The iPhone 12 doesn’t have any kind of optical zoom, it digitally “zooms”, which just gives you a mess of pixels vaguely in the shape of what you’re pointing the camera at.
Today, I saw a beaver resting near the Cariboo Dam. It was not especially far away, but not especially close, either. The 250mm telephoto lens on my Canon EOS M50 would have gotten a nice shot.
My iPhone 12 produced this brown ovoid blob with maximum zoom:
I’m still not getting a new iPhone.
