Is your phone good enough for travel photography?
The simple answer is, it can be. Ultimately, it depends on the image quality you're looking for, what you want to do with the images, and how much gear you're willing to lug around. I'll get into all of this, and weigh the pros and cons to help you decide what kind of digital image-making tool is best for you.
A brief introduction...
Smartphone vs Camera
| Smartphone | Camera |
| Decent image quality | High image quality |
| Lightweight | Usually heavier |
| Limited lens zoom, often low-resolution | Wide-angle and telephoto lenses can be used for landscapes & honing in on far-away subjects |
| Fits in your pocket | Bigger, more to lug around |
| Often has flat, gray colors | Higher range of more true-to-life colors |
| Limitations to photo print sizes due to quality | Better for printing photos |
| Moderate editing capabilities | Vast editing capabilities (when shooting RAW) |
| Works well for sharing on social media & with friends | Essential if you're looking to make money from your images (prints, blog) |
A "real" camera is always better, but that doesn't mean it's right for you.
I'm assuming you're reading this because you have an upcoming trip that you want to make sure you get awesome photos from. Perhaps you're looking for the photos to be better than what you've ended up with in the past. In which case, it's worth mentioning that "better" comes in two parts: skill and equipment.
The good news is that simple compositional rules can instantly make your photos look more professional by learning a few basic techniques. Check out the blog post I wrote about 32 Travel Photography Tips to determine if you're struggling with how to take good photos, as opposed to being dissatisfied with the colors or resolution from images taken on your device.
If you've found your issue to be the latter, then you're in the right place. Truthfully, I'll always be an advocate for cameras for the sake of their higher-resolution images. This allows for more push and pull in the editing process. Colors and sharpness are always going to be better on an actual camera too. Since I print my photos large scale, sell them, and use them in my professional photography portfolio, those things are important to me. This leads me to the first thing you should consider when thinking about purchasing a camera.
How do you want to use your images?
For social media: smartphone or compact (pocket-sized) camera
Posted on a personal blog: smartphone or compact camera
Printed for your home: smartphone or compact camera
Made into a photo book: compact or professional camera
Anything that involves the potential to make money from these images: professional camera
Most people are looking for "nice" (again, 80% of that goes back to skill behind the lens, not equipment) photos to share on socials and print a few to frame in their house or put on their holiday cards. That can all happen on an iPhone, but only if you're not looking to do major editing.
For example, take a look at the two images below. The first one on the left is a RAW image I took with my Sony a7iii mirrorless camera and a pro-level zoom lens.
What is a RAW image?
RAW is an uncompressed file format that allows camera users to maintain all image data possible when taking photos. It's not a sharable file format, so photographers need to edit their photos or at least convert the file format before posting them.
The second image on the right was taken on my iPhone 11 Pro.
RAW image (converted to JPEG for web use) taken on Sony a7iii
HEIC image taken on iPhone 11 Pro
I edited the colors heavily with the camera photo on the left using a custom Lightroom preset. However, when I copied and pasted the same settings from the preset onto the iPhone image, it made the photo look awful. Instead, I did an edit from scratch to match the camera image as much as possible, which is what's shown above. Why did it look so bad with the camera preset? A few reasons:
- Apple auto enhances the images you take, manipulating the colors, sharpness, exposure, and more to produce a better in-camera result. If you're curious about this, look up Apple Deep Fusion. And no, you can't turn this off.
- Photos taken on iPhones are compressed image files, and the default file format is HEIC. Essentially, HEIC image files use "lossless compression" to keep file sizes low without losing any significant image details. But it's still a compressed image. Go into your iPhone's camera settings to make sure you're shooting HEIC instead of JPEG, which sacrifices image quality when compressing the file, known as "lossy compression".
Compressed image file formats limit how much the photographer can manipulate an image when editing. On a professional camera, it's possible to bring up the exposure of a RAW photo so much that a night photo could look like it was shot in daylight. This would never be possible with a compressed image file without destroying the image's quality.
Apple does its very best to get it right in-camera by automatically manipulating each photo you take, while still maintaining as much image quality as possible. Smartphone users have no use for large, unsharable (if shot in RAW) file sizes.
This means that using a preset designed for RAW (uncompressed) camera photos, which significantly adjusts exposure, highlights, shadows, colors, and sharpness, can create a highly exaggerated effect when applied to a compressed iPhone photo that has already been auto-corrected. It went way too far. This difference in the starting images means the editing process will vary greatly. If you’re interested in improving your mobile photography editing game, there are presets sold online in places like Etsy and Creative Market that are designed to manipulate compressed image files.
As you'll notice in the iPhone image, I wasn't able to manipulate the colors as much as the camera image, because doing so was starting to ruin its quality. But it's still a decent photo, and iPhone cameras have improved beyond the quality of my iPhone 11 Pro. This brings me to my next point.
