Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra as a travel blogger’s tool

Ten years ago, travel lovers faced a tough choice: to carry heavy camera equipment and bring back cool shots from their trips, or to relax and “click” on a smartphone without claiming high quality and variety of photos. Fortunately, technology does not stand still. In 2025, we can go on a trip with just a smartphone and not regret anything. In this article, I will share my experience of shooting on the flagship smartphone Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra

Smartphone or camera?

Of course, a professional camera with a huge sensor and several lenses is an opportunity to take stunning photos. But when you face the practical side of the issue – for example, the need to drag all this stuff uphill for several hours in the heat (along with some other important cargo) – the advantages no longer seem so obvious. Walking with a smartphone is an opportunity not only to throw off a few kilograms from your shoulders, but also much greater mobility and peace of mind. Your tool is always at hand – I keep it in my belt bag – your hands are free, there is no fear that something will fall, break, or get scratched. You don’t have to think about whether this type of photography is worth “taking out” the camera: quickly take out the smartphone, quickly take a couple of shots, then select it with a fresh mind. By the way, even if there was an embarrassment and the smartphone fell out of your hand, most likely nothing strange will happen: the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is made very reliably – a protected case with titanium edges is designed for use in not the most delicate conditions. The smartphone also has protection from moisture and dust, which allows you to use it even in the rain or, for example, when shooting on the go during a walk on ATVs.

Shooting experience

What really impressed me about the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is the ability to take high-quality photos at different focal lengths. Many smartphones are guilty of having a good main camera, but the wide-angle modules are inferior in quality. And it is wide-angle optics that are in demand by all amateur photographers who shoot landscapes.

Here I had no complaints: the wide angle showed itself from the best side: the pictures are detailed, the colors are rendered correctly. The wide-angle camera received a 50-megapixel sensor, which works in conjunction with autofocus optics with an equivalent focal length of about 13 mm (again, remembering cameras – standard travel zooms do not offer such a focal length) and a very high aperture for such a solution – f / 1.9.

The wide angle allows you to take panoramic shots that convey the overall view of the area.

Besides, it is a great opportunity to take pictures with a lot of “air”, to add a sense of space to the frame.

By shooting with a wide-angle camera, we can play with the proportions of the frame, deliberately emphasizing an interesting foreground.

And, of course, scenes with a clear perspective look great at a wide angle, for example, lines stretching into the distance:

On the right is a shot taken with a wide-angle camera, on the left is a shot taken with the main camera

But perhaps even more than the wide-angle camera, I was pleased with the zoom capabilities of the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. Those who have taken photos with telephoto lenses while traveling will probably agree with me that the temptation to take this heavy, bulky object out of your backpack before a long walk is almost always there. At least for me, as a rather fragile woman, I don’t really like to carry it around. And at the same time, I don’t really like taking photos only at a wide angle. Telephoto lenses on smartphones, in my experience, are not always implemented well, but in this case I was more than satisfied.

In addition to the standard and wide-angle cameras on the Galaxy S25 Ultra, you can shoot at 2x, 3x, 5x, and 10x zoom.

Both cameras worked perfectly: in my opinion, when viewing photos on social networks from a smartphone (as most users do now), the shots are almost impossible to distinguish from those taken with a professional camera.

The ten-fold “hybrid” zoom was also a pleasant surprise: in the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra it is not there for show – it is a full-fledged tool that I have used many times.

The same scene, shot with different zooms: 3x, 5x, 10x

Telephoto lenses are indispensable in situations when it is not possible to get close to the subject, but you want to capture it:

It is also an opportunity to make “dense” compositions, alternating them with “airy” wide-angle shots:

Using zoom, we can focus on a specific area of ​​the scene, highlighting something particularly spectacular, like this cloud “flowing” down the mountain:

And, returning to the topic of perspective, telephoto lenses work with it in their own interesting way, visually bringing the plans closer together. In scenes where there is a rhythmic pattern, I especially like the use of zoom:

As for the main camera, I will not dwell on it in great detail, I will simply say that there were no questions about it. By default, the smartphone shoots with the main camera in a resolution of 12 megapixels (4,000 × 3,000). But you can select shooting options with a higher resolution: either the maximum, 200 MP (16,320 × 12,240), or 50 MP (8,160 × 6,120). Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra conveys the surrounding reality quite correctly: there is no annoying influence of artificial intelligence, which is trying to embellish the picture beyond recognition. In some places, I lacked more thorough elaboration of shadows in the pictures, in some scenes the colors seemed a little colder than I would like. But these are rather questions of individual preferences, and it is easy to fix this using the internal editor on the smartphone. Below are examples of pictures from the main camera without processing:

To sum it up: a large selection of working focal lengths is definitely a scope for creativity and an opportunity to present any story as the photographer sees fit. It is also an opportunity to make a travel report as diverse and interesting as possible for the viewer.

