Is it okay to use your phone to take photos?

I was out at a local woodland area this weekend. I was with my wife, and since I spend about 95% of the week taking photos everywhere we go, I had agreed that this particular Sunday would be a photography free day!

Well not quite! I couldn’t resist taking a few shots with my phone camera. I have a Google Pixel 3, and even though it’s an older model now, it does take great photos. Okay, so you can’t fully control depth of field, and there’s no shutter speed control, not to mention there’s no choice of lenses. What it does do though, it does very well. The exposure blending and processing is great, and produces really sharp images with plenty of dynamic range.

Here’s one of the shots.

The Pixel 3 can shoot in RAW format, and I even edited the image on the phone using the Lightroom app.

There are many people who don’t take phone cameras seriously, and I understand why. Given the choice, I would always prefer to use my Z7 or D7500, but a phone photo is better than no photo, and I thought the result above was pretty good to be honest.

So in my opinion, yes, it’s okay to use your phone to take photos. In many ways it frees you up so that you don’t need to think about all the technical stuff, and you can concentrate on the composition and story in the image. That being said, a DSLR or mirrorless camera is so much more versatile and even necessary in certain scenarios.

At the end of the day, they’re both tools with their own advantages and disadvantages. I can certainly say that one of the key benefits of a phone camera, is that you can sneak it out on a walk with your wife!

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