I was having this random thought this morning while enjoying my coffee with my wife before going to work.

When we travel and bring cameras with us – high quality, expensive cameras. Is it worth the hassle, does it really matter?

It all started with my wife saying how cumbersome it felt last year when she travelled to New York with the Leica Q2. “It’s heavy”, she started. “Especially when you are travelling and carrying other stuff with you. I felt relieved every time I got back to the hotel and took the camera off me.”

To which I replied “The Q2 is not the heaviest camera. But it feels like a hard block, yes.” More on this comment here, where I shared my 2 week experience with the Q2.

To the point

It got me thinking. When I travel, most pictures I take serve the purpose of keeping a remembrance of the things I saw, the places I visited.

Is my iPhone not good enough for this?

Is there any added value in bringing a high-end camera?

I am obviously excluding photo trips in this discussion, like in the first photo you see above this post that is self -explanatory. But for casual mementos on a trip. Do I really need the extra image quality a proper camera brings?

Numerous photo files

Coming from a one week trip in Finland where I took three cameras with me: the Hasselblad 907x 100c, the Leica V-Lux Typ 114 and the Insta 360 One X. I am dealing with thousands of files now. It’s a headache.

First thing I have to upload the photos to my iMac. Then delete the useless ones. Then select the favorites, to be edited and post-processed.

This takes time. I went through the whole process with my Leica, because it is pretty straight forward. The out of camera files are basically OK and presentable, just need a few adjustments. I can do it in Photos, in my phone.

The Hasselblad, it’s a different story. The RAW photos need to be massaged properly and I use their proprietary Phocus 2 app. I have yet to edit the massive RAW files from my favorites selection. Each file is 200 MB big and my iMac suffers with the heavy lifting.

The Insta360? The files are not even in my iMac… All 360 video files need to be cut and edited using their app.

Feel my anxiety?

And it came to my mind that from both my Hasselblad and the Insta360, I have files from our trip to the Azores last year yet to edit.

So again…

…is it worth the hassle? The burden of carrying a camera all day long, plus the burden of having hundreds of files that I have no time to edit?..

But NOT brining a camera with me when I travel feels like a lost opportunity. Besides, what’s the point of keeping so many good cameras locked at home, not bringing them out for a spin?

My quick answer to all this – as of now, as I started thinking about this when sipping my coffee – is to bring a camera with me, but only one. And to shoot less, shoot more deliberately.

And before stepping out of the hotel, to make an assessment and decide if it’s worth bringing a camera for the activities of the day.

But above all, above everything. To shoot less and shoot more deliberately.

Finished my coffee, have to go to work now.