There is no such thing as a crop sensor. Well, unless it is literally a sensor placed in a cornfield or something. Maybe you took a large sensor and cut it down. There you cropped it. If you bought a camera that is equipped with an apsc format sensor, it is just a sensor. The 35 millimeter is no more a crop of a medium format sensor than a phone sensor is a crop of a micro four thirds sensor.

The Nikons have two autofocus motors.

Unfortunately, your phone is not equipped with a telephoto lens.

Very broadly, the rule of thumb is this; if you are close use wide angle and if you are far away use telephoto. This is a good rule of thumb in most photography. Going wide to ‘get it all in’ (and the pixel 7 has a wide lens) is a recipe for getting a ton of sky and land that looks like it is really far away. A lot of landscape photographers use telephoto lenses.

So what do you do? Get much, much, much, much closer to your subject.

If you didn’t remove a larger sensor and cut it up and put it into your camera you don’t have a ‘cropped’ sensor. You have a sensor in APSC format, it is no more a ‘crop’ than a ‘full frame’ sensor is to medium format sensor. Short people aren’t ‘crops’ of taller people.

At any rate, a fast lens and a focal distance of at least 50 mm has brought me some good success. Pack a lot of patience and shoot a lot of frames. Bounce flash can save you indoors. If that isn’t possible, turn up the lights, more than you think you need.

Even outdoor portraiture can be improved with flash, almost all outdoor portraits I do include some level of flash. It can be a huge pain, but the payoff is worth it if you don’t want to deal with shadows on the face, neck, and clothes and if you like that golden affect you can get.

I think the most obvious advantage you can get is indoors where you have cruddy light but ceilings low enough you can effectively bounce your flashgun. When you truly need indoors high shutter speed (running toddler or something) and your camera supports a high speed sync. This is where mommy and daddy hobbyists fall down and where people who have learned their equipment can shine.