What does your editing style look like?
If you want sharable photos that have a dark, moody look with deep blacks and high contrast, look no further than your smartphone. This is not a technical term at all, but "editing down" on a smartphone doesn't challenge the image quality. When I say editing down, I mean lowering the exposure, deepening the shadows and blacks, or converting the image to black and white. You're looking for less color and/or less detail than what was produced by your device, so those editing styles tend to look good even when shooting on the most basic smartphone. The same goes for if you're looking to make minimal edits like fixing the white balance or bringing up the exposure a touch.
Major "editing up" on the other hand requires a much higher image quality which is where smartphone users can run into trouble. Drastically increasing exposure, bringing up shadows and blacks, lessening the contrast, and increasing vibrancy and saturation are all more likely to "break" a compressed, low-resolution photo. That's because manipulations like bringing up the shadows would require there to be image data in those shadows in the first place, which generally you can only get from a camera that's capable of shooting RAW or by using a special smartphone app.
How to take raw photos on a smartphone
If you decide that the quality of your smartphone images isn't cutting it, try downloading a camera app for your phone like ProCam (non-spon) that lets you shoot in RAW. On ProCam, you'll also have full control over the photo's aperture, shutter speed, ISO, focus, and white balance.
In the two example images below, the first photo on the left was taken initially as a RAW photo. RAW photos aren't sharable, so I've converted it to a JPG for web use. To take the RAW photo, I used ProCam on my iPhone 11 Pro. The second image on the right was taken using the regular camera app.
RAW image (converted to JPEG for web) taken on ProCam app using iPhone 11 Pro
HEIC image taken using regular camera app on iPhone 11 Pro
Hopefully, you can see the dramatic improvement in color quality and true-to-life colors with the image taken using ProCam. Both images are heavily compressed now so they will load quickly on your screen, so you'll have to trust me when I say the overall image quality of the ProCam image was better too.
All this to say, I would highly recommend downloading a smartphone camera app that offers more control over camera settings and supports RAW shooting before jumping into buying a dedicated camera. Shooting RAW on newer phone models and editing your images with mobile Lightroom presets to create a cohesive style might be the extra wow you’ve been searching for.
I tried a smartphone camera app, and it's still not enough for me.
Welcome! You're officially a photography nerd like me. Purchasing a dedicated camera is a big investment, and it's important to make sure you're getting the features you want as well as a few bells and whistles to grow into while staying within budget. As I mentioned briefly in the table at the beginning of this post, almost all cameras will provide you with higher quality images and more true-to-life colors. This all comes at the trade-off of managing large file sizes and potentially lugging around heavy gear.
Compact cameras
The next step up from your smartphone would be a compact point-and-shoot camera. These cameras fit in the palm of your hand and can be slipped into a pocket when traveling. They're discreet, convenient, and usually under $1,000. If you're looking for better quality photos without all the fussing with pro-level gear and highly technical settings, this type of camera is for you. Their automatic and scene modes are pretty good, but they can struggle in low-light settings making your image grainy. Fortunately, a lot of this can be fixed with Denoise AI in Adobe Lightroom. That one setting is reason enough to buy a Lightroom subscription, seriously.
There have been instances when traveling that I haven't wanted to take my large professional camera. Reasons include:
- - It made me a target for theft
- - It made me stand out as a tourist, which can be dangerous for solo female travelers in some parts of the world
- - It seemed culturally inappropriate
- - I was expecting bad weather
- - It was heavy, and I was planning on walking more than five miles that day
These are all serious concerns to consider when traveling. You don't want to hinder your experience in a new place with an aching shoulder and a massive backpack not allowed inside a museum.
Compact cameras, like the one I used for this shot in Mexico City, do best in bright environments.
So, where are you going?
If you're going on a road trip, it's not exactly a hindrance to carry tons of professional photography gear if you want to. You can stop when you want, take all the time you need to set up a shot, and when you're done it can all ride in the back of your car. Easy. But hiking trips, and long days in urban environments, that's when you're going to have to decide if the "inconvenience" of a big camera is worth the potential for extraordinary images. Assuming my safety and cultural sensitivity aren't in question, for me it's always worth lugging around my professional camera. It might not be for you, and that's okay.
Though I should mention that not all professional cameras have to be heavy. I shoot with a Sony a7iii camera body which weighs 1.43 pounds. In the professional camera world, that's nothing. But combined with my 24-105mm zoom lens which weighs 1.46 pounds, it can start to feel like a lot. I shoot with a zoom lens when traveling to maximize the kinds of shots I can take, from wide landscapes to detail shots from a distance. If you're more into one type of photography, you could buy a fixed prime lens that shoots at only one focal distance tp minimize the lens weight a little.
