Tag: phone

Do You Need an Actual Camera When You Travel?

On By Isobar ExpeditionsIn Travel Tips21 Comments

With cell phone cameras getting better and better every year, it begs the question whether or not you should take up room in your bags for a camera. Even if we have a camera with us, we still use our camera phones in addition to using a traditional camera. On a couple of occasions we have decided not to take our camera with us at all, but in most cases we always take a camera with us. There are several reasons for packing our camera and extra lenses when traveling, despite the improvements in cell phone camera technology.

Monkey in Panama with a Phone
Taken with a Camera and Zoom Lens
Colosseum in Rome with the Camera and Zoom
Zoomed Using the Cell Phone

We have a couple of lenses for our camera, including a vibration reduction zoom lens. There are many times during a trip that we get the opportunity to have amazing views of a city or landscape. Having a camera with a zoom lens allows us to take photographs of objects in the distance and see them in a way that we couldn’t otherwise. Many of these photographs turn out to be some of our favorite photographs from a location. Another benefit that we find for taking photographs with a camera when traveling is that we can quickly focus on various objects as we walk through a location. Whether on a tour or just walking through a place on our own, we don’t want to stop every 30 seconds to take a picture and we find that we can get photographs of different objects without having to come to a full stop and playing with the zoom of a camera phone.

Quick Picture in the French Quarter of New Orleans
Same Shot from the Camera Phone
Florence Skyline from the Phone
Zooming in Really Close with the Camera

With that said, there are times when the cell phone camera is our preferred choice.  Obviously, there are the selfies, probably one of the biggest reasons that camera phones became popular. Also, when we are in a restaurant and want to take a photograph of our food, we’re not likely to pull out our camera and snap a few pictures. Depending on the lighting, we have also found that cell phone cameras work fairly well in low light situations like inside of buildings, churches, and museums. There certainly isn’t any doubt that camera phones continue to improve and they can produce high quality photographs.

Camera Inside of the Church in Nuremberg
Taken with the Cell Phone

We have included several similar photographs here, one taken with the camera and the other will the cell phone. Obviously, there are other factors that come into play regarding the results, but we found the comparison interesting. For the reasons previously mentioned, we’ll continue to take a camera with us, but that doesn’t mean that everyone should. Would you leave your camera at home on your next trip and rely solely on your cell phone camera?

Statues in Luxor, Egypt from the Phone
Same Statues with the Camera

 

Technology Has Changed the Way We Travel

On By Isobar ExpeditionsIn Travel Tips13 Comments

It is an obvious statement and perhaps just another sign that we’re not as tech savvy as our children’s generation. Or, maybe its just another indication that we’ve been on the planet long enough to see the whole world change. When we booked our latest trip, we did it all using apps on our phone. The hotel, car, and airline. In fact, the idea of where to go on our next trip came from using an app to explore our options.  We’ve obviously booked plenty of trips on our computers, but this was the first time that we booked the entire trip on our phone (stop snickering at us).

Just a Few of the Things that Go with Us Everywhere

We’re really not trying to do a “we remember when” post, but when we think back to some of early trips, the differences are striking.  On one of our trips, we had gone into a state park on the weekend to see some old wagon wheels and the ruts that are permanently carved into the limestone from settlers crossing the Oregon trail.  As luck would have it, we got a flat and the car that we had just recently purchased, didn’t have a jack.  No big deal, right, just call roadside assistance.  Oh, that was in the days before cell phones, we’d be better off with smoke signals.  And since it was a Sunday, there was no park staff, so we were faced with some of us hiking the five miles back to the closest service station while everyone else stayed with the car.  Luckily we found someone working on a pump after about a mile and a good Samaritan had stopped to assist.

Broken Down
In the Middle of Nowhere

We’ve gone from travel agents to online searching, to travel sites, to travel apps.  We’ve become so dependent on these technologies that we can barely remember how it was back in the Stone Age that was our early days of travel.  What would we do if we didn’t TripAdvisor to tell us what others have thought of a place.  How could we possibly survive without flight notifications on our phones or even having our boarding passes on our phones.  Imagine the hours spent comparing travel sites before we had all of the travel search engines promising to get you the best deals (and some of them really do 😉 ).  And what if the plane doesn’t have WIFI, what are supposed to do, use pencils and paper, those barbarians.  So much for our trip down memory lane, time to grab our phones and prepare for the upcoming trip to Iceland.