The Best Tool Is the One You Actually Use — My Experience With the DJI Osmo Pocket 3

This year I spent my holidays in Espinho, and a few days in Caminha. Beach, good lunches and dinners, walks along the seafront, ice cream. The kind of days that feel ordinary while they are happening and irreplaceable once they are gone.

Normally, all of this would exist only in memory, fading gradually over the years until what remains is an impression rather than anything specific. This year I did something different. I recorded it.

The tool I used to do that would, under normal circumstances, run directly against my philosophy. I am an advocate for analogue photography over digital, for process over convenience, for the friction that forces attention. A DJI Osmo Pocket 3 sits at the opposite end of that spectrum. It's compact, digital, electronically stabilised, requiring almost no decisions from the person holding it. It is, by design, as frictionless as a camera can be.

The honest reason I bought it is this: film and developing costs have made analogue photography genuinely expensive. Fifteen days of holidays, shot on film, would cost more than the camera itself. Faced with the choice between not recording anything or finding a tool that made recording practical, I chose the tool. It might be worth mentioning that this article is not sponsored.

The Osmo Pocket 3 stayed in my pocket throughout every day of those holidays, ready to come out the moment something was worth capturing. That is the detail that matters most. A larger camera moves between bag and hand, and when both hands are needed, it goes back into the bag, and somewhere in that cycle you forget you brought it and the moment passes. The Pocket 3 does not work that way. It is simply there, in my pocket, available before the thought of using it has fully formed. It became part of my everyday carry: phone, wallet, pen and notebook, keys, pocket knife, Osmo Pocket 3.

It also allowed me to record video, a medium I have always been curious about but never seriously invested in. The results in 4K at 60 frames per second are considerably better than anything my Android phone produces, and the phone has its own role that I prefer not to blur. I use it for calls, messages, and limited social media. Not for filling the camera roll with heavy files and draining the battery while filming. A dedicated tool for each purpose is a preference I have held for long enough and the Pocket 3 aligns with that philosophy.

With this camera I was able to capture a little of everything, precisely because of how effortless it is to use. I filmed parts of the trip itself, afternoons on the beach, walks along the seafront at sunset, late-night strolls through unfamiliar streets, and took photographs throughout it all. I recorded moments from the Viagem Medieval in Santa Maria da Feira, along with countless small scenes that, without this camera, would probably have survived only as fading memories, or as forgotten files buried in a phone until the day that phone eventually failed and took them with it.

What all of this has made me realise is that the best tool is not always the most sophisticated one, nor the one with the greatest number of options. More often, it is the one that is most available for the task you actually want to accomplish.

On these holidays, what I wanted was simple: to record video and take a few photographs. I could have bought a mirrorless camera with superior lenses, a larger sensor, and image quality that would probably produce more cinematic footage. But that would also have meant constantly thinking about manual settings, focus, stabilisation, lenses, and exposure. It would have required carrying a larger kit everywhere, and it would have meant explaining the entire process to my girlfriend whenever she wanted to use it herself, followed by the inevitable learning period that comes with any more advanced camera.

The Pocket 3 bypasses almost all of that. I still use manual settings, but in practice the only variables I regularly choose are shutter speed and ISO. Once those are set, they remain consistent, and I adjust exposure with simple magnetic ND filters that take seconds to attach. When my girlfriend wants to film or take a photo, I can simply hand her the camera and she presses the button. That is the entire explanation.

It is so simple that the friction disappears completely, and the act of recording genuinely beautiful footage becomes part of the relaxed atmosphere of the holiday itself. There is no exposure triangle to think about, no focus system demanding attention, no depth-of-field calculations, and none of the endless technical decisions that can easily turn filming a holiday into another form of work.

With the Pocket 3, the process is reduced to setting things up beforehand, pointing the camera, and pressing record. The simplicity of that workflow is not a limitation, it is the reason the camera succeeded. Holidays are supposed to feel light, spontaneous, and unhurried, and this is the first camera I have used that seems designed to preserve that feeling rather than interrupt it. The camera doesn't become a barrier, it becomes part of the action.

I still prefer analogue photography. I still believe that slower tools often produce deeper attention, and that convenience can sometimes come at the cost of presence. None of that has changed.

What has changed is that this year’s holidays exist in a way they would not have existed otherwise.

I can watch the Atlantic in Espinho at sunset. I can hear the noise of the Viagem Medieval in Santa Maria da Feira. I can see the small gestures, the walks after dinner, the moments that felt too ordinary to deserve a photograph and therefore are usually the first to disappear from memory.

Perhaps that is the real lesson of this camera. The contradiction is only apparent. The Osmo Pocket 3 did not replace film, nor did it replace the satisfaction of a carefully made photograph. It simply solved a different problem: how to preserve fleeting moments without turning the act of preservation into a burden.

In the end, the value of a tool is measured less by its specifications than by the memories it allows to survive.

And the moments from these holidays survived.

That is enough to justify both the purchase and the contradiction.

Products I use with DJI Osmo Pocket 3 (in case you're interested in trying it for yourself):

• DJI Osmo Pocket 3

• K&F Variable ND2-ND32+ND32-ND512

• K&F Black Mist Filter 1/4

• Smallrig Mini Tripod

• Utebit Transport Bag