I didn’t see the movie “X-Men: Days of Future Past”, but I
always hated the title, since a “day of future past” is every day.
What’s next? “X-Men: Taco Tuesday”? “Future Past” sounds profound (fine, I
understand there’s a time travel angle to the movie so maybe it’s not that
far off) but it’s not saying anything. Just putting contradictory terms
together and hoping to further confuse an already easily bamboozled audience.
There is a better formulation of the sentiment, and comes
from King Arthur in the 1981 classic “Excalibur” (those who know me were no
doubt wondering how long it would take for me to get an “Excalibur” reference
into a post). This trip, for your family, is to “be the stuff of future
memory.” It should be a reference point, a touchstone for decades to come, passing into legend.
Unfortunately, memory is unreliable, you’ll need to give it a
boost – you’ll want to preserve as much of the trip as possible, in the best, most heroic possible way. I noted a new
app called LiveTrekker in a previous post, it tracks where you’ve been and you
can add photos and comments to make a digital road map of the journey. Maybe
that’s how everyone will do this in the future, you may recall that I’m against
constantly pulling out the phone. Live in the moment of the trip.
Of course, pictures are still the best way to go. And with
that, you have a very basic choice: camera-phone, or dedicated camera? I’ve
wrestled with this for some time. Almost all of my previous trips were run off
of a dedicated camera, but that was an easy decision. My “smart phone” was a
Blackberry until 2012, really, there was no choice. Most of us have either an
iPhone or Galaxy these days, or perhaps you’re a rebel and rock an HTC. It’s a
fine device. The smartphone has definitely take the place of the stand-alone
camera *unless* you’re going high-end on the latter – if you know what an
f-stop is, and how to use it, your phone camera just won’t do.
For the rest of us, the camera phone probably will be
fine for the trip. I mean, who wouldn’t want to carry one device, instead of
two? Regardless of how small they are, it still can be a bit of a hassle to fit
the camera somewhere. That convenience is the main reason to skip the camera
and go with just the phone. Also, with your phone, you can update your social
media posts right then and there; some cams now come with wifi and Facebook
posting features, since the camera companies know this is an important feature.
Indeed, on my last trip, I went without a camera, just used
my phone. This was not by design, our camera fell out of my pocket in a NYC cab
and so I had to rely on my iPhone. It worked out just fine. I took bunches of
great pictures, made some good FB posts, and all was well. Except, not quite,
and for that reason I’m going back to a camera for this trip.
My reasons: for one, the regular daylight pics on the iPhone
were great. Low light and movement? I was less enthused. The difference was
more pronounced when I printed the photos (I’ll get to that in a bit). And
picture quality is critical.
Other reasons? I’ve mentioned how I don’t want to constantly
be reaching for my phone. A camera is different, at least in my mind. I won’t
be able to say, “well, I have my phone out, let me check FB and update a post.”
A common strategy is to save the photo posts until the end of the day, at the
hotel, when you have wifi – I get that. But still, I repeat, I want to refer to
my phone as little as possible. That phone is a constant reminder of
non-vacation.
I’ve also had phone issues regarding both storage and
battery life. That’s really just a me issue, probably, but my phone has gotten
clogged with apps and photos – videos, especially – to the point where I’ve had
to start mass deleting items. Sure, they’re backed up “in the cloud” – ugh, I’m
not a Luddite, I know how the cloud works, and I know there are photo apps that
help you manage this, but it’s somehow less than fully reassuring. Battery
issues are more pressing – it’s rare that your camera battery will run out on
you – a full charge will easily last a week, unless you’re doing heavy-duty
flash photography -- but a phone can drain in a hurry. I know, set it to
“airplane” mode, but still. My battery life is shockingly short.
Then comes organizing. You get home, and you’ll want to do
some curating. The camera makes this really easy: plug it in, download to your
photo file, and you can start. For my iPhone, this is not an option – I pretty
much *have* to go through the cloud, and I’ve been annoyed at this on more than
one occasion. I finally figured out how to make this work relatively easily,
probably just in time for the process to change. Or I’ll forget. Some of you
think I must be a Grade A Technomoron, maybe I am: but the plug and load of my
camera is *really* easy, and I like that.
Anyway, there it is. I replaced my lost camera (a very handy
little Sony) with a Nikon Coolpix, based on reviews. $70 or whatnot on eBay, seems
well worth it. It has all kinds of features I’m sure I’ll never use: for the
most part, it has good megapixels, and is small enough to carry in my pocket
without a prob. Also, you can’t easily take a selfie with it: this is a
feature, not a bug. We need fewer selfies.
Now – what are you going to do with all these photos? No
doubt share them on the internet, in FB posts or Instagram or Flickr or Lord
knows what. I will, too. But I also insist on creating hard copies of my photos
and putting together a proper book. We’ve done that for every trip, and without
that, I’m not at all sure we’d ever look at our old photos. Seriously, do
people go to their laptop and just start browsing all 8,000 photos they’ve
taken? No, but books still do get picked up.
Needless to say you won’t be doing the print-out and paste
in the blank book process like in days of yore. I look back on some of those
and note, sadly, that the color in my photos is running. Very irritating.
You’ll be using a print service to make your photo books, of course. There are
too many of these to iterate. I have used four: Shutterfly, Snapfish,
SimplePrints, and Walgreens. I’ve gotten pretty good results with all of them,
but there are some caveats.
Of those three, SimplePrints works directly off of the pictures in
your phone. That makes it easier on you if you choose not to use a dedicated
camera, and I used this after having lost mine on the cab. However, I find that
arranging and editing out of your phone is much more difficult than from a
desktop/laptop. And I found the quality of the photos once printed didn’t match
up to my old camera photos on print. I don’t know if this was a function of the
phone camera or the print service, but it’s enough to drive me back to buying a
new camera for my upcoming trip. Quality is everything here.
I end up going back to Shutterfly as my main service because
I’m used to their interface and can pretty easily customize my book. The first
time I used the service I was pretty amazed at how well it arranged the photos
by itself: I assume it has algorithms that work off of photo date and general
composition to group the shots together in a pleasing manner. I only did minor
edits on my initial books.
There’s a cost to that simplicity, though, in this case a
real out-of-pocket cost. Shutterfly’s algorithm tends to put one, maybe two
photos on a page fairly often, and include a lot of blank space. Either you
work with fewer photos, or you have to buy extra pages, and those don’t come
cheap. By now, I’ve practiced with the site enough to customize my own layout,
and I try my best to minimize empty space without making the photos too small.
Don’t settle for their algorithm, is all I’m saying. Take your time and put
together the best possible book, and annotate it properly. There’s a really
good chance your great-grandchildren will own this volume.
No comments:
Post a Comment