“Please may I borrow your phone?” Asked my daughter the other day.
“Why?’ I enquired.
“I want to find some pictures for the scrapbook I’m making,” came the reply.
My daughter is 16. It’s interesting that the first place that occurred to her to find pictures she may not already be in possession of, was on my phone. Rather than say my camera, my hard drive, or my box full of memory cards of every capacity and format.
Although I will take a dedicated camera – one that doesn’t connect to the internet – on family holidays, the image capture device that I always have to hand, even on those rare occasions where I don’t want to lug a ‘proper’ camera around, is my phone.
It would stand to reason then, at least in my daughter’s eyes, that if she recalled a family photo opportunity, most likely the relevant image would be on my handset. Or, at least, that would be the first place to look. A reasonable assumption.
From bricks to clicks
Though mobile phones were a thing when I was also 16, they were brick sized. And didn’t contain cameras. Those weren’t a mass market option until I was 30.
Examples I tried in the early 2000s weren’t that great, either, with their tiny lenses, sensors and VGA resolution. Consequently, I was a little sniffy and cynical about the phone replacing the dedicated camera – at least in the short term.
Despite that, we did have the foresight to include them in the buyers’ guides of camera magazines I was editing in the noughties. Seems a quaint idea now, that someone would buy a magazine to decide which phone to buy.
Nowadays we’ve reached the point where phone photography is not only ‘good enough’, but it has exceeded the performance of most standalone consumer cameras for those happy to point and shoot. Using a dedicated camera, now, is more about enjoying a different ‘experience’. It’s no longer purely a debate about one medium being better or worse than the other.
A moment captured is always better than a moment lost.
But, even if the quality of my phone at the time had left much to be desired, when my camera proper wasn’t to-hand I’d still take the picture. A moment captured is always better than a moment lost. And when it comes to family, those fleeting moments are irreplaceable.
If I hadn’t have automatically had my phone with me, I wouldn’t have captured the unexpected. Like the first time my daughter was able to ride her bicycle without me holding on and steering her, surprise appearances of birthday cakes and candles, or on ski runs or fairgrounds rides, where a mirrorless camera or DSLR would have been impractical.
As it is, I need to replace my current Samsung handset. The screen is cracked from when it was previously borrowed, the casing is chipped, plus memory is showing 98% full, meaning various apps have stopped working as intended.
So… “Please may I borrow your phone?”
Related reading
- I’ve discovered the perfect phone for content creators – iPhone users are missing out
- Here’s what I’ve learned from taking 200,000 photos in 25 years
- I’ve tested lots of different phones – this is the one I’ve enjoyed using the most and why
The views expressed in this column are not necessarily those of Amateur Photographer magazine or Kelsey Media Limited. If you have an opinion you’d like to share on this topic, or any other photography related subject, email: ap.ed@kelsey.co.uk