Compact vs Mirrorless/DSLR cameras
So how do you know if a point-and-shoot will be enough for you or if you want a mirrorless or DSLR camera? Amazingly, some point-and-shoot cameras have gotten so good that they're actually better (and more expensive) than some DSLR cameras. The point-and-shoot camera my Mom has is way better than the first DSLR camera I had as a kid. I'd say that if carrying convenience and ease of use are important to you then you're never going to bring a mirrorless or DSLR camera anywhere. It doesn't help you to own one if you always leave it at home.
In addition, I would only recommend purchasing a compact camera if this is as far as you want to go with photography. You're not super interested in the technical details like ISO or taking experimental images like long exposures, but taking the time to work with a dedicated camera sounds fun. If that sounds like you, make sure you spend the extra few hundred dollars to find one with 4k video that shoots RAW file formats. Not all digital cameras let you shoot RAW! You don't have to shoot RAW, but if you get more into editing later on, your camera won't hold you back.
If you're not concerned about the size of a larger camera and you're eager to delve deeper into the technical aspects of photography and editing, perhaps experimenting with accessories like tripods or lens filters, and you prioritize top-notch image quality, then I'd suggest investing in a DSLR or mirrorless camera.
Hazzah! We finally got there. These high-resolution images can be used to make large photo prints, make your small business or website look more professional and authoritative, or simply majorly up your Instagram game. Years later, I'm still growing into my powerhouse of a camera and the investment was worth the phenomenal colors and image quality that will always be an acceptable standard, even as technology continues to improve.
Mirrorless/DSLR cameras
There is so much to consider when purchasing a camera that it'll need to be its own blog post. There are beginner DSLR cameras for only a few hundred dollars and there are pro-level DSLR cameras for several thousand. So what's the difference and how much is too much? Do you want a mirrorless or a DSLR camera? Is a full-frame FX-format sensor worth the extra money, or is a DX-format enough? What kind of lens do I need? What brand do I want to invest in? And what's my budget anyway? Entering into the technicals of the camera world, like many things, has a high learning curve but is incredibly rewarding for those who want to learn. I'll link this upcoming post here as soon as it's written!
I'm always going to be an advocate for making the switch to a DSLR or mirrorless camera because I'm a total camera nerd and professional photographer. Almost all the images on this blog were taken using my professional camera. I think part of me hopes you'll love cameras as much as I do, but there are many improvements you can make to your images before needing to purchase a dedicated camera.
A lot comes down to knowing how to edit your images and finding your personal editing style. Easier said than done, but there are tons of Lightroom Preset packs you can purchase on Creative Market or hire someone to create custom presets for you on Fiverr if you have something specific in mind. Having good mobile presets for your smartphone photos, perhaps taken on a special camera app, can often do the job.
Hopefully this analysis helps you better weigh each option so you can make the decision that's best for you. Let me know if you have questions in the comments!
A quick purchasing guide
Invest in a DSLR or mirrorless camera
It's true that the best camera is the one in your hand. But if you're looking to up your photography game (and have a better camera in your hand!) it's worth investing in a DSLR or mirrorless camera. I usually prefer mirrorless cameras for travel. Why? They tend to be more compact, lighter, and easier to carry.
Budget: If you're just getting into photography, and want a step up in image quality from your phone, check out the:
- Nikon D3500. This is a great all-around beginner camera. F-stop goes up to an impressive 1.4, making it good for low-light and playing with depth of field. Nikon has tons of lens options to pair this camera with. I'd recommend a zoom lens for travel.
- Mirrorless Fujifilm X-T200. This camera is also small and lightweight. It has a touchscreen and several high-end features like eye tracking.
- Mirrorless Sony A6000. They offer a lot of high-range features at an entry-level price.
Mid-range:
- Mirrorless Nikon Z50. It's small and lightweight with impressive autofocus and 4k video.
- Mirrorless Sony a6400. Compact camera with object-tracking, beautiful colors, and 4k video.
Pro-level:
- Mirrorless Sony A7iii. It's what I shoot with, paired with the 24-105mm f4 lens. This camera is my baby. I'm continuously amazed by the image quality and all its cool features like eye tracking, wifi, and high ISO capabilities. If you're looking for a full-frame camera that's also super light and compact, this is it.
Travel Tripod
There are so many instances when I wished I had a tripod with me when traveling, but they can be beasts and impossible to carry around. For something that folds up into next to nothing, is lightweight, and won't break the bank, check out the:
- ZOMEI Z669C Carbon Fiber Portable Tripod. It has a max height of almost 60 inches and collapses to 14.6 inches. It's only 3.22 pounds but has a sturdy build.
