What type of camera do you use on family days out/holidays?

[Doughnuts68]

What type of camera do you use on family days out/holidays?

Do you just use your phone or do you have something like a go pro or dedicated video/camera etc? Can anyone recommend one?

[Tommika]

If my intent is photographing then I take out my ‘proper’ DSLR camera
Otherwise it’s my phone in my pocket

Assuming you are going out for the ‘experience’ of the day out, then are taking photos and video to look back then a reasonable modern smartphone camera will give all your photo & video needs.
If it’s something more ‘special’ to be documented then perhaps a dedicated camera - but there’s a balance where you can ‘lose the moment’ With the camera being a barrier from you experiencing it


GoPros etc are great for what they are intended for, and you can save a lot of money by using a generic action camera rather than a branded GoPro.
But they distort the footage as they have fisheye lenses which are designed to capture everything in front and virtually to the side of the camera.
If using one then plant it on a tripod, strapped to a tree etc or worn whilst participating. Leave it running

I have a Nikon DSLR for ‘proper’ photography and an iPhone 12 Pro. The camera and its mix of lenses are great, but unless you have a twenty year old phone any smart phone can give you great memories, the only barrier to video on them is how much space you have for the recording

[Tommika]

@Doughnuts68
What to you want to photograph / film?
And what do you want to do with the results?

The best camera in the world is the one that you have with you, if you want to capture moments to document them then the best camera is the one that fits in your pocket and is always with you - that’s likely to be your phone

If your going canoeing then the best one is going to be an action camera mounted on you, the family or fixed to the canoe. In a waterproof case and with a safety tether

[Doughnuts68]

Tommika- Thankyou for your long reply:

I want to capture experiences and be able to look back in them on the tv.

Would you say a phone is good for video footage to be able to do that of special days out ‘experiences’ or would a dedicated video camera be a huge difference?

Would phone video footage be just as good to look back on the tv?

[BertieBotts]

Camera quality is something I look at when I upgrade my phone for this reason.

Most modern smartphones can take HD video now which is more than good enough for home video, but do check whether it compresses and what the framerate is like and sound quality. You can often find this on reviews especially for popular models. Stabilisation and optical zoom are other good things to check.

I have a Google Pixel 4a which I'm really happy with the video quality. My last phone was Sony Compact XZ1 which the photos were nice but video overly compressed which was no good.

[Doughnuts68]

Bertie-what does compressed mean?

[Doughnuts68]

Bump

[SoniaFouler]

Old school. Disposable, so I’m not posing and checking the photos and look forward to seeing them when it’s all done. I don’t take my phone on holiday nor any proper cameras

[BertieBotts]

You can compress image/video files so that they take up less disc space, however this will reduce the quality (make it look "crunchy") so it's not something you want if you want to view it on a big screen.

[Tommika]

Phone footage will be good enough for watching back on TV.
(Assuming it’s a modern-ish phone capable of a high definition video, and your TV isn’t the size of an entire room)

4K video is generally what you will want to look for, though my more technologically sound mates would call that rubbish quality

@BertieBotts highlighted the key issue with digital video that as the quality being captured gets higher the file sizes become enormous so some form of compression or other short cuts are needed.
With compression if you compare very old bitmap BMP image files to JPEGs, in BMP every pixel is recorded. So if you have a black picture on 640x480 pixels then your image consists of 30,720 pixels in total stating :
black, black , black etc
Compress that into a JPEG and the file could say:
‘black’, repeat = 30,719

If you have a photo of a black wall with a white cat then there will be a lot of black pixels in a row, some white, lots of black, some white etc
A BMP is the same size no matter what the image
A JPEG is somewhere lower than that. A simple image has a pattern that can be easily compressed to a small size, a complex image is somewhere in the middle

In old school film you would have a series of still photos with x number of photos/frames per second
In digital video you will have the first image, then instead of a new image per frame the file format only saves the changes.
You can sometimes catch out digital video - play a video on screen and it looks good frame by frame, but if you skip 30 seconds then it can’t just display the frame at the 30 second point but has to work out the difference - sometimes you see that you’ve caught it out because the character has walked outside and is on grass, but for a moment you still see a frozen doorway

[Tommika]

What phone do you have?
I’m going to first say to use your phone to video parts of the day as well as photos

But if it’s ‘action’ then it’s worthwhile getting a clone action camera.
These are often tiny so will easily wobble. Add a mini tripod or handle.
If the ‘action’ is a long way away then an action camera will appear to show a tiny object in the distance due to the fisheye lens effect

[Kinsters]

I use my phone but DH has previously used a go-pro to really good effect. It's more effort than a phone though so he's only done it for scuba diving holidays and one "big" holiday that we went on a few years ago. He took lots of short videos and then got Google photos to splice them together and it did a really good job.

[Kinsters]

I also should say that it's not easy to do. I had a go at doing some videos with the go pro and found it really hard to keep the camera stable enough/line the shot up properly. I know I'm bad at stuff like that though so it wasn't a surprise that my videos came out a lot shakier than DH's and very poorly framed!