New York City Boots For my most recent trip to New York City, I left my DSLR intentionally at home and decided to either borrow my wife’s X-E1 or just use the iPhone.

My wife’s camera worked great. As far as the iPhone goes, I learned a few things too. While it can take nice photos and the processing options on it are almost unlimited too, it has one great disadvantage. While they advertise the smart phones as addressing a wide range of tasks, I felt like it fell short of that for one simple reason – battery life!

For my camera, I have several spare batteries and in the worse case, if I run out, it’s not a big deal other than not being able to take pictures (yes, it is a big deal and I make sure it never happens). Running out of the battery in the phone when used for multiple purposes is quite different – all of a sudden, your navigation is gone and  your emergency call impossible.

With some light navigation and very light photography I was down to 50% of power in 2 hours! After that, I holstered the phone leaving the rest just in case.

Yes, I know there are battery packs one can lug around to recharge the phone on the go but doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose of light weight mobility and not having a separate camera?

Back to a camera it is for me.

Have fun with your travel camera of choice!