Illusions

My passion for photography and the outdoors, along with my technical background, has been leading me down a dark hole lately. (Note - This is nothing too serious.) I tend to be a person who pushes my equipment to its limits as I try to get the most out of everything. For this discussion I am referring to image quality with minimum weight. Lately I have been researching and testing how to take advantage of the technology in my cell phone so I can leave my GoPro kit out of my camera gear backpack.

Not only will I need equal quality, I want better from the phone, if possible. Hopefully I can achieve that since the Iphone has three ranges of camera view (not counting the selfie camera). That beats the GoPro. My concern is phone storage space and battery power. With the GoPro I carry a handful of batteries, so that could be a wash if I carry a small powerpack to charge the phone. The storage space could be the deal breaker. I need to be able to record for the duration of a trip, if possible.

Certainly image (still and video) quality is paramount. Today I think I figured out the video portion. The still imaging is getting there, but will not replace my Nikon equipment.

My photos for today are referenced to “illusions.” My outing at Sweet Marsh was very pretty - waterfowl was calling and flying about, the early morning sun and clouds complimented each other, and temperatures and wind were comfortable. The scenes were just pretty as documented in the following images.

It was when I looked closer to see another view of Sweet Marsh - when the illusion of pretty flipped to the opposite. Between the drought and weather conditions there has been a fish kill in recent months. A close look revealed what remained of many large rough fish. I used those reminders as subject matter for my cellphone camera to show me what it could do in the still photography realm. The picture theme may not be too attractive, but the technical quality was pretty good. Testing will continue.