The average smart phone in 2024 features a hyper-competent camera system capable of taking high-resolution photos with high dynamic range at the press of a single button. This has been true of most mid-range and flagship phones for close to a decade now.

So naturally, there’s no better time to get back into non-phone photography.

I was profoundly lucky to go to a public high school with a photography program. We had a full dark room for print-making and even got 35mm black & white film at a deep discount. I learned the basics of exposure and composition as a teenager when camera phones were truly in their potato era, taking grainy little VGA snaps on a Motorola RAZR that couldn’t easily be shared. Even when MMS came around, carriers charged upwards of $2 to send that blurry shot to your friend.

After graduating high school, though, photography became much less accessible. Sure, I had a little Coolpix or PowerShot or something that shot 8mp JPGs on a tiny CCD sensor, but it quickly made its way to the junk drawer after I picked up an iPhone 3G. Despite the camera quality being significantly worse than my point-and-shoot, it was always in my pocket.

The ubiquity of the phone camera, like the digitization of most artistic mediums, has significantly devalued the photograph. My camera roll is overflowing with casual snaps of meals, graffiti, sunsets, pets, loved ones, and about 1000 now-useless screenshots. I’m willing to bet yours is too.

On one hands, this is an obvious net good; I would much rather have a document of the things I see and do in my life than not, and the fact that such a robust tool for documentation is almost always on my person is hyper-efficient. But having a camera that defaults to full auto mode and instantly processes the image to produce a very specific idea of a “good exposure” has led to most of these photos looking real dang samey.

This summer, I picked up a Fujifilm X-T3 for a few hundred bucks on eBay and snagged a couple prime lenses to try and get back in the habit of intentionally taking photos. As nice as it’s been getting my muscle memory back for shooting on an SLR-styled camera (even though the X-T3 is mirrorless), it was immediately apparent how much heavy lifting the training wheels of the phone camera do.

Take this shot from summer solstice, for example. It was midnight and I was getting some fresh air outside Van’s Dive Bar in Anchorage. The sun had technically set 15 minutes prior but the longest day of the year features no actual nighttime, just civil twilight.

Low light performance on phone cameras has come a long way in the last few years, but if you pulled out an iPhone 15 or Samsung Galaxy and took this same shot in the default auto mode, it would bear a very different result. There’s a time and a place for hyper-HDR’d images but it’s nice to use a dedicated camera for shots like this. Not just for the manual control but sticking with a fixed focal length forces your feet to move and keeps my eye looking for a specific frame and angle.

It’s easy for me to get down a hyperfixation rabbit hole, and photography (with its near-endless gear options and formats) is no exception in that regard. I’ve been enjoying what Fujifilm has to offer, though, so I’ll be sticking to that system for now. I’m not huge on heavy photo editing in post, so the X-T3’s film simulations producing pleasing JPGs straight out of the camera is a boon. More time taking photos, less time at computer, please.

To clarify, I still enjoy a good phone photo–my iPhone 13’s camera is the one that’s always on me after all, and that’s generally the best camera (or not).

There are plenty of places where I’m not likely to bring my X-T3. It’s a bit on the hefty side, even paired with the relatively compact 35mm (~50mm full frame equivalent) f2 prime I prefer to shoot with.

I have a couple trips planned later this year and look forward to getting more street photography practice in Japan, in particular. In the meantime, I do have the distinct advantage of living in one of the most gorgeous places on earth. Looking forward to capturing more of it with something that can’t receive push notifications.