The Pixel 8A and the camera you take with you

Sometimes you travel thousands of miles from home to see something incredible. And every once in a while, something shows up right in your backyard.

That’s what happened on Friday. “What is the aurora forecast for tonight?” I asked a friend who follows these things. “Amazing,” he said. He wasn’t lying. At 9:30 p.m., my husband and I went out to the backyard to check the sky—nothing but hazy light pollution on the northern horizon. But just an hour later, the sky erupted.

I didn’t think twice about which camera to use to photograph the event, as I already had my SIM card in the Pixel 8A – it had arrived a few days ago, after its announcement. I gave my husband the Pixel 8 Pro; he left his iPhone XR without night mode at home. The wavy lights were visible even to the naked eye, but the sky came alive with greens and purples in our photos. This put to shame the thin bubble we saw on our flight to Reykjavik, Iceland the year before.

We had everything on our side that cold night in Iceland. The sky was clear; our bay tour boat left the city lights far behind us. I had the excellent Xiaomi 13 Pro in hand ready to photograph it — but there was nothing to see.

Heaven just wasn’t talking. The ship’s crew distributed plastic cups of aquavit as consolation. We did our best, we thought, and at least we saw that light from the plane. Then, a little over a year later, improbably, we saw the light show of our lives right in our backyard. Life is fun.

The next day was unusually sunny and warm, and I made a last-minute decision to take my two-year-old son to the best sandy beach in West Seattle. It was the kind of day that reminds you why you suffer months of darkness and drizzle to live here; from our little stretch of man-made sandy shore, we had a view of the snow-capped Olympic Mountains and downtown Seattle. A small fleet of sailing ships approached from the north. We went down to low tide and I saw my son put his bare feet in the salt water for the first time.

The problem with core memories is that sometimes you just trip over them. Sometimes you’re just trying to have a perfectly normal morning by the water or a night at home eating ice cream and playing Deviland boom – you’re face to face with a once-in-a-lifetime moment.

I tend to overlook phone cameras considering they are all good enough. “The best camera is the one you have with you”, etc. And this is true for 90% of the things we take photos of in everyday life. But in those pivotal memory moments, having a camera that can do the scene justice really matters.

The Pixel 8A was the camera I took with me this weekend; It’s far from the most expensive phone I have in my hands, but it delivered. Not every budget phone can take a good portrait mode photo of a kid running in the waves and having a blast. Not every budget phone can take a decent photo of the night sky. I have more testing to do with the Pixel 8A and a full review is underway. In the meantime, I’m grateful to have a camera that can keep up.

Photography by Allison Johnson/The Verge