But my cell phone has a camera!

Getting home from running errands yesterday, I exited the garage into the back yard and caught a squirrel halfway over the fence from the neighbor's yard.

He froze and eyed me suspiciously and I pulled out my cell phone, an iPhone 13 Pro Max, and "pinch-zoomed" to an indicated "13X".

Now, the lens of the regular rear-facing camera on the 13 Pro Max has a full-frame equivalent focal length of 26mm, so 13X that would be...carry the two...roughly 338mm of digital "zoom" on that 12MP sensor.

What I got was this impressionist hot mess:

Below is an image from a 12MP APS-C Nikon sensor with a 200mm zoom lens, giving a 300mm full-frame equivalent focal length of real, actual, optical zoom:

There's just no comparison between an actual long lens and "digital zoom".

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