Binoculars vs Smartphone Camera

You will see more with your binoculars than with your phone's camera. I was amazed at what I could enjoy with the binoculars that I could not see with the camera. Well worth the view ounces in your carry-on luggage. I won't leave them behind again.

Yes, I agree with Becky on the binoculars. I’ve taken my small 8 X 25’s which are small enough to fit in my pocket or purse and can see lots of detail in churches, museums, etc. In no way can I see that detail with my iPhone6 zoomed as much as it will go.

I had previously taken my birding binoculars which are 10 X 50 and much bigger and heavier. They were too much trouble to carry around so I switched back to the lower power ones.

I use the zoom lens on my DSLR. It works well so I don't need binoculars. The problem with zooming on a smartphone is that the image becomes quite "shaky" if it's zoomed in to any degree.

Binoculars have much better zooming capability than any smartphone. I have some light ones as well, they don't need to be heavy. A telephoto/zoom lens on a DSLR is a good substitute, but not a smartphone.

If you live near an REI or a Sheel's or a Cabela's, check out the selection of tiny binoculars or monoculars. The optics are amazing and some are quite light. I prefer binoculars..

Only place I can think of that you would not be allowed to look through your smart phone is the Sistine Chapel inside the Vatican Museums. Rest of the complex should be fine, just that one chapel is an issue.
In there you might get a talking to if you pull out binoculars as well cause they might not realize what they are at first but should be ok once the guards realize.

That said as mentioned above zooming on with a smart will definitely not be the same as looking through binoculars. You would need a dedicated camera with a zoom lens to get the similar look as binoculars can achieve.
Especially indoors (where light is usually less than ideal) the digital smart phone image will suffer and not be clear when zoomed in.

I always take my little Nikon Binoculars. I'm old school. I want to see directly at what I'm looking at. This feels "real" to me. Seeing something through a digital device seems less "real" to me since the image is being re-constructed and filtered. My wife and i saw something very strange in Paris. The Eiffel Tower has a display of lights every night just after sunset. We were at the top of the Arc de Triomphe, and out of 50 or so people, we were the few ones watching the display through our own eyes. Nearly everyone else was watching "through" some sort of device, Ipad, Smart Phone.. etc. My immediate impression was that this was weird. I've seen this in many other places, such as the sun rise on Haleakala in Maui. Did these people, "see" these events? :)

Francis, I am with you. While on a safari, I took lots of photos, but after a while, put the camera down and just looked (and felt). It is those images that are now imprinted on my mind's eye that I remember most. No tool can capture the 180 view of the Serengeti skies and these are exceptional.
That being said, I have to appreciate that every generation does things differently. I find binoculars showed mosaic ceiling details more clearly than a camera or Smartphone, but I think people should use the tool they are more comfortable with to get the result they want.

The zoom in phone cameras is not a real optical zoom, so it doesn't actually make the image more detailed, just larger.

Thanks everyone, some thoughtful replies. Consensus seems to be that binocs are useful so I selected a small compact pair to take.