Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I am pretty much a point and shooter but I have owned 3 other digital cameras (Fuji and Canon) before this one. My most recent one was Canon A75 so my review is pretty much based on my prior experience with these cameras.
Pros:
- Good image quality overall. Auto focus works well most of the time.
- the AF assist lamp and flash are powerful making low-light images come out very clear and, somehow, both the subject and background are balanced. I can see the background that is like 10 foot behind the subject clearly. Canon was very poor in this area. The Canon's AF lamp was very weak and almost useless. Canon's flash was also bad and pictures with flash often had subjects very bright but background dark.
- 5X and 8MP work as advertised.
Cons:
- battery life is not so good. I initially used a pair of old (but still good) 2300mAh Sony. It lasted only a few hours of testing. I probably took about 40-50 shots and 10 video clips. The video mode drained more battery and would report that the batteries were dead and shut down after a few seconds of taking video. The batteries however still had a lot of juice in it and I could still take a lot of pictures. I switched to a brand new pair of 2500mAh Energizers and the video mode then lasted a lot longer. So, make sure you get good batteries and bring spares with you.
- microphone strength is poor.
- when switched to video mode, it has a pre-zoom of 1.5X or so. This is bad because it forced me to have to step away from the subject (usually my children) and make the sound even weaker.
- performance is below average. Camera turns on quick enough. There is a noticeable shutter lag but still acceptable once you get used to it. However, flash charging time is very slow - about 3 secs or so.
- burst mode is useless because it's very slow. no difference than taking consecutive shots manually.
- ASR mode is slow. It takes 1 sec from press shutter to LCD black out to shutter sound play, then another 1.5 to 2 sec for post processing. I don't consider it useless as most other reviewers say. It works. I had some better pictures using ASR when the subjects are far and in shade or low light. In an indoor situation, it is better going with flash. Also, because of the shutter lag and slow shutter speed, ASR is not good with moving subjects (but I think Image Stabilizer in other manufacturers can't handle this either).
-The size is bigger than expected. "1 inch thick" is misleading. The slimest part of the camera is 1 inch! The side that you hold the camera is about 1.3 inch thick and beware that the len is thick. If you're concerned about the size, check out the 3D image at Samsung website first.
Goods and Bads for VIDEO mode:
- Now the MPEG4 feature, which is the feature that got me to buy this camera. Because of the compression advantage, I could use normal SD card (non-high-speed) to record highest resolution video fine. The video quality was somewhat a mixed feeling and I need to do furthur research on this. I used DivX Codec and Windows Media Player to play this, did not try the attached software. I didn't expect the media player to make a difference. The avi file was actually indicating it's Xvid but I wasn't able to use Xvid codec to play it for some reason. When played at its native resolution, the videos look OK. When enlarged to 2X or full screen, the compression artifects become very visible and the video look pretty bad i.e. moving subjects will have clear noise around the edges, low light videos will have noise all over. Sure I understand the fact that the quality is lower when I enlarge it. My point is the noise I get when I enlarge a M-JPEG video or a DivX movie is far less disturbing than what I get from this camera.
320x160 mode is useless as it's small and you always have to enlarge the video when viewed. 640x320 is acceptable when viewed at its native resolution.
- I tried to play some 640x320 files with my MPEG4-capable DVD player on my 21inch TV and the videos look decent enough. The fast moving subjects look a little jerky sometimes but not bad and the noise is much less noticeable.
- I found 20fps very useful for saving storage as the quality is good enough for slow moving subjects (most other cameras only support 15fps or 10fps for slow mode).
- Optical zoom works in video mode. Sound is mute only while the len is moving.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Samsung Digimax S850 8.1MP Digital Camera with 5x Advance Shake Reduction Optical Zoom (Black)
CL) SAMSUNG S850 BLACK DIGITAL CAM
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