks of Palisades Ski Resort show off the detail and tonal range using 10x digital zoom.
This is an incredible amount of range and detail for a telephoto lens on a mobile phone to capture. Oh and did I mention, I digitally zoomed in to 10x to take this photo? Absolutely impressive.
An unedited portrait mode shot of my friend Peter.
In this unedited portrait mode shot of my friend Peter, I like how the shallow depth of field nicely blurs the background as well as his snowboard in the foreground but left him very sharp.
The skin tones are realistic, and the image has good exposure, with the brighter white sky and mountains in the background still retaining some detail, as well as the darker base of his snowboard.
Here's another stunning and unedited view of Lake Tahoe, shot on the 5x telephoto lens.
The image has rich detail, from the snow crusted bushes in the foreground to the snowcapped mountains range in the background.
The colors that the S24 Ultra captured really pop and look true to life. If you look closely, notice the wonderful array of blue tones coming through in Lake Tahoe.
And below is another telephoto image. I love the depth compression from the Ultra's 5x telephoto lens.
Here is a view through the woods shot on the 5x tele lens.
An unedited image of the chairlifts leading into the distance shot on the S24 Ultra's 5x Tele 2 lens.
This is an unedited image of the chairlifts leading into the distance. Again the 5x telephoto lens adds some great depth compression to the photo.
The image is sharp and in focus all the way through, with rich detail. The individual snowflakes are visible against the lift towers, and the bokeh of the snowflakes in the foreground give the picture some atmosphere.
Below is another stunning view of Lake Tahoe. This unedited image was shot using portrait mode on the primary lens. Notice the impressive dynamic range and how the Ultra, once again, nails the exposure. You can see rich detail in the sky and the varied tones of the clouds, as well as a great exposure on the darker parts of our subject.
The saturation of both the lake and the skin tones on the snowboarder are true to life and not overdone.
An unedited image of my friend and Lake Tahoe, shot in portrait mode on the Ultra's main camera.
The unedited image below, shot on the 5x telephoto camera, shows true-to-life color in the blues, yellows and reds of the Look Pivot 12 bindings.
You can see some incredible in this detail shot of my boots, bindings and skis. Look closely at my Vokll F22 skis and notice the blue dots in the graphic and the bits of ice and snow. Even the texture of the plastic on my boots is visible.
Here's a 5x photo of my skis.
When working in challenging environments, in both skiing and in photography, your gear matters. Our tools are partners in the creative process and make the difference between good and great in our artful endeavors.
With the compact and powerful Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra in my pocket, I conquered a blizzard that left my friends and family stranded in the mountains during some of the most extreme conditions. The storm was the catalyst for a canvas of moments that can now never be forgotten.
