Enjoying the place is #1 for me. I do not want to drive by the Colosseum in Rome in a taxi and be done with it. I want to get out and see the place…experience it.
To each their own though.
All I was trying to say, is that is a huge excluded middle there.
I did that, with a DSLR, and got some great photos to remember the day by. My camera is an extension of my eyes and my memory. Not on every trip, but on my memorable ones.
What’s the point of owning a DSLR if you don’t use it?
The mention of point & shoots reminded me that I had one, although it’s a bit old and I haven’t used it in years. So I went looking for it, first in the regular, easy-to-access place I keep most of my photo gear. Wasn’t there.
So I looked in the much-less-convenient place I keep the older/obsolete photo gear and electronics I don’t use very often. Not there.
I looked again in the first place. Ah ha! There it is! Why didn’t I see it the first time?
Okay, so where is the battery charger for this one? Not in this bag. Back out to that other box. Not there, either.
Back to the first place. Look in the one pocket I didn’t check the first time. Ah ha!
It’s a Canon PowerShot Elph 130 IS, about 10 years old. It shoots 16MP images, compared to the phone’s 12 MP. Not vastly more pixels, but it has an 8:1 optical zoom. It’s small and light, so not a burden to throw in my sling bag. And instead of spending $400-500+ on a new camera, I’m paying $17 to buy a couple of new batteries.
So that’s my final camera inventory for this trip: Galaxy S21 plus PowerShot 130 IS.
If I have a chance, I’ll try to set up a few shootouts for the two of them, and see which one yields better results. If I do, I’ll post the results here in August.
That is probably a good combination.
Unfortunately it got me curious. Sitting right here is my Fuji F70EXR point and shoot. I haven’t used it in years, because camera phones.
Turns out it is a 10x zoom, and is equivalent to 27-270mm. That is awfully close to the 18-300mm on the DSLR. I’m sure the Nikkor lens is much superior to the little P&S zoom, but we’re talking multiple pounds and an entire additional carry on bag, versus something that will fit in my shirt pocket.
If I can get 80% of the quality for 2% of the effort, then taking the P&S and leaving the DSLR is the right move. If I can get 20% of the quality for 2% of the effort, then I’m better off with the DSLR.
I think I’m on the right side of that equation, because my technical skills aren’t up to being able to exploit the full potential of the DSLR. Also, it will give me an excuse to play with the demo gear that will supposedly be available.
A key characteristic, if you are interested in nighttime or indoor shots, is sensor size. Generally, the larger the sensor the better the low-light performance. Another factor is lens speed.
DSLRs are great for indoor photography. I have Canon’s ‘nifty fifty’ 50mm prime lens, which is f.1.8 wide open. Combine that with the APSC sensor in the camera, and you can get amazing indoor shots wothout a flash.
The superzooms are great for daylight landscape shots, though. You don’t care about depth of field and have penty of light, and those lenses can be pretty good when combined with the smaller sensor size.
Google’s night sight mode works very well for dim or indoor locations. It combines dark but sharp frames with blurry but exposed frames to get pictures that are both sharp and exposed. For indoor pictures the phone is definitely the correct camera. It has a faster lens at f1.7 than the DSLR’s slow f3.5 telephoto. The big disadvantage to the phone, and the only reason to even consider the P&S or DSLR is that the phone has a 27mm focal length.
The point and shoot has a nifty feature where it can trade resolution to decrease noise or increase dynamic range by combining data from nearby sensor elements. That was useful in 2009, but the post processing on the phone blows it away now.
That is what I want it for. I’m expecting daylight shots over the ocean. Even if it’s overcast, there will still be lots of light. The trickiest thing I expect will be glacier pictures, where getting the white balance correct is important. I know from experience on snow the P&S on full auto will really mess up 1 out of 10 or so times and the picture will be completely blown out. That doesn’t seem to be a problem with the phone, but again, 27mm.
Shoot in RAW, that will give you a lot more options when processing the shots.
OP here. We got back a couple of weeks ago, and I ended up taking 1,076 pictures with the phone and exactly one with the P&S camera. I took it out at one of the early excursions, grabbed a shot, but realized that its very small screen, in comparison with the phone, made it harder to compose and shoot. So it was the phone all the way.
Thanks for the advice.
Next summer’s trip will be to the Canadian Rockies, Jasper, and Banff. Unlike this trip, which was mostly guided tours with groups, we will be doing most everything on our own. I think that will be a trip for the DSLR.
Here a few shots from Europe. (You may have to click on them to see the full image.)
The Rialto in Venice.
Kotor, Montenegro.
Temple of Poseidon, Cape Sounion, Greece.
Excuse the bump to a 2-months-stale thread, but I have similar angst for a late September European cruise with a 2 day pre-cruise stay in Rome.
Obviously, my 5D mk 4 is going to out-shoot my iPhone 14 Pro, but I ain’t quite so young as I was, and lugging pounds of gear for miles is a concern.
Besides the phone, I don’t have a modern point-and-shoot, so if I wanted something in the middle I’d need to invest at least a few hundred dollars in one.
At this moment, given the photos I expect to take (mostly wide shots, including architecture) in Rome as well as cruise stops like Naples/Pompeii, Mikonos, and Istanbul, I think I can make a decent kit with my 5D4 and a 16-35 lens for everyday carrying around (on a full-frame sensor, that 16mm wide end gets you a lot of field-of-view); the combo is 3.5 pounds.
