We lived in Vienna for more than three months in autumn of 2023 when we were visiting the technical university of Vienna, TU Wien. It was here that I really became interested in smartphone photography, and I am happy for that.
I used to consider my smartphone camera as an inferior tool to my Canons and Panasonics. And there were two good reasons for that: The quality of the photos were not comparable, and the phone-as-camera was not user-friendly. That has however changed lately. I now own a Sony Xperia 5. It has an excellent camera with its own physical shutter button so I don’t have to unlock the screen and open the camera app before being able to take a photo. I just press the shutter button once, and the smartphone is ready to take pictures. I then frame and push the shutter button again. Moreover, the camera app is really good, allows me to adjust a lot of parameters, and creates astonishing shots. The quality of the photos are no as good as dedicated cameras, but the difference is neglectable for screen-based viewing.
But I think the biggest advantage of using smartphone camera is the well-known fact that the best camera is the one you have with you. When I look at the photos I have taken, it is apparent that I take a different kind of photo than I take with dedicated cameras. The photos in this album are good examples, informal photos of casual subjects, triggered there and then based on curiosity. I like it.
