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Is the best camera really the one you have with you? Shooting Hawaii with a mediocre cell phone

I first visited Hawaii in 2008, and I brought every piece of photo gear I had: D300, 17-55DX, 80-200AFS, 30mm 1.4, D40 with kit lens, and a cheap palm-sized 720p video camera. I used it all.  Hawai'i is a great place for a photo enthusiast, and I’ve been lucky enough to go back a few times since.  My next trip was with one body and two lenses.  After that, only a Coolpix A.  Finally, being completely seduced by the Dark Side and its flexible panoramas, built-in HDR capabilities, and pocket-size convenience, I decided to try a trip using only a cell phone camera.  Besides, Steve Jobs once tried to convince us the iPhone was reminiscent of an old Leica, so this must be worth a shot.  Truth be told, the only reason I tried this is because I had already amassed a ton of DSLR shots by this point, so I thought I was in a position to test that pithy aphorism “the best camera is the one you have with you.”

Let me spoil the ending for you:  No. No, it’s not.

But not for the reasons I expected.  It wasn’t because of the lens, frame rate, low-light performance, or resolution.  The problem was that the process of using it was cumbersome in ways I never considered.  Here’s a list of the major ways it went wrong (plus a shot or two that I thought went right. It wasn’t a complete failure.)

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