If you're a fellow photographer, you're probably crying blasphemy already! In this post I go through what happened when I left my proper camera at home and took only a phone on a photography trip to Andalusia. The results genuinely surprised me. I've also added a bit about the places I visited, in case you're thinking of going.
Device Note: All the images in this post, unless I say otherwise, were taken on the Xiaomi 15 Ultra with its Photography Kit and a 67mm polarising filter. I'd bought the phone just a few weeks before, and to be clear, I'm not sponsored by Xiaomi or connected to them in any way. I'm just quite excited about it.
It's a problem a lot of photographers have when they travel. Do you take the full camera and put up with the weight for the best quality and control, or do you go lighter and make life easier? For years my Canon EOS R5 has come on every trip abroad with me. For a recent trip around Andalusia though, taking in Malaga, Cordoba and Seville from 25 to 30 March 2025, I decided to try something a bit different. The R5 stayed at home.
In its place I took my Xiaomi 15 Ultra, and nothing else. I didn't just take the phone on its own though. I added the optional Photography Kit that's made for it and, knowing how bright Spain gets, a 67mm circular polarising filter. What I wanted to find out was fairly simple: could a high-end phone actually be my main camera for a busy trip, and give me photos good enough for my social media and website?
The Rationale: Convenience Meets Capability?
Leaving the R5 behind wasn't an easy decision, because I know exactly what it can do. Travel photography and actually enjoying the trip don't always go together, though. I like to travel light, usually with just a backpack, and camera gear eats into that fast. Walking round busy streets or sitting in a cafe also feels different when you've got several thousand pounds of kit on you. And then there's the simple fact that your phone is always with you anyway.
I was also genuinely curious about how far phone cameras have come. Could the Xiaomi 15 Ultra really get close to a proper camera on image quality? This trip was going to be a real test, because I'd only had the phone for a few weeks.
Some of my confidence came from the hardware. Phones like the 15 Ultra now have big sensors (a 1-inch type on the main camera) and several lenses with real optical zoom, rather than just cropping in digitally. On paper it looked very capable. My main worry was the software, and whether heavy processing would make everything look unnatural, which is something I work hard to avoid in my own editing.
The Photography Kit and Filter
Honestly, I don't think this test would have worked without the Photography Kit. It's a grip that slides onto the phone and makes it feel a lot more like a proper camera in your hand. It gives you real buttons too: a two-stage shutter button (which is really satisfying to use), a zoom lever, and a dial you can set to whatever you like. I put exposure compensation on mine straight away, because I use it constantly. There's a video record button as well. The bit that mattered most for me, though, was the 67mm filter adapter ring that comes with it.
That ring means you can use normal camera filters, and in Andalusia's sunshine a good circular polariser (CPL) was a must. A polariser cuts down reflections on water and glass, darkens blue skies so they don't blow out, and gives you richer colour, all in camera rather than in editing afterwards. The grip also has its own battery that tops up the phone's, which was reassuring on long days out. The phone charges really quickly too, but to be fair the battery held up well enough that I barely needed to.
Andalusia: A Real-World Test
Malaga, Cordoba and Seville threw up a great mix of things to photograph, nearly all of it under bright Andalusian sunshine.
Malaga
Malaga tested the phone straight away, because there's so much contrast there. The Alcazaba has bright sunlit walls right next to really deep shadows in the archways, and the busy streets meant I had to compose quickly. The city was bigger and livelier than I'd expected. I'd sort of pictured something like Alicante, but there's a lot more to see, a lot more history, and a surprisingly good nightlife. The polariser earned its place from day one, especially on the view across the bullring towards the sea.
The night shots came out cleaner and more detailed than I expected, especially when I shot RAW (DNG) in Pro mode, but more on that later. Right now I want to give a shout out to Chester and Punk, a really atmospheric bar with properly good cocktails in great glassware and a soundtrack of pop punk and emo. I knew every single track, which doesn't happen often! The best thing I ate in Malaga was fresh octopus at Romancero Restaurante, which makes sense being right on the coast.
Cordoba
I got the train to Cordoba, which only took about 45 minutes from Malaga and was comfortable and fairly cheap. The Mezquita-Cathedral and the Roman Bridge are both huge, and you really feel the history standing in front of them. Photographing the bridge in the warm evening light was one of my favourite moments of the trip, and the phone picked up the texture of the old stonework really well. I think I used one of the optical zooms for the bridge shot (probably the 3x or the 4.3x), which compressed the perspective and framed the Mezquita nicely behind it.
