Tue, 21 Oct 2025

Photography Wisdom

A wise man, Bob Martindale, once told me (I don’t know who he heard it from or if it originated from him), the best camera is the one you have with you.

He was, at that time, a TV news photographer (maybe even back in the pre-video days of 16mm film).

The point being, if you don’t have your camera when a great, cool, interesting, momentous scene presents itself, the camera does you no good, no matter how well made it may be.

I was reminded of that recently and unconsciously at a happy hour gathering of former AARP WSO-ians. Yonas pulled out his camera to capture some cool afternoon shadows on the buildings around us.

And I was reminded even more recently, and consciously, this afternoon when I thought this was kind of a cool self portrait. Not as cool as Jake’s from WSO days: his face at the end of a Diet Coke bottle.

So, by way of illustration, the self portrait would be pretty hard for me to get with my “real” camera and its (D)SLR viewfinder. But with my cell phone (or most any cell phone camera), or — admittedly a mirrorless “real” camera, it’s much easier to see the screen as you’re composing an awkward shot.

On the other hand, this bird from our last day in the Galapagos would have been hard or impossible for me to get (I think) with a phone camera — that viewfinder, with a long lens, made all the difference.

In both cases, the technical details of the image or image capture are less important (at least in my mind) than having a camera with the features you need when you need it.

This last example is a not very good scan (sorry about that) of a 4X5 chrome I took years ago along the Potomac River. It required a lens swing to get the pilings in focus from front to back (which knocked much of the rest of the image out of focus — though a bit of the far shore is in the same plain and also in focus). I’ve seen advertisements for tilt/swing lenses for 35mm-like cameras, but don’t have one. That flexibility comes built in to a 4X5 rail camera.

So no way (before AI, at least) to get something like that from a phone camera.

But I’m still happy to have a camera I can and do carry with me almost all the time — that will often be the best camera (even though my 4X5 has cool extra feature and can capture way more detail).

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