Recently I spent a short break hiking in the Italian mountains. Obviously, during such activities you want to keep the weight of the stuff you carry with you to an absolute minimum. This means you don’t carry all your photo-equipment with you. That is, unless, photography is your main goal. Which, in my case, it wasn’t. Hiking was and, of course, along the way (no pun intended), you happen to pass the most beautiful places. And, yes, you want to record these to keep them as permanent documents of what the environment really looked like.
So there’s the dilemma: take landscape pictures, but don’t carry heavyweight equipment. I ended up leaving my entire set of expensive Nikon equipment at home and just brought my smartphone along. For my purpose – just simple straightforward registration of what I see – today’s smartphone camera’s are more than capable of doing that. My Nexus 5 fits nicely in my trouser pocket and is no burden at all. It weighs next to nothing. Have a look at these pictures and judge for yourself.
Back home I found out that I shot all pictures with the second best technical setting. All pictures were taken with 6 megapixels where the camera can handle a maximum of 8 (which even is modest compared with other modern smarthones out there). The ratio with 6MP is 16:9, where 8MP uses 4:3. But it’s all beside the point I’m trying to make. If you’re shooting simple, straightforward images that register what you see, forget all your fancy DSLR equipment and use your smartphone! Don’t bother with ISO’s, exposures or shutter speeds. Grab your smartphone, compose and shoot.