I love taking photos.

The camera I use is the one on my iPhone X. I’ve been happy with the features and quality of the photos I get from it.   If I kept the photos and videos on my phone memory, I would have run out of space a long, long time ago but I move my photo library to Google Photos for storing and organizing my photos.  I really love the search feature of Google Photos but I’ll share those thoughts with you in another blog post.

Anyway, back to my camera. A few years ago, I researched cameras that would be easy to carry but would take great photos. I’m not a professional photographer by any means, but I want to take relatively nice pictures of people and places I visit. One sentence struck me while doing my research. The best camera is the one that you will have with you when you want to take a photo. For me, I don’t want to carry a lot of stuff everywhere I go. That means the camera on my phone is the one that is with me everywhere.

I have a trip to Peru coming up in July and rather than carrying a DSLR with me while out and about in addition to all the other things I’ll probably be carrying–like bottled water, souvenir purchases, snacks, and a jacket, I decided to get the Olloclip Mobile Photography Box Set.  It comes with three lenses.  I bought mine from Amazon.

Fisheye–For that artsy spherical effect.  I can see me using this fun lens in Peru.

Superwide–To add more of what I want to capture in a snapshot.  I definitely will use this in Peru. Above is the side-by-side comparison with the superwide lens and without.  I’m standing in the same place for these shots of my garden.

Macro 15x–This magnifies the subject 15 times for a super close up.  Unless I have lots of time to take a photo of something I really want to magnify, I don’t see myself using this lens in Peru.  You need to have good lighting, a subject that doesn’t move, and your lens has to be so close to the subject that it is almost touching it.  But it is pretty cool and I can see myself using it here in Hilo.

All of these lenses are portable and easily clipped and unclipped to the phone.  I’ll keep it in my cute, gold Winky Lux pouch.

One more point.  If you want to use the Olloclip, you cannot have a  protective case on your phone from another company.  The only case it works with is the Olloclip phone case.  The Olloclip case is not very expensive so I went ahead and got it since I do want to protect my phone from damage as much as possible. I also got this from Amazon.

If you have any tips for me about Peru or amateur photography, please share them with me! Living Hilo Style.