The Mezquita itself was fascinating, with rows and rows of archways that repeat through the whole interior. It was really crowded when I went (and to be honest I'm not as moved by religious sites as some people are), but the outer courtyard and its architecture really stayed with me. The bell tower has great views across the city, which helped me make sense of the old walled areas I'd been wandering round. I loved walking through the Jewish Quarter, with lots of small courtyard gardens people clearly take pride in and the odd bit of flamenco drifting out of bars and restaurants, even if the tour groups did spoil the atmosphere a bit now and then.
There's a story behind one of my favourite shots of the Mezquita-Cathedral, framed through some golden-lit leaves (see below). I went back the next day hoping to get the same shot in different light, and the bush I'd used to frame it had gone completely. It had apparently only been put there temporarily. It's a good reminder that some shots really are one-offs that nobody else will ever be able to take again.
Seville
Another easy train ride, 55 minutes this time from Cordoba, took me to Seville, my last stop, which was busy and colourful. I was surprised how crowded it was for March. Tickets for the Alcazar and the Cathedral were sold out for days ahead, which I hadn't expected at all in what I'd assumed would be a quieter time of year.
Plaza de España more than made up for it though. It's so big that it never felt crowded, even with all the tourists, and there's almost too much to photograph. The polarising filter earned its keep again here, cutting the reflections on the canal and bringing out the blue tiles and the sky. The grounds around it are lovely too, with some quieter spots away from the crowds. I mostly used the main 1x lens and the optical zooms rather than the ultra-wide, because they held more detail and let me build shots around things in the foreground, like the plaza's ornate railings.
The walks along the river were nicer than I expected, and you can tell the city has put money into making those areas pleasant to spend time in. The Metropol Parasol ("Las Setas") was a real change of scene, and strangely a bit less crowded, especially in the evening. I'd booked to be up on it for sunset, and a shot from that golden hour, looking up through the structure with leaves framing it, is still one of my favourites from the whole trip. When I went back after dark I rested the phone on something to keep it steady, and it coped really well with the curves and the coloured lights, and even got the Giralda in the distance reasonably sharp. The rooftop bars were great for views too, including the sunset over the city and some closer shots of the Giralda.
The polarising filter was on the phone for almost the whole trip in daylight. Inside, for things like the stained glass in Malaga Cathedral or dark bars, the phone did a good job. Very low light isn't as good as bright conditions, obviously, and you can see the noise reduction if you look closely, but with a steady hand (or resting the phone on something) the results were more than good enough for what I needed.
The User Experience: Freedom vs Familiarity
So how did it actually feel using the phone as my main camera compared to the R5? Mostly, really freeing. The Photography Kit's grip made it feel secure and like a proper camera, nothing like holding a thin phone awkwardly. I noticed the drop in weight and bulk straight away and loved it. It was a real relief not having a camera bag on my shoulder or worrying about my kit, especially somewhere like the beach, where I'd normally be nervous about putting expensive gear down on the sand.
The screen surprised me. Even in direct sunlight it was bright and clear enough that I hardly missed the R5's viewfinder. Having a real shutter button and the exposure dial right there made shooting a lot quicker than poking at a touchscreen. It still isn't the same as years of muscle memory on the R5 though. On the camera I can change aperture, shutter speed and ISO almost at once without thinking about it, whereas on the phone I had to think about each change and do them one at a time.
The biggest win, though, was being able to shoot whenever something happened. Knowing I had a really good camera in my pocket at all times meant I never missed anything because the camera was back at the hotel. Most days I'd walk round the city for hours, head back to where I was staying in the early evening, then go out again for dinner and drinks, and the whole time I had my main camera on me, rather than deciding whether it was worth carrying the R5. The workflow was really quick too. I shot 16-bit DNG RAW files in Pro mode, edited them properly in Lightroom Mobile on the phone itself, and could send them to friends and family straight away without transferring anything off a camera first.
People were also a lot less suspicious or self-conscious when I photographed them with a phone rather than a big camera. There were some funny moments where I was fairly sure my phone was getting better photos than the tourists struggling with DSLRs they hadn't quite got to grips with. At one point I gave some advice to a family taking graduation photos with the sunset right behind their daughter, explaining as a professional photographer that they'd get a much more flattering portrait if they changed the angle and zoomed in. I don't often do that, but it was clearly an important moment for her and I wanted it captured well. It's the same instinct behind the graduation shoots I run back home in Southampton: get the angle, light and lens right and an everyday snap becomes something worth framing.
