The iPhone As A Primary Camera

Since having kids two things have changed about the number and types of pictures that we take.  First of all, the total number of pictures that we take has increased dramatically since the kids were born.  In the past two years, the number of pictures we have taken per year has went from the low hundreds to the low thousands.  Secondly, the types of pictures we take now are different.  In the past, most of the pictures we would take were grouped around events such as a trip or conference.  Now, the majority of pictures we take are of random events that happen in day to day life.  Both of these things have driven us away from a traditional digital camera towards the camera on the cell phone.  Over the years the quality of cellphone cameras has improved and the convenience of taking random pictures with the cell phone has left our digital camera mostly collecting dust.

This trend is occurring in other households as well, by evidence of data from Flickr.  Not only do you get the convenience of not having to carry an extra device at all times to take random pictures, it also connects to the internet and various cloud and social media services as well for back-up and sharing.  Newer point-and-click cameras try to offer similar features but frequently are more clunky at doing so.  There is one big disadvantage to using the cellphone camera, however, and that has to do with copying pictures to your computer hard drive.  Despite having an Apple phone and computer, the process is cumbersome at times.

When using a digital camera, when I wanted to transfer pictures from the camera to my computer I would insert the memory card into my computer and simply click and drag the pictures to a folder on my desktop.  Pretty simple.  In fact, when transferring pictures from the iPhone to a computer I typically use a Windows computer because it allows be to access the files on the phone in Explorer for click and drag functionality.  The last time, however, there were pictures on the phone that didn't show up in Explorer.  So I plugged the phone into my MacBook, thinking that would solve the issue.  It didn't.  Despite using Pictures, certain photos on the phone were not being displayed on the computer.  I ended up using AirDrop to move the pictures from the phone to the computer.   This was the first time I have ever used AirDrop and performance was spotty.  It seemed to either work really well or not well at all, and according to reviews I read online, this inconsistency seems to be the norm with the technology.  I was able to get the pictures onto my computer but it was quite cumbersome.

While we're on the topic, I am not a big fan of using Photos to transfer pictures from the iPhone to the computer.  I like to copy pictures to folders I create so that they can easily be backed-up to a cloud service and to another hard drive.  Photos seems to place them in hidden (or at least not obvious) locations, making moving them to specific folders for organization and back-up purposes difficult.  I am sure I could get online and read more about it to learn where they are stored, but it seems like it should be a bit easier to use.