The Best Camera?

There is an old saying, “the best camera is the one you have with you!”  I work for Nikon and we make wonderful cameras and the vast majority of my images are made with one of them.  Sometimes though you are someplace and see something you really want to photograph and you don’t have your “good” camera with you.  Today was one of those days, I was in airports all day and then got ot Las Vegas and several things I saw struck me, but I wasn’t carrying my DSLR or even a Coolpix.  I did have my phone!!  Now I’m not suggesting that any of us should make our camera in our phone our go to camera, but…….  When it’s all you’re got it can do remarkable things.  Now in fairness, I just did replaced my iPhone 3s with the new iPhone 4s and it does have a pretty nice camera in it.  It has it’s limitations, but  one of them is not that you never have your phone with you.  The story goes that a man whose son wanted to be a writer took him to meet Ernest Hemmingway.  It is said that the father asked Mr. Hemmingway what kind of typewriter he used!!!   Probably not a good conversation starter.

I am a big believer that 90% of photography is seeing great light, and subjects, and composing well.  You can do that with any camera. Now in fairness the night scene from my hotel room is a Coolpix 7100  shot, but the rest are iPhone images.  The iPhone allows you to take and make anything from nostalgic image like he people getting on the plane with an app called Hipstamatic, and a hand held HDR of the seats in the Phoenix airport ( a scene I look at too often).  You may not care for either of those images, I consider them personal shots because they mean something to me, they don’t have to relate to others, but are just fun for me to capture.

Or the image I like to call sweet light, of the Tower across from mine.

Then walking back from the convention center at MGM Grand today I thought the afternoon light on two of the three towers was neat, so out came my iPhone.

The most important thing is to stay visual, stay aware, look for interesting subjects and great light, and whatever you have with you use it like a real camera, because they all really are!!!!

Be blessed,

the pilgrim