In the early days of the World Wide Web (ie, mid 1990s into the 2000s), I took photos to share because there were so few pictures on the web. Back then, most folks didn’t even know the term “digital camera.” It was rare for me to see anyone else walking around Disneyland using one. Today, almost everyone carries a 4K camcorder and high-megapixel digital camera with them at all times — their phone.
Yet, I still take photos and share them, but today it is mostly for preservation. I frequently find myself consulting my galleries to see what used to be where. “Did they really cut a new hole in the sidewalk to add this tree? Wow, it looks like they did.”
My recent visit to Lost Island Theme Park in Waterloo Iowa was the first time I have not taken my digital camera with me to a theme park since I got my first one in 1996. The few photos I took were done with my phone. The only time I previously did this was not by choice — I was visiting an attraction that did not allow digital cameras 😉 but was fine with cell phones. (More likely, still not fine with phones, but they know if they banned those they will lose customers…)
I also prefer using a digital camera out of politeness to guests around me. When we are in a dark area (such as a theater or indoor attraction), folks using their phones to take pictures/videos light up the area with their screens. I specifically get digital cameras that have an eyepiece/viewfinder so I can take pictures without emitting extra light from a screen. Folks who visit big parks like Disney or Universal will no doubt know what I am talking about when you have literally dozens of phone screens in front of you all lit up as you are trying to watch something in a darkened theater.
Is VR better for preservation?
Most folks rightfully think that virtual reality is only for viewing in a VR helmet. While this is true for that kind of VR, taking “VR photos” is really just taking a 360 degree image that lets you point the viewfinder later in any direction you choose. Unfortunately, the quality of these cameras is …very poor… compared to even a cheap cellphone. (Techies can read this blog post from another one of my sites for an explanation.)
Lately, I have been doing more VR recording using cheap consumer cameras such as the Insta360 X5 or DJI Osmo 360. While these cameras can take “normal” photos, they are nowhere as good as what I can take with my phone or digital camera. They also have no viewfinder so the screen has to be used when taking a phone (or a phone screen, linked to the camera) causing the battery life is much worse than a decent digital camera.
I take 360 degree photos to preserve the location. For example, using my phone I took this photo of the opening show at Lost Island:
I was pretty far away, so I used my phone’s zoom. The subject of the photo is the park’s characters. They represent the realms of the park (Fire, Earth, Water and Air). This photo is fine, but does not tell the full story like a VR photo can.
Here is a different photo, taken further back using the Insta360 X5 in photo mode.
Click that and you can look around and find the characters in the distance. You can also see the crowd level during this performance.
And as a moment in time, we now can see what early morning crowd levels were on a Saturday in early June in 2026. As the park’s popularity grows, there may be a day when hundreds of people are watching this show, but a close up of the characters will look the same and not reflect that.
But people hate effort…
The problem with 360 photos is the extra effort it takes to view them. While you can view them on a web page (if it has a special plug in such as the one above) or Facebook, you would need a special app installed to view it on your phone or on your computer. If I just send you this image, you probably wouldn’t care for how it looks:
Everything is all warped and wobbly due to this being a combination of two opposite-facing 180 degree fisheye lenses stitched together in this weird panorama.
Also, we tend to be a bit lazy. When you take a photo and show it to me, you did all the work composing that image to capture what you wanted me to see. If you show me a 360 photo, what were you taking a picture of? “Everything” is the answer. But why would I care? What would I want to look at in your photo of “everything”? Now I have to do work and scroll around and see if I can figure out what might be interesting in it.
Even if 360 photos eventually get supported natively on iPhones and Androids without requiring downloading a special viewer app, I am doubtful they would catch on. People hate effort.
But VR better for preservation…
Hopefully this silly demonstration makes the point that capturing a location in VR is a much better way to preserve all the details. Sure, someone can take a photo of the Disneyland castle…
…but unless they took time to take other photos of areas around it, such as gardens, walkways and such…
…you really have no way to understand what the area was like. And that’s just fine — you see a picture, you either like it or dislike it or don’t care about it at all — and “it is what it is.”
Back to 1996
In 1996, my first digital camera has such limited memory I could only take 16 “high resolution” (i.e., 640×480) images before it was full. Instead, I would shoot in a much lower 320×240 resolution to capture more photos. Back then, that was still half the size of a PC screen with a VGA monitor.
In 2026, those 1996 photos and even the “high resolution” photos that camera took are the size of a thumbnail on a modern display 😉 They are even too tiny for my text watermark to fit on them when I share them on this blog:
Back to 2026
While modern cameras can take higher resolution photos, and have enough memory to take thousands of them in a day instead of dozens … you’d still not capture everything unless you were really trying. For example, in 1997 I created a “virtual tour of Disneyland Main Street”. You can still find it on my ancient site:
https://www.disneyfans.com/dlmstour/index.htm
I walked around Main Street and stopped at different locations and took a photo facing in each direction.
In 1997, this was a ludicrous experiment – spending that much time walking to all those locations and taking four photos. And cameras were not fast back then, so you had to wait a bit between each photo while it saved.
Pity the resolution I had to use was so small (320×240) as this may be the most complete tour of Main Street from that era you will find online in 2026.
Basically, I have been hoping for a way to preserve places since I had my original digital camera.
In conclusion…
Technology has chained, and while I still prefer using my digital camera instead of my phone or VR camera, I expect to slowly start taking more and more VR photos for preservation.
Until that time, you can check out my galleries with over 250,000 digital photos, dating back to 1996.