60 Foot Hose

Today I returned to Texas from visiting family in Virginia.

I saw this trailer while I was sitting in my plane, and it caught my attention. I mean, who wouldn’t be interested in a 60 foot hose?

As we were leaving our gate, I began evaluating my time in Virginia. A bit of introspection. Thinking about the week with my dad.

I was thinking about growing older. Trying to put myself in my dad’s place.

Also thinking how good it will be to get home – we all know there’s no place like home.

I was happy I could have a white chocolate mocha before I left! And I felt fortunate that my gate was right next to a coffee shop.

The other reason for this post was to test the camera on the Samsung Galaxy S10+. I’m not trying to trivialize my thoughts about my dad and aging… but I always include photos, so there’s another story here. They’ve incorporated 3 separate lenses on the back camera, one for wide angle, one standard, and one telephoto – so you have 3 distinct focal lengths without using digital zoom. It goes without saying that this is technically better than relying solely on digital zoom – for 2 distinct reasons. First, you preserve your megapixels as opposed to decreasing resolution when you use digital zoom. Second, and maybe more importantly (maybe not) by using distinct focal lengths, you gain the advantage that each focal lengh provides a separate angle of view. Using only digital zoom magnifies the image, but maintains the same angle of view.

I especially like the wide angle lens. You can see just how wide it gets in this photo of my dad at the National Museum of the Marine Corps.

All in all, I’m happy with 3 separate focal lengths. It provides a couple benefits that you lose using only digital zoom, like on my previous cell phone camera.

So, if you’re thinking about getting a new phone, and you want to preserve some of the artistic elements you gain from using multiple lenses, maybe you should consider a cell phone that has more than one lens – several new phones have added this feature.