The pictures were taken from one point at focal lengths of 0.5x and 5x, respectively.

I can’t help but mention portrait photography, as for many it is an integral part of travel photography. Portraits of locals always add color to a photo report. And sometimes it’s worth putting yourself in the frame, so that the audience doesn’t forget whose blog they are reading.

And here the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra also has something to please: the photographer has access to as many as 4 focal lengths in portrait mode: 1x, 2x, 3x and 5x. This is convenient, since it allows you to shoot not only staged portraits, but also take pictures from afar, capturing live moments. In portrait mode, artificial background blur is available with the ability to adjust the intensity of the effect, and retouching – however, without the fine-tuning of parameters that can be found on other smartphones: here we can only smooth out the skin.

Photos taken in portrait mode

Another option to diversify your travel photo report is to add macro shots, for example, of local flora and fauna. And the Galaxy S25 Ultra coped with this task quite well. Of course, the detail is not as high as that of a professional macro lens, but if we are talking about a couple of shots for a blog, it is probably not practical to have a separate tool for this.

In addition to shooting, I will also touch on the topic of processing photos on a smartphone. Sometimes I like to take photos with a filter right away if I see that some kind of tinting (usually black and white) fits the scene perfectly. I liked the ability to instantly correct each filter by several parameters in the Galaxy S25 Ultra: saturation, color temperature, contrast, graininess. By moving the sliders, we immediately see how the frame will look – this can greatly save time on processing, and the process itself is simply pleasant. Of course, filters can be applied after the fact, as well as other basic corrections. An already standard, but very joyful option is removing unwanted objects from the frame. Now you don’t have to be upset if a branch or a passerby in the background gets into the frame: artificial intelligence will successfully correct the image.

At night, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is also capable of taking high-quality photos, both with a standard focal length and with an extended viewing angle and even with zoom (which doesn’t happen often) — but I didn’t have a chance to take pictures of night views on my last trip, it wasn’t the right format for traveling. So here are some examples from our detailed review of the smartphone:

Shooting video

Nowadays, it’s rare that a blog is limited to photos, and Samsung has taken care of those whose favorite format is video shooting. The Galaxy S25 Ultra has a lot of possibilities in this area: you can shoot video in resolutions up to 8K at 30 frames per second on the main and wide-angle cameras, as well as with a five-fold zoom — but without the ability to instantly switch between focal lengths. But in 4K resolution with a frequency of up to 60 frames per second, you can already switch, and options for two-fold and three-fold scaling are added to the list.

There is also a “professional” shooting mode, in which you can adjust the zoom speed, choose which built-in microphones to record sound to, activate “Zebra” to correct the lighting in the frame, shoot in HDR, shoot Log-video. You can even choose external sound recording sources, connected both via USB Type-C and Bluetooth.

Digital stabilization is already available in 8K, and it works effectively. There is also improved stabilization – it is available in Quad HD resolution (2560 × 1440), and at a frequency of up to 60 frames per second.

Conclusion

To sum it up: I spent 3 days in close contact with the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra in beautiful places and took a lot of different shots that suit me both in terms of quality and in terms of artistic rendering of reality. An objective fact: I also took a camera with me on the trip, which I use for commercial projects, and I only shot with it on the first day. Then I put it aside and took pictures only with a smartphone, because I was convinced that for my purposes: to leave beautiful memories for myself and post pictures on the blog – it is more than suitable. It is convenient, easy, you can instantly change focal lengths and get a variety of photos from one point. If you want, you can immediately shoot in monochrome mode or apply other filters, post photos right away, sharing emotions – for me this is valuable, since photo processing often stretches out for months, and the pictures lose their relevance. The smartphone’s charge was more than enough for a full day of shooting, I didn’t worry about it when shooting in relatively extreme conditions – on a motorraft or on a jeep, since the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra has protection from difficult weather conditions. Overall, the experience of a photo trip with a smartphone was more than pleasant.