Why You Should Bring an Actual Camera on Your Next Vacation

(Written November 15, 2015, posted on Facebook)

Before going on a trip to Venice, Italy and a cruise to the Greek Isles, I was debating whether or not bring my camera, a Canon PowerShot SX700 HS. Most people nowadays just use their cell phones which sport anywhere between 8MP (iPhone 6) to 16MP (Galaxy Note 5)–or 41MP if you have the Nokia Lumia 1020. It makes sense to just use my cell phone, right? Well, I decided to bring the camera anyway. What made me decide to bring the camera was battery life. Using the camera would save my cell phone battery from use. More than that, I learned on my trip why it was useful and advantageous to bring an actual camera.

I mentioned that using a camera rather than a cell phone would save battery life on my cell phone–I typically have an extra battery for my camera–but it also saves on memory capacity. Rather than use the memory space in my cell phone, I put all the vacation pictures on a 4G SD memory card. 4G capacity memory card is sufficient to hold vacation pictures. In case it is not, I have an extra 1G memory card that I bring along.

The zoom on my camera is much better than the zoom on my cell phone. This is another advantage to having an actual camera. I can zoom in on structures far away and have it be relatively clear of noise. Have you ever tried zooming in on an object far away with your cell phone camera? Yes, you can buy those lens clips from Amazon, but make sure they are telephoto and not macro. My partner and I recently found this out while trying to buy him a lens clip for his iPhone 6. If you’re willing to dish out $90 for a lens with 2x zoom, go for it.

Editing pictures. Yes, this is one feature that my camera cannot do; however, my camera is wifi capable. There is an application for my Canon camera that I downloaded from Google Play onto my Galaxy Note 4 which allows my phone and my Canon camera to communicate. I can connect them either through a network or through my camera’s self-generated SSID and password. This came in handy when we had no wifi connection–it’s much too expensive to buy the connection on a cruise ship. I connected my phone to my camera, and I was able to choose the photos I wanted to download onto my phone. Once on my phone, I was able to edit and modify the photos using Snapseed. During our excursions off ship, when we were able to connect to a wifi, we shared our photos on Facebook.

My point-and-shoot camera is fairly small so it doesn’t take up too much room.  You don’t need to have a hefty camera with a telephoto lens unless, of course, you are a professional photographer or you really know how to use such equipment.  While I’m traveling, I like to keep my one luggage as light as possible; so, this is another reason to bring along a little point-and-shoot camera.  It fits nicely into a pocket, backpack, or purse.

So when you travel, what do you use?