Where MY CAMERA Still Excels
There were compromises, of course. The R5 is a professional camera for a reason, and these are the areas where I noticed the difference most:
Autofocus Performance: The Xiaomi's autofocus is very good for everyday shooting, but the R5's is faster, more decisive and much better at tracking things that move unpredictably. Street photography was the hardest thing without my proper camera. I could frame scenes fine, but catching quick movement was often tricky, and for anything fast the R5 wins easily.
Depth of Field Control: The 15 Ultra's lenses have fixed apertures, so you don't get the same control over depth of field you get from a range of apertures on a proper lens. Portrait mode can fake a shallow depth of field with software, but it doesn't have the same look or give you the same creative options as a fast lens on a full-frame camera.
Ultimate Image Detail and Flexibility: For the web and normal print sizes, the phone's images are genuinely excellent. The R5's bigger sensor just captures more though, so you can crop much harder, print really big, and pull back very dark shadows or bright highlights without it falling apart. I had previously attempted a similar experiment in Estonia with my Galaxy S23 Ultra, but found its zoom camera lacked the resolution I needed, and its sensor and RAW capabilities fell short of what the Xiaomi 15 Ultra now provides.
Ergonomic Efficiency: Even with the grip, the R5's controls and handling, after years of using it, are just faster and more instinctive, especially when I need to work quickly.
The Conclusion: A Compelling Alternative
So, the big question: could the Xiaomi 15 Ultra realistically replace my Canon R5 for travel photography? For this trip, which was mostly cities, lots of different subjects, good light, and photos mainly for online use, my answer is yes, and I'll probably do it again next time.
Put the phone's cameras together with the Photography Kit's grip and buttons and the polarising filter, and I ended up with a setup that kept giving me photos I'm genuinely proud of. For this kind of trip, having something light that was always in my pocket and ready to go mattered more to me than the extra quality the R5 has in certain situations.
It's genuinely changed how I think about what to pack. I can see the R5 staying at home for a lot of my personal trips from now on.
Where would I still want the R5? For street photography, really low light, or big detailed prints, a proper camera is still the better tool. It's also still the obvious choice for paid work, commercial shoots where the client is paying for the result and the reassurance of professional kit, proper lighting and a process that works. That's especially true for food and drink shoots, where controlling the light is the whole point. But for most travel photography, where you're grabbing whatever comes along, the phone was brilliant and a lot of fun to use.
Final Reflections
Who should think about a phone like this for travel photography? I think it's a great choice if you travel a lot, like to pack light and still care about image quality. Keen photographers who want RAW files and manual controls in something smaller would probably love it too. And if you mainly share your trips online, the quality is more than enough.
Phones like the Xiaomi 15 Ultra, with their bigger sensors, proper optical zooms, good RAW files and accessories like the Photography Kit, are a real step up from a normal smartphone, and they're clearly made for people who care about photography. For paid work though, where I need it to be reliable, fast and high resolution whatever the conditions, I'll still be reaching for a proper camera.
If you're commissioning a shoot rather than taking your own photos, this is exactly the line. For commercial photography in Southampton and Hampshire I always bring the full kit (Canon R5, prime lenses, lighting, modifiers) because the brief usually demands shots a phone genuinely can't do, whether that's controlled low-light interiors, big-print menus, or product shots that need to hold up at billboard scale. If you'd like a rough idea of cost before you ask for a quote, the pricing reference page lays out concrete ranges, and when you're ready you can tell me about the shoot.
It's an interesting time for photography. Part of me, with everything I've invested in traditional gear, feels a slight twinge seeing phones get this good, but mostly I'm excited about it. What you can do with the camera in your pocket now is pretty incredible. It made me think about my late father, Neville Stanikk, who was a keen photographer himself and was always interested in how phone cameras were coming along. I think he'd have been amazed at what they can do now, and especially that you can use a polarising filter on one, because he's the one who first taught me why they matter.
I guess the biggest thing I took away from this trip is that the best camera isn't always the biggest or most expensive one, it's the one you actually have with you when something happens. I see a lot of travellers lugging big cameras about and probably not using half of what they can do. A really good phone, used with a bit of thought, can do a lot more than people give it credit for, and it's a lot more freeing to carry. On this trip the Xiaomi 15 Ultra did a brilliant job.
