Travel Blogger Conundrum – Smartphone versus DSLR

If you get the balance right between your travels and having your travels generate you money instead of it flowing one way (out of your bank account), travel blogging can make for one of the most rewarding self-created careers in existence. Sure, a lot of travel bloggers are paid what is somewhat of salary to travel and blog about their travels, but such “jobs” don’t just fall into one’s lap and you’d be hard-pressed to find a job vacancy which specifically advertises for a “travel blogger”. This is essentially a career you have to carve out yourself, starting out rather slowly perhaps, but then building up the kind of momentum which has you generating your full-time income through your travel blog.

A picture does indeed speak a thousand words, so one of the most important tools at the disposal of a travel blogger is their smartphone camera or a dedicated camera such as a DSLR camera. While a smartphone perhaps comes with the convenience of doubling up as an overall personal organiser in addition to picture-taking capabilities, the internal battle within bloggers over whether to use their smartphones or invest in a DSLR (or mirrorless) camera rages on.

I mean smartphone cameras these days offer some good image quality and in many instances can’t even be told apart from dedicated cameras with regards to the quality of the images they produce, but the camera in a smartphone will never be as good as that of say a DSLR camera available from a specialist camera outlet like Clifton Cameras.

As a travel blogger, you likely do want to travel as lightly as possible and a DSLR camera perhaps comes with some bulkiness in addition to size, for all the features it offers over a smartphone camera, but then again if you’re serious about your travel blogging exploits there will undoubtedly come a time when you want to make sure everything you post is of the highest quality possible. That’s how you attract interest, from readers and from prospective advertisers, sponsors, etc. A DSLR camera will also give you much more battery life over your smartphone, even if you’re fully charged up and have dedicated your smartphone to the sole purpose of taking photos on a particular day.

Getting back to the image quality, although a smarphone will likely allow you to take bigger pictures (as a result of a larger megapixel count), a DSLR camera generally offers clearer pictures as a result of larger sensor and a quicker shutter speed. You’ll likely want to capture some images from sporting events or some outdoor adventures you’re involved in while out on your travels, so again, a DSLR camera just makes more sense in the long run.

A smartphone can be great if you’re just starting out as a travel blogger, but in all honesty, there will come a point along the way when the need to invest in a DSLR camera will become very clear. There’ll just be less editing with ImageReady, Photoshop and the likes because pictures come out as close to being ready as possible with a dedicated DSLR camera specifically built for the one job it does well.