Do I Need A New Camera?

I saw a very colorful caterpillar today. I took a picture of the little crawler using my iPhone. I liked it so much I created a small watercolor painting in my sketchbook.

Everybody seems to have a smartphone nowadays. I think I've seen six-year-olds with smartphones. 

Okay, I know not everybody has a smartphone (Brian, Peter, and Frederick you know who you are - though I know Frederick has a super cool real camera).  I imagine if you're in my little artsy update audience you might have a smartphone, which has a camera. 

​It's funny how we still call them phones. They're more like a mini-computer that happen to make phone calls. 

Though my smartphone camera does a pretty good job at almost everything like panoramas, videos, timelapse, slo-mo, zooms-in and out, I'm looking for a better camera because I like taking pictures and some things about my iPhone camera frustrate me.  

• My phone takes rubbish night shots. It's all grainy and looks like somebody filtered the picture through cheesecloth. 
• When I try to zoom in with my smartphone camera, even in the best lighting, it becomes fuzzy. 
• The iPhone camera is susceptible to light, and you lose a lot of the vivid colors you can see with your naked eye.  

Because I have a camera on me almost all the time, it's changed how I live my life, at least how I remember my life. 

I've taken somewhere in the neighborhood of six billion (exact number about 16K) photographs with my phone.

I try to keep a diary of the things that I do from day to day by writing down things that happen during the day. Some days I write more than others.  I wish I did it every day, but I don't. 

I use a program called Evernote for my diary. For each entry, I add a couple of photos to the mix.  

• Did I draw something? I take a snap and include it. 
• Did I see something good on the road? I take a pic and log it.
• Was it an awesome sunset? Oh, I love sunsets. That goes in.
• Did I go to a concert? I love concert photos.

I use the photos as a reminder, as a touchstone for future reference. When I go back over my journal, as I often do, the pictures help me remember where I was and what I was doing. 

As I ride that highway to addle-mindedness, I'll need all the help I can get. 

A fancy new camera might help me take better quality photos but do I need that for the way I use the images? 

Maybe a new camera can help me document my trek on the Appalachian Trail. 

I've seen a lot of great videos from hikers on the trail, though I haven't seen any videos from a sexagenarian. I know there has to be some of us out there. 

I've personally met people in their seventies on the trail. So it can be done. 

But do I really want to have to carry a separate camera around? It's all about weight when you're "carrying a wardrobe on your back", as Bill Bryson mentioned in his book, A Walk In The Woods.

I think, for now, I'll stick with my iPhone and the camera that comes with it. 

It does the job. I don't think I need a better one right now. 

Right, now that I've come full circle and I've cleared that up for myself ...

Until we meet again, I wish you peace.