Towards using a smart camera: day one

First shot with a smart camera: a graffiti wall in Capalaba, Queensland, Australia

I had waited for four months, I could wait no more: through some fluke of distribution, a large retail store in the area scored one of the first Samsung Galaxy Cameras to be made available in Australia.
After a few hours with it I was so pleased that paid my $599 for it.
Why was I so excited?  Look at the photo; it was a quick shot of a shadowed shop wall using one of the many easy to use presets. No cropping, no image manipulation. It is what I have been looking for in a camera: simple, fast unobtrusive and capable of capturing the kinds of images I want to illustrate my writing.

Ashi Pentax: lightweight 35mm c. 1960

Some history

I was forced to take up photography. It was because my newspaper was cheap: it didn't want to pay for a pro photographer to do the photos to illustrate my stories.  Instead the General Manager bought one of them new-fangled 35mm SLRs for staff use. I had to return the Ashi Pentax to the newspaper's safe every night along with the spare role of film I was issued. The pro store up the road still got to develop my shots.
Later, in the Australian Army's Public Relations branch, I was relieved of the duty of taking photos and as I scribbled my notes observed how the real professionals wielded SLRs loaded with the exciting new 400 ASA monochrome film to bring us all the Vietnam conflict in searing images. These war photographers were far more eloquent than anything I could write.

Minolta: tough but heavy and too obvious.

Convinced, I bought my own SLR: a  Minolta SR-2. Rugged  but decidedly heavy, hard to hide and took far too much time to bring to bear when you are trying to capture those special moments that tell a story.
 I kept trying over the years with a succession of SLRs that evolved into DSLRs. Not with great success.
Then I was shocked by American pro photographer Chase Jarvis in his photo essay,  The Best Camera that you have is the one that's with you . The camera was getting in the way of my story. He took brilliant shots with nothing more than an early iPhone, getting around the limitations of the square format, poor definition and dynamic range with sensitivity for the tool at hand and creativity.

A startling Cartier-Bresson image
taken with his famous  LEICA

Then I looked again at the life works of Cartier Bresson. Cartier Bresson is still the master of street photography--and he did just so much of his great work on a small, unobtrusive LEICA he carried in his pocket. The trick is to be invisible to your subjects so they don't play for the camera.  For sports photography, that is easy but to capture the quick of life, it is much harder.

Big battery blister on my S2 gives sufficient
life for a day's shooting, navigation and
emailing

Consequently, at the beginning of this year, I made the decision not replace my worn out Pentax DSLR with its beautiful Tamron 18-200mm zoom lens to travel with a smartphone. The best available at the time was the Samsung Galaxy S2.
It was the right move, I took nearly 3000 photos in four months and, every night was able to review what I had to match with my writing. Many of the photos were note taking rather than story telling, there to remind me of the text on signs, people and places visited. Thus my writing improved along with my photography.
But as my expertise grew, so did my frustration with the limitations of using a single device for everything. For example, you can't record a public speech and take photos at the same time. The killer was that, like most multi-use tools, the performance of some functions can be mediocre.  On the S2's camera, I began to notice a subtle pink spot at the centre of each snap. At first, I just worked around the difficulties with post-production fixes on my home computer but finally I cracked.

The Smart Camera

Sadly, while coming with a thoughtful camera app
that works on startup, the camera has annoying
number of junk apps baked in.

Cue the Galaxy Smart Camera with its 16MP, Optical 21x, 23mm Wide Zoom lens.
Samsung took a moderately good compact camera (Samsung WB850F) ripped off the complicated array of buttons and dials and layered onto the back the touch screen and guts of arguably one of the best smart phones available the Galaxy S3.  If you want to read a proper description  of this remarkable package see Digital Photography Review
The only bit Samsung left out from the S3 was the ability to do voice phonecalls--not a high priority when you already have a smartphone on you. My experience of trying to use a smartphone is one of horrific battery drain--and with only a tiny 1,650mAh battery you just don't need that pain. The trick is, as I quickly found out, to limit it to its proper function--a good camera with excellent communication and reasonable editing.
Then there is the weight and size.  The specs say 300gm which is over twice that of the S3.  And you will need to carry a spare battery. Still that is much less than even the lightest of the DSLRs currently on offer and it is compact enough to be worn on a belt.
In a rather ironic twists,  the ergonomics are great for me because I am a left hander. The camera grip, zoom and photo button are on the right and easy to use but my dominant hand is free to use the screen better than the majority of people.  Very much the same as a table setting: never did really understand why the fork, the most used implement is on the left but it suits me perfectly.
But it is in the comms that this phone shines.  More on that later as I work towards what is the best configuration for my purposes.