Articles & Tips

Put the blame on the Cell Phone

As soon as we decided that our trip “Spain 2017” would be a reality, two things popped into our minds, where will we go and with what camera will we take pictures. We don’t have any of those professional cameras. No Canon, Nikon, Sony or Fuji Film.

We decide to try a few at the store but none with the desired results. OMG! We had become so accustomed to take pictures with our cell phones, that the feeling wasn’t the same. The visual flexibility afforded with the cell phone is something else. We were not limited to using the small visor where you have to shut one eye in order to see the image with the other. We tried doing it with both eyes wide opened and it didn’t work out. Just to think about how much they cost and that they became even more expensive in the measure that it provided less image distortion. What about special lens? Sure you can get them, but they are also expensive. Are they good? For a professional of course.

However, cell phone cameras are getting better, with higher resolutions and megapixels which results in a more defined image without the need for special lens. They practically focus on their own too.

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Santa María La Blanca, Antigua Sinagoga Mayor de Toledo

You also don’t have to carry extra batteries, a quick recharging of the phone and the camera is ready again. Having a portable power bank just in case for recharging is great.

And the best part of taking pictures with the cell phone? One can edit and improve the photos on the phone. You could further edit your pictures with apps such as Photoshop, improving lighting, focus and colors.Best of all the apps can be downloaded for free!

Comparativa Casita del Pescador El Buen Retiro
El antes y después de La Casita del Pescador en el Parque del Buen Retiro, Madrid

Other advantages to using the Cell Phone camera? It doesn’t take up much space, it is light weight, easily stored and one can view the picture at a reasonable size. Want more reasons? You can share you photos o send them easily (Gmail, Facebook, Whatsapp, Messenger, Instagram, etc.). Additionally, yu can use different modes available on the cell phone camera the images as desired (panoramic, sports, Night, etc.).

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Palacio de la Merced o Antiguo Convento de la Merced, Córdoba, España

One concern before taking off was how to deal with the storage of the pictures being taken. We began by creating email accounts for every city to be visited. One for Madrid, one for Toledo, another for Ronda, Ecija, Cordoba, Seville and Granada. This enabled us to send photos organized by cities and up to 15Gb of free storage space available. When selecting our lodgings it was important to ensure that they included free Wi-Fi connectivity. In this way, every night we could connect via Wi-Fi to transmit our pictures to the respective email account. Each email could include 4 to 5 pictures. We would later make sure that the pictures had been received at the respective account. Once this was confirmed, we could delete the pictures from the photo gallery. In this manner we could count on having enough free storage on the cell phone for more pictures the following day.

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Plaza de España, Sevilla

In the end we made the gusty move to rely on our Cell Phone cameras. Over 3,200 pictures were taken with our Samsung Galaxy 7 cell phone. Actually a lot more photos were taken if we consider pictures deleted when they didn’t turn out right or as desired.

Indeed, the cell phone camera is at fault for being a great invention.

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