It was very late and very cold. Most of the snow has completely cleared off the roads around Leavenworth. There’s still plenty piled up where it’d been pushed aside this past weekend. I needed some camera therapy.

So I went out at the tail end of the “golden hour” with my Olympus E-M5 and my Samsung Galaxy S4 with VSCO Cam and into the old part of Leavenworth near the Missouri River.

After a little less than 45 minutes of photography (it’d gotten quite dark and I was slipping on icy spots) I headed to a local eatery to at least look at my Samsung images. I manged to weed out all but five, and ran those through VSCO Cam. When I got back to my hotel room I discovered that three of the five images were rotated right 90 degrees, and when I moved them off the camera to my notebook, they looked like crap, far worse than last night’s collection. They look great on the cell phone’s screen. I think I’ve just about had it with smartphone photography using Android and Samsung. I’ve made the comment before about moving to the Apple iPhone because of the iPhone’s superior camera. I believe I’m truly ready. I don’t know if I’ll load VSCO Cam on an iPhone. It might be great for the iPhone, but it’s not so great on Android and the Samsung Galaxy S4.

These images were made with my trusty Olympus E-M5 and the Panasonic Leica 25mm f/1.4. They were then post processed in Nik ‘s Analog Efex Pro Vintage Camera 2 (with some minor tweaks). I got the feel out of the E-M5 and Nik that I couldn’t out of the Samsung and VSCO Cam. For me the lesson’s pretty clear: I’d rather let the moment pass if all I have is my Samsung. From now on I’ll always have the E-M5 and one prime with a charged battery and plenty of space on an SDHC card.