While it is not intuitive for a camera to have a zoom level that is less than 1, google uses this in order to select the wide angle lens on certain phones.
In particular, Pixel 6 supports zoom in the range of 0.7 through 20.0. The hal picks the camera based on the selected zoom level. This phone has only 2 logical cameras, despite having 4 physical sensors.
Wide angle sensor: 0.7 to 0.9
Main: 1.0 to 4.2 (not sure of upper limit on non-Pro)
Telephoto: 4.3 to 20.0 (Pixel 6 Pro only)
In addition, the video conferencing camera on these phones support zoom level in the range of 0.9 through 10.0.
The open source camera software in development as linked below does a wonderful job setting the available zoom. It defaults to 1.0, and sets a zoom slider part way through its range, allowing access to all zoom levels and therefore of all camera sensors:
While it is not intuitive for a camera to have a zoom level that is less than 1, google uses this in order to select the wide angle lens on certain phones.
In particular, Pixel 6 supports zoom in the range of 0.7 through 20.0. The hal picks the camera based on the selected zoom level. This phone has only 2 logical cameras, despite having 4 physical sensors.
Wide angle sensor: 0.7 to 0.9 Main: 1.0 to 4.2 (not sure of upper limit on non-Pro) Telephoto: 4.3 to 20.0 (Pixel 6 Pro only)
In addition, the video conferencing camera on these phones support zoom level in the range of 0.9 through 10.0.
The open source camera software in development as linked below does a wonderful job setting the available zoom. It defaults to 1.0, and sets a zoom slider part way through its range, allowing access to all zoom levels and therefore of all camera sensors:
https://github.com/GrapheneOS/Camera