Samsung Wildlife Photography: Safe Distances and Settings

It’s tempting to get up close and personal with animals in parks and nature reserves, but this behaviour stresses animals and can be dangerous, and park wardens wouldn’t appreciate it either, since in many parks it breaks the rules! Wildlife photography doesn’t have to mean walking up to an unsuspecting deer or bird though. Just plan your shots around the distance you’re allowed to keep and you can still get some great wildlife pictures on your Galaxy phone.

Wildlife settings by situation

• Wildlife photography is rarely as predictable as photographing birds at a feeder. Settings may need to be altered depending on the situation.
• Many animals are most active in the early morning and late evening, which unfortunately means less light for the photographer.
• These settings are a good place to start.

For example, say you’re photographing at dawn. According to Samsung’s guide to Pro mode, ISO sensitivity can’t be set to Auto if you’ve manually set the shutter speed, so you’d need to keep increasing the ISO setting as the light changes. If you find that a lot to keep track of, Camera Assistant, on Samsung devices running One UI 8.5 or later, can specify a minimum shutter speed and leave everything else on Auto in Photo mode. The Camera Assistant guide tells you where the setting is, and the shutter speed guide tells you how fast is fast enough depending on what’s moving.

What your phone shows at a safe distance

Yellowstone National Park wants you to be at least 25 yards (23m) away from animals (even bison and elk!), and at least 100 yards (91m) away from cougars, bears and wolves, and suggests a camera with a lens of at least 300mm to take pictures of animals.

GSMArena notes that the S24, S25 and S26 Ultra phones all have a 5x camera, which at 111mm-equivalent is the longest lens on current Galaxy phones (the S21 to S23 Ultra phones had a 10x periscope camera).

An elk or deer at 23 metres with the 5x will still be identifiable but will have plenty of scene around it. A bear at 91 metres will be a much smaller part of the scene and this is as much as you should expect from a phone at that sort of distance. So shoot animals as part of a landscape scene and resist the urge to zoom in further. Each phone’s lenses determine what it captures from afar, and our telephoto lens guide looks more deeply into the differences.

• The base S and FE models offer a 3x telephoto camera, as does the Z Fold7. That’s enough for wildlife that’s acclimatised to humans.
• The S24 Ultra, S25 Ultra and S26 Ultra offer a 5x telephoto camera. Their 10x zoom is just a crop of that 5x camera, but it’s surprisingly decent in good lighting.
• The S21 Ultra, S22 Ultra and S23 Ultra have a dedicated 10x periscope telephoto camera, offering true 10x optical zoom at focal lengths of around 230mm to 240mm. That’s the closest any Galaxy gets to what the park recommends.
• The S25 Edge, A series and Z Flip models don’t have a telephoto camera, so your options are limited to wide-angle shots (think landscapes) and digital zoom (quality will suffer).

Four wildlife myths, checked

Space Zoom can stand in for a long lens

Samsung's Space Zoom takes over past 10x and can reach 100x on the Ultras. This isn't optical zoom though, as the phone is just enlarging a crop and using processing to bring back some of the lost detail, so expect fur to get smooth and edges to take on a painted-over look. Use this feature to help you identify an animal but when you're ready to take a photo, zoom back out to 10x or less and crop the photo down later. The 100x zoom guide reveals the point at which degradation begins.

If the animal stays put, you aren't bothering it

If you think you can get closer to an animal, ask yourself if it’s aware of you. As the US National Park Service reminds us, if the animal reacts to your presence, you’re too close.

If a deer lifts its head from grazing and points its ears at you, it’s noticed you, even if it doesn’t run. That’s your cue to stop moving forward, take your pictures from there, and back up slowly if it stays alert.

Night mode is the answer at dawn

If you have enabled Night mode on your phone camera (the moon icon in Photo mode on Samsung phones with One UI 8.5, where the dedicated mode can be re-enabled through Camera Assistant, according to SamMobile; on a Galaxy S25 Ultra with One UI 9, checked in November 2026, it’s back in the mode strip), it can struggle with moving subjects like animals, because Night mode often combines multiple photos taken over a period of one second or more, so any moving subject will appear blurred, even if the rest of the picture looks sharp. Alternatively, if shooting in Pro mode, you can select a fast shutter speed, specifically 1/250th to 1/500th of a second, along with a high ISO setting, to freeze motion better and minimise the risk of blur. Digital noise resulting from a high ISO setting can generally be corrected more easily in post-processing than blur can. See our night mode guide for when it helps.

A tight portrait is the best wildlife shot

Try not to frame too tightly, as tight shots on phones can be quite soft.

If you can get a bit more context in the shot it will often add interest. The edge of a misty field will add interest to a shot of a deer, as will a bank of brambles to a shot of a fox.

If the animal is facing one way try to leave space in that direction for the shot to ‘breathe’.

Before you leave the area try taking a couple of wider shots (1x or 3x) of the general area for context.

Fieldcraft for animals

1. 1

   Go where animals already tolerate people

   Farmland footpaths, nature reserves (with hides!) and parks are better places to start than chasing truly wild animals across open ground, as you’re more likely to encounter wildlife that’s habituated to humans at a distance.

2. 2

   Arrive before the light

   Many mammals are most active at dawn and dusk so get there early and set your phone into Pro mode and select your lens before the animals appear so you’re not faffing about when they do! If you’re taking pictures of animals, see how to turn off the shutter sound to reduce noise when using your Galaxy camera.

3. 3

   Keep the wind in your face

   Position yourself with your back to a hedge or tree so you don’t appear as one silhouette. Stay downwind so animals that rely heavily on smell can’t smell you.

4. 4

   Never feed or call animals in

   Don’t use calls or bait to lure animals into shot. Not only does this alter their behaviour (which means it’s no longer a true representation of the wildlife in its natural environment), but according to the National Park Service, feeding will also encourage them to return hoping for more food!

5. 5

   Brace for every telephoto shot

   Use supports: at 5x and especially 10x zoom, even the tiniest of movements can drastically alter your framing, so use fence posts, props etc to steady yourself or rest your phone on a bag on a car door frame.

Tap-to-focus is helpful, but if you enable Tracking auto focus in Camera settings, it’ll try to keep that subject in focus as they move around. (We checked the setting on a Galaxy S25 Ultra with One UI 9 in November 2026, and it was listed as unavailable in Photo mode, so you’ll want to make sure it’s available in whichever mode you shoot in.) Samsung’s S26 user guide warns it can also struggle when the subject is poorly lit (say, backlit or in a dark location) or if their colours blend in with the background. Brown deer in brown grass at dawn? It’s not going to do well.

If you find the camera focusing on everything except your subject, try switching to Pro mode and using manual focus. Frame your shot so the area you want in focus lines up with the zone indicated as sharp, and let your subject move into that area.

Editing wildlife photos

Crop images using the Gallery app’s editing options, leaving some space for the animal to look into, and consider placing the subject off-centre.

Increase brightness and contrast, if needed, using the sun icon (Adjustment) in Gallery if images taken at dawn appear dull. Be careful not to increase the saturation too much because the colours of fur can quickly become too strong.

If images appear blue due to shooting in the early morning, use White Balance, available for free in Snapseed.

Use the Selective tool in Snapseed to increase the brightness of the animal’s eye.

High ISO images captured on phones don’t stand up well to significant amounts of sharpening, so stop sharpening when you start to see halos around edges.

Use the erase option found under Photo assist in Gallery to remove unwanted objects, e.g. a twig in front of an animal’s face.

Birds will require a different approach, due to their size and speed, so our bird photography guide can help with reach and tracking, too (using the 5x and 10x lenses).