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I use an iPhone 13 max, and I bought it specifically for the camera. If I turn on the camera and press 3x, it turns on the sort-of telephoto lens that is the equivalent of a 100mm lens on a 35mm camera. By comparison, your Samsung—a good one!—has the equivalent of a wide angle 35mm lens and a super-wide 28mm lens. Yes, if you zoom on any phone lens, including the iPhone, it will pixilate or at least lose definition. But the iPhone telephoto is the real deal, just as sharp with most lens. If you are at the zoo, your photos will be much closer if you use 3x.
Did you order your telephoto lens for your phone on Facebook? I did that. It was a complete scam. A total piece of junk. It was not at all like what was on the ad, and the photos were so blurry that they were unusable. Getting a refund was a farce. If I wanted a 100% refund, I would have to ship it back to China, with postage costing as much as what I paid for the lens. I just threw it away.
The Canon Rebel is a good camera, but no sharper than my iPhone. Usually it comes with an inexpensive 50mm lens that is considered a “normal” lens. It will bring you a little closer than your phone, but not much. I edit all of the photos I keep on my phone or iPad, and I delete most of them and only save the best. Do you know how to use the advanced photo editing tools your phone has? They are amazing. I generally crop the photo, maybe adjust the exposure or color balance or saturation. I can make my photos look so much better. So can you. Learn how.
Here’s the big question to ask yourself before your cruise to Alaska: Do you want to take photos of majestic mountains and glaciers and beaches, or do you want closeups of bears and birds? If the former, then your phone and a knowledge of the photo editing tools is all you need. Don’t ever use the zoom function on your phone. Just crop the photo later. Below you can find a couple of my photos taken with an iPhone. (The bird is 3x, but the bird was only twenty feet away. The others were taken with an old phone. The originals are sharper than what you see here.) But if you want relative closeups of eagles and deer, the Canon Rebel will NOT do it unless you buy a very good zoom lens. At least 300mm. 500 mm is better. Think $2,000 for a good one, plus the camera. And then you need a good tripod or monopod, too—another $100 or more if you aren’t buying a toy. And then, when you have that lens on, you miss out on the wide angle shot. Instead, you stand at the deck rail with your expensive telephoto lens waiting for the right photo, then you miss it. Good wildlife photographers may wait for days for a good shot. You can’t do that. If you spend $2,500 on a decent quality camera and telephoto lens to take on this cruise, chances are you won’t get any amazing photos with it from the ship. Thus, I recommend that you stick to just your phone and don’t buy a camera. Just learn to edit your photos and improve them and stick to the big picture. If you see a bear a hundred yards away from the ship, just watch it and enjoy it and don’t waste your time trying to take a photo. Leave the astonishing wildlife photos to the pros.
You can find a book of my photos here. Forty year old slides taken with an Olympus OM1, but digitized, then edited on my iPad:
Amazon.com