Late in September 2022, I traveled to the Trinity River / Downtown Dallas area to shoot some pictures. Normally, I take a backpack with one of my Nikon DLSR cameras and lenses. This day, I wanted to travel light, so I just took my Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra and my Leica D-Lux 7.
While I had only planned to shoot a few river and skyline shots from a distance, then leave, that did not happen. As often happens, I began walking and exploring instead. I hiked down the levee to the Trinity River bottoms trail and kept walking when I discovered the view of some landmarks and infrastructure was very much different and interesting than what we all usually from street and ground (or drone) level. It was captivating, and I kept walking further, shooting pictures with my smartphone, until it “crashed.” There was a message saying the camera had overheated, so it had to close. It was only a mild 91 degrees, which is not hot by Dallas standards, and I’d never had any film or digital SLR/DLSR or.any camera for that matter “shut down” due to the heat, ever in my decades of shooting, including many middle of summer 100+ degree days in TX. The camera did not come back on no matter what I did, and I could see many potential good pictures ahead on the trail.
Fortunately, I had my taken my small Leica D-Lux 7 along with me. It was working, but as with moast mirrorless cameras, it was eating battery power up as I continued to shoot and didn’t have an extra battery. In the end, I was able to capture most of the images I wanted between the two cameras that day. The picture in this post of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge taken from below at the river botttom level was taken with my Leica after my smartphone “shut down.”
I experimented with the choice of camera gear I took with me that day and learned a lesson with that experience. Fortunately, it was not a serious shoot, and had it been, I would’ve had my backup Nikon cameras and gear available.
I am sharing this experience as a caveat for those who set out with a smartphone “only” to capture important images. Keep a backup camera close.
