I spent a week in the mountains recently. I went hiking. I slept in a tent. I cooked food over a fire while surrounded by mosquitos. And I took a lot of photos.

I am a pretty prolific photographer already, but being surrounded by the natural beauty of the Canadian Rockies had me clicking the shutter hundreds of times per day.

I brought three cameras with me: I have an aging Canon dSLR with a couple nice lenses. I recently upgraded my GoPro sports camera. And, of course, I almost always carry an iPhone stuffed with photography apps.

The two dedicated cameras take great photos, each with strengths in their own domain of specialty. The dSLR takes rich images with a signature depth of field emerging from my choice of lens. The GoPro brings a kind of go-anywhere, camera-on-a-stick point of view that I can’t get from my other cameras.

And then there is the phone camera. It is reliably above average… sometimes almost better at taking photos than I am, if I’m being honest. If I’m struggling with getting a good shot with either of the others, I can just pull out the phone and get a decent pic.

This isn’t an iPhone endorsement.

This is a question? Who’s actually taking the photo? The two dedicated cameras are already a far step from classic exposing of film to light, the signal passing through a collection of sensors, chips and software before it turns into a file on my memory card.

Yet, with the proper “dumb” cameras, I still feel like I’m the one making choices: choosing settings, setting focus, and taking a photo. But on the phone, it is often less so: it often feels like I am letting something inside the phone decide what it sees …and then asking it to make an image out of that.

What’s the difference, you ask? It is a fuzzy line, though, isn’t it? Who—or what—is taking a photo when I point my phone at an interesting scene? Did I take that picture, or did an algorithm?