I have a Bellroy 9L sling and I’ve tested carrying it on ~1 mile walks with that kit, and it seems comfortable enough. When I’m actively shooting, I have an Op/tech sling that lets me carry the camera openly and easily bring it to my eye. In luggage, I’ll probably also bring the general purpose 24-105, but likely won’t haul it on excursions.
So, I don’t know…I’m attracted by the idea of having a sub-one-pound camera+lens, especially something that is somewhat pocketable. My main concern is not having enough room on the wide-end to get in all the building/scenery I’m trying to capture. Having a full frame has really spoiled me that way.
I’m mostly arguing with myself, but if you have advice that hasn’t been said or emphasized, I’m all ears.
Are you taking this trip to see the sites, or to photograph the sites? Either answer, or something in between, is fine. For many people photography is a rewarding hobby, but for others it’s just a way to share a memory or two, and not in itself enjoyable.
It looks like the iPhone 14 Pro does 13, 24, and 77mm, so it should be able to capture a similar field of view as your wide angle lens. I’m sure the 5D will take better pictures, but the iPhone 14 is still very good.
I think the basic question is, will you miss the 5D if you don’t have it? If you could predict that, then you probably wouldn’t have bothered asking here, but it might be useful to consider.
I know on mine I would have really missed not having a powerful telephoto lens, but I still used my phone in most situations in which the telephoto wasn’t needed, unless I already had the other camera in my hand.
Before my trip I did some hikes with the heavy DSLR, and determined the extra weight of the camera on a hike didn’t bother me. My big concern was the travel with the camera and its accessories. I wouldn’t let an extra $60 in airline fees keep me from properly enjoying a major trip the way I wanted to, but the additional mental load of one more bag, which will be attractive to thieves, while at the same time having to keep track of multiple people who tend to wander off, and all of their bags, which they tend to forget, was enough to convince me not to take a DSLR.
There were people on the trip who thought it worth the trouble of bringing massive 600mm lenses. Clearly other people have different priorities, which is fine.
Sorry, but I’m going to go the opposite direction.
I’ve been an amateur photographer for quite a while now. To my horror, I realised that my DSLR was broken beyond repair in a recent home-move, and I am no-where near financially solvent enough to replace it. Ever the stoic, I’ve since been going around doing urban landscape photography with my phone - and, you know what? It’s fine.
At least, fine for my needs. Granted, if you zoom in to the pixel level you’ll see stuff you don’t like, and big prints are pretty much out of the question. But I have 12"x18" prints hanging up on my wall that I’ve taken with this phone that I’m more than happy with. Even in low light, something which traditionally phone cameras haven’t been great at, my Samsung does pretty well, although you can see it struggle a bit more. It’s somewhat humbling for me to recognise that, for the most part, I am not a good enough photographer to really warrant having a hulking great full-frame DSLR - and probably never was.
However, pretentiously moody red-filter high-contrast urban landscape photography just-so-happens to suit phone cameras (with a hefty dollop of Photoshop) quite nicely; the focal length is about right, and dramatic lines and shadows mask the clunky dynamic range and JPG compression. If I were shooting portraits, macros, wildlife or sports the story would be very different. Plus, there have been some limitations (I’d have got a really good shot of the London City Airport runway, if I’d happened to have a 400mm telephoto to hand, for instance).
But, as you say, if you’re mostly going to be doing landscapes anyway, a standard phone lens would probably suffice 90% of the time. I suppose the question is whether you, a pro, could live with a) the loss of control (you can kinda fiddle with aperture, shutter speed and so on with phone cameras - but it doesn’t hit the same…) and b) the loss of quality. Unless you’re a very picky nit-picker, I suspect that the pros of going phone-only outweigh the cons.
Thank you for the replies.
I have a 300mm “L” and it’s a beast; I carried it around the Atlanta Zoo one afternoon and even with a quality sling it was tiring. Fortunately, for what I’m after this trip, it will be much more of the wide shot variety. I also have a sexy 85mm I use for portraiture, and it too is arm-stretching, but like the telephoto it won’t be of service this trip.
It IS amazing what phone maker’s cameras/processing can accomplish these days, especially considering the phone’s lens and sensor sizes. But, of course, beyond just the field-of-view issue versus the DSLR, there is resolution (not MP size, but actual lens resolution), contrast, color gamut, and so forth. True, some of the fine details will take pixel-peeping to see, but in things like architectural lines, some of that may be more obvious. Also: the DSLR has a viewfinder level and plumb, and I find them invaluable in things like building photography.
While I know I should be able to adjust my phone’s aperture (logically, if not physically) BEFORE the shot, it isn’t fast or intuitive for me, whereas while I’m definitely not a super-pro on the 5D4, adjusting speed/aperture/ISO is drop-dead easy and quick. That said, those things likely won’t need quick changes in the environments and targets I’m considering (sure, changing from outdoors to indoors, or architecture to people, but nothing fast-moving), so it isn’t necessarily a big advantage for the DSLR.
I’m quite grateful to everyone’s point-of-view expressed originally and recently. Bottom line: I will experiment more with carrying my body+1 lens on several mile outings and see how I feel. If it seems a burden, I’ll leave it behind (if not at home, then in the room/cabin).