One of the things I never expected to do so is birdwatching in Ubud with my smartphone. Well, I finally did it, as I come here for work several times a year. Usually, I will bring my Canon R7 with an RF100-500 lens for my bird photography.

But this time, I decided not to carry my mirrorless camera as I wanted to focus on my work. But somehow, when you don’t bring your camera, the birds will appear in front of you wherever you go. I guess that’s life.

Birdwatching in Ubud with my Smartphone

Anyway, I use a simple Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, and I have been using that smartphone for my general photography, mainly for landscape, food and work pictures. The technology is still not there for bird photography, but the birds are sometimes just mere metres away from me.

When I visit Ubud in Bali, I usually rent a motorbike to move around, therefore I get to see some lovely local places, and often, I will bump into some of the local birds there, which are not common for me. Ok, less talk and more photos, as I’m sure you want to see the outcome of my smartphone bird photography.

To add on, most of the smartphone birding photos here are taken in either normal mode and zoom or with 5 to 10 times zoom. When I try to zoom in 50 or 100 times zoom, the picture breaks terribly, and you can even make out if it’s a bird.

I cropped most of the photos and edited them a little for clarity for the Ubud bird photos above. Nothing is over-edited, plus I do not use software like Topaz or Lightroom, just basic Photoshop.

Conclusion

This year, on 17 January, Samsung will launch the all-new Galaxy S24 Ultra, which is apparently powered using Galaxy AI. I’m quite excited to see how the new smartphone camera performs, but I’m still sceptical about how it will do in bird photography.