Owning the Samsung Galaxy S4 has opened a slightly new photographic world for me. It is not that the camera will do anything in particular that my Canon SX50HS will not…but I find myself pulling it out a lot for the quick HDR (when I do not want to set up a tripod for the Canon…no tripod necessary on the phone), or certainly an occasional panorama, and certainly if I think there is any chance I will want to share the image before I get back where I can work with it on my laptop. PicSay Pro on Android is a very capable image editor…I like both the way it works and the results it produces…and it works with full resolution files. Then too, Google+’s Auto Backup is a formidable attraction. I don’t have to do a thing, and my images from the S4 are uploaded to my Google+ account. Once there, Auto Awesome does some interesting things. For instance, if I take a conventional sequence of exposures to use with an HDR program later, Auto Awesome recognizes them as such, and makes the HDR…again, without my intervention. And it does a pretty good job! Then too, I can I can instantly share my PicSay Pro edited image on Facebook, email them to friends and family, etc. etc. The Galaxy S4 is a social camera…and its instant and painless connection to the social side of my life is one of its main attractions.

So that lead me to take a look at “real” cameras…you know, with a real zoom lens, and other creative options…that might provide some of the same experience. The obvious choice would have been the Samsung Galaxy Camera, which is every thing my phone is (except a phone) and a pretty much a real camera at the same time. However it is 1) relatively expensive for a Point and Shoot, and 2) I suspect, due for an refresh (as in Galaxy Camera 2) before the end of the year. So I looked for cameras that would connect to my phone and transfer images painlessly so that I could do the editing and sharing almost instantly on the phone. I knew from past experience with Eyfi cards, that I wanted a solution that let me choose which images got transferred to the phone. The Eyfi cards and their like just dump everything you take onto your connected device. You can fill the memory on a phone or tablet really fast during a full day in the field with your camera. That narrowed it down to a few wifi equipped Panasonics and, of course, the Samsung Smart Camera line. The Samsungs were less expensive and had as good reviews, I am already familiar with how the camera apps in them work, and they got the best ratings on the ease of using them via wifi with a phone or for direct upload to cloud storage, Facebook, etc.

So this is among my first shots from the Samsung WB250, 14mp biCMOS sensor. 18x zoom starting at 24mm equivalent (the wide angle is a requirement for me). All kinds of shooting modes, including in-camera HDR that does not require a tripod, auto bracketing for real HDR (ditto on the tripod), a great Macro mode, waterfall mode, night scene, shot, smart-zoom (automatically reduces the pixel count to maintain quality over the 18x mark), etc. etc  I have only begun to explore. This image was taken in my yard, transferred wirelessly to my phone, edited in PicSay Pro, auto-backuped to Google+ Photos, and now shared here directly from Google+. It all works really quite well. It will not replace my Canon SX50HS for most of my work…but it is a great Social Camera, and goes well beyond what the camera in my S4 can do.

There is probably a Galaxy Camera in my future, when they get around to a refresh, but the WB250 seems to do exactly what I need for now!