Capable of superb images, value for money, disappointing Point & Shoot quality
Pros:
Has potential for great sharp images, Cheap, Manual controls, Compact
Cons:
Battery life in movie mode, Major Focus problems, Colour accuracy, Feels a little cheap
The Bottom Line:
For the money, it offers some good features. It is let down by some of the practical usage issues though.
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
This camera has been my partner's camera for quite a few months now, and I used it full time while I was researching cameras to upgrade my own camera.
Overall, this camera left me feeling a little underwhelmed, not because it didn't do anything well, but because of it's potential that just hasn't been utilised.
Body & Design
Not bad - aesthetics and finish are good, but I couldn't help feeling the buttons on the back feel and sound like a $2 hand-held computer game from a cheap shop. The mode dial is OK, but the powerbutton really needs a hard press for a good second and half for it to start up. I've had to press it a few times to get it turn on occasionally. The zoom buttons feel cheap, I much prefer a sliding surround around the shutter button. It is a nice slim shape that fits in a pocket nicely, though the hand grip feels a little too thin to be comfortable for my hands.
Image quality
This was a surprising area - I take it this camera is the flagship in the 'S' series, being 8 megapixel. The image quality in auto mode when using flash and the average indoor shot is just plain bad. Noisy, and it constantly mis-focuses! It's bordering on being useless as a point and shoot camera as it never gets it right! At least 4 out of 10 images are blurry and signifantly over or under exposed. If you use a bit of trial and error with half depressing the shutter button, eventually it WILL focus correctly though.
If I shift over to manual mode, rest the camera on something steady, move the ISO down to 50 and do a bit of trial and error with the focus/exposure compensation it's capable of some truly excellent looking photos. Better than my Powershot A700. The detail and sharpness it is capable of is incredible and it seems as though the camera has reasonable dynamic range too. The colour accuracy isn't great, with everything developing a yellowish tinge - white is yellow, cream is light yellow and pink is almost a shade of light yellow also!! Red's are shifted to orange, but greens and blue's aren't too bad. It does make for a warm looking indoor photo though(which I'm assuming they did intentionally).
Outdoor shots aren't good because colour accuracy is again a problem. Detail and sharpness is great, but many shots in bright light are overexposed in areas of bright sunlight/sky, or the auto focus got it wrong!
It has a surprising amount of manual control, no aperture priority though.
Movie Mode
The 640x480 30fps mode works, but not well. The DivX compression is too high, though it makes for some very efficient movie file sizes. Images appear underexposed, muddy and have lots of artifacts. Compared with my Powershot A700 with identical resolution/fps it is nowhere near as good. However, the sound is very good though, much better than the A700.
Being able to use optical zoom while recording movies is great - however is cuts the sound out, obviously because the sound of the zoom lens isn't very pleasant.
In use
This camera is a little sluggish in shot to shot performance and bootup performance. When 'drag racing' with my A700, the Samsung has only just gotten ready to take its first shot by the time the Canon has taken its first shot and is ready for it's second! The menus is OK overall but difficult to find the manual settings, they are hidden away quite well.
Macro performance is hard to use just because the focusing system doesn't work well, it takes a lot of patience to get a well focussed shot.
Battery life
Battery life is OK, but not great. It appears to have a bug whereby when using movie mode the batteries run flat VERY quickly indeed. We killed some new Energizer Alkalines in matter of a few minutes when using the movie mode alone. Similar story with NimH rechargeables. An interesting point to note is the camera will notify you that the batteries are flat at a point when the batteries aren't actually flat - I can then insert them into my Canon and keep shooting for a quite a while!
Conclusion
Samsung could have done more with this camera I believe, by improving it's focus performance, flash and improving it's colour accuracy. It is capable of some detailed, well exposed images, but fails to come up with the goods in point and shoot usage.
