As we prepared for our trip to Ireland, I began to reconcile myself to the idea of owning a “Smartphone.”
This represents a bigger deal in our home than in most. For years, I’ve resisted the multi-tool aspect of smartphones, preferring my basic, or “dumb” phone—a device for making phone calls, which I see as the basic duty of any telephone.
What began to change my mind was the quality of photos that Aly and Michelle take with their smart phones.
Mark’s new smartphone. The fingerprint-retention feature was a definite selling point . . . (Photo: Mark A. Zeiger).
Aly and I went on an outing in May of 2017 that offered some amazing photo opportunities. We went with several of the region’s top photographers, one of which wandered by as Aly and I conferred over our best DSLR cameras. He’s an excellent photographer, a standout in a region where such artists are thick on the ground. So, when he pulled out his smartphone and showed it to us, saying, “Anymore, I take most of my photos with this!” He explained that almost any smart phone has a larger capacity camera than a standard DSLR cameras these days. I was at first astounded, then thoughtful. Perhaps the time had come to reconsider the smart phone.
Since then, Michelle has received tips from the professional photographer guides with whom she works. As the Ireland trip approached, Michelle and Aly started showing better phone photos than ever before.
As with all commercial air travel in and out of Haines, we needed to pass through Juneau twice on our trip. And, because we take the ferry home instead of a small carrier flight, we needed to spend a night in Juneau each way. We realized that the local store run by our phone carrier was on the way to or from the airport, so I had two chances to buy a smart phone on the trip. I chose the trip home—yes, it would be handy to have a high-quality camera/phone on the trip, but I’d be damned if I would spend any time on the trip learning to use the new device!
Now that I’m home, I’m learning, and liking the new phone. I have been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st Century, and I find that—cautiously—I like it here!
The homestead view in panorama, first attempt of this feature on new smartphone (Photo: Mark A. Zeiger).
Not that the learning curve hasn’t proven steep. Three weeks later, I’m still not completely comfortable with it, nor do I have most of the good features discovered or mastered.
It doesn’t replace my trusty DSLR camera, but I’m more likely to have it on me when I need it than I am to have the actual camera. My basic phone included a camera, but it barely managed snapshots—mostly, I only took photos with it that I wanted to make that phone’s desktop photo.
Once I have the proper permissions transferred, it’ll prove handy for going to town. I likely won’t need to take my computer with me anymore, unless it’s to post to this blog, or perform some other function for which a full-sized keyboard would work best. That’s the biggest drawback: the keypads are way too small for my stubby finger tips!
It’s not that I try to be a Luddite, I just don’t want the added distractions a smart phone offers, including instant Internet access and games. But, I have to move forward with the times, eventually. We’re experimenting with the hot spot feature. If it works, we might cancel our dedicated hot spot, and save a little money (see The Mysteries of Cellular Internet Explained).