Samsung isn’t a big name in digital cameras –
it’s still best known for electronics – but the
Digimax V4 heralds a new push by the
company to become one of the major players in the
digital photography market.
And the Digimax does look like it’s got everything
going for it: resolution, photographic options, size, build
quality, versatility and, above all, price.
More for your money
Samsung’s aiming the Digimax V4 at both beginners
and more ambitious photographers. Beginners can leave
the camera set to the ‘Easy’ auto-everything mode so
the camera sorts out the technicalities. More
experienced users can apply exposure compensation,
change the white balance, change the metering mode
(from multi-pattern to spot metering) and switch to
either aperture-priority auto-exposure, shutter-priority
or full manual mode. There’s an AEB (Auto-Exposure
Bracketing) option too for taking three shots at three
different exposure levels so you can choose the most
successful later.
In itself this dual appeal is nothing new. Even
advanced enthusiasts’ cameras like the Nikon CoolPix
5700 or Canon PowerShot G3, for example, have idiotproof
point-and-shoot modes. What’s important here,
though, is that the Digimax V4 offers all these advanced
features for such a low price – a price at which you’d
normally only expect to get a simple auto-only model.
The Samsung’s versatility extends to a movie mode,
admittedly with a limited resolution (288 x 208 pixels),
but with a good 24fps frame rate that prevents your
movies looking jerky. It can record sound at the same
time, and the built-in microphone can also be used to
add voice annotations to your still images.
All the controls available could leave you spending as
much time making alterations as actually taking
pictures. The Samsung gets round this with three
different My Set options that store up to nine different
settings including image size, quality and ISO ready for
re-use at any time.
This camera’s not finished yet, either. Samsung
boasts that the Digimax V4 can use no fewer than nine
different types of battery but in truth six of these are
variants on AAs (alkalines, NiCds, NiMh and so on).
You can also fit 3-volt CR-V3 lithium cells, dedicated
Samsung lithium-ion disposables and, if you go for
the optional Power Pack, a rechargable lithium-ion
battery and charging unit. This gives a life expectancy
of around 280 shots.
Daily use
All of which is pretty good for £350 all in. And if you’re
expecting compromises in build quality as a result,
you’re in for a surprise. The Digimax is compact and
solid-feeling, with a high-quality metal finish. This is a
camera that feels more expensive than it actually is.
The startup speed is pretty brisk at around three
seconds, and the focusing speed is on a par with rival
cameras, typically taking around a second to confirm
focus. The zooming isn’t quite so impressive, though.
It’s quick enough when travelling from one end of the
range to another, but as soon as that’s done that it
spends a moment refocusing.
The LCD panel is where digicam makers try to save
cash when they’re on a tight budget, but there’s little
sign of cost-cutting here. The 1.5-inch panel produces
crisp, bright, sharp images – maybe a fraction too bright
in broad daylight. Samsung reckons it auto-adjusts to
dimmer lighting, and it certainly performed well in
gloomier indoor lighting.
The optical viewfinder’s usable, though not quite
so impressive. It’s a reasonable size, but there’s lots
of barrel distortion around the edges.
If there is a chink in the Samsung’s armour, it’s
the control layout. The controls themselves feel
positive and well-engineered, but if you want to use
some of the camera’s more advanced features you
have to go through the menus to get to them. The
aperture-priority, shutter-priority and manual modes,
don’t have their own positions on the main mode
dial: instead, there’s a combined ‘A/S/M’ position
and you have to pick the one you want from the
menus. You’ll also need the menus to swap to spot
metering mode, set up auto-exposure bracketing,
change the white balance, change the quality
settings and more. You might be able to configure
your favourite settings using the My Set feature, but
the Digimax still comes across as a camera that
offers a whole host of tools but then puts them just
a little too far out of reach for everyday photography.
It was a bit disappointing, too, to find that the
Digimax is pretty slow at cycling through images in
playback mode, taking as long as four seconds to
render each shot fully on the LCD. It is quick if you
want to zoom in on shots, though, and pan around
them to check the details.
Image quality
If a few of the controls are all we’ve got to complain
about, then the Samsung’s going to come out of
this very well indeed. But most importantly – what
are the pictures like?
They are, on the whole, very good indeed.
Exposure accuracy and colour fidelity are excellent.
Outright sharpness isn’t the best we’ve seen from a
4-megapixel camera, but it’s not the worst either.
Maybe we’re spoiled by the razor sharp definition of
the PowerShot S50 this month, but the fact is, the 3-
megapixel Olympus Mju 300 is sharp enough to rival
the Digimax. Never mind, though, because the
Samsung’s results are smooth-toned and noise-free
and can surely stand a little sharpening in your
image-editor. Certainly for £350 you’re not going to
find a camera that produces better pictures than
these.
You don’t need us to tell you that the digital
camera market is competitive, constantly changing
and crowded with excellent cameras. It makes it
pretty hard to pick out any one of them and say
“this is the one to buy if you’ve got a fixed budget
or you’re looking for a specific set of photographic
options”. Compared to its many rivals, we wouldn’t
rate the Digimax V4 best for image quality, design
or features alone, but for £350 it gives you more of
all three than we think you’ll find anywhere else.
For now anyway.
Sunday, April 8, 2007
Samsung V50
The 5-megapixel Digimax V50 is entering
a pretty crowded marketplace, and on
the face of it there’s no single ‘killer
feature’ to help it stand out. Instead, its strength is
likely to be its combination of specifi cations and
price. It needs to offer a lot for the money.
Here’s the V50’s fi rst problem: £300 is pretty
good for a 5-megapixel camera with a full range
of PASM exposure modes and a 30fps VGA movie
mode, too. However, Samsung’s own V5 model
offers all of this and for around £40 less. The only
signifi cant difference between the V5 and the V50
appears to be the V50’s swivelling LCD display.
There are a couple of other interesting features
to pick out at this point. One is Samsung’s boast
that the V50 can run on nine different power
sources. In fact, it comes with a proprietary
lithium-ion cell (which is one of them), and unless
you run out of power unexpectedly, this is likely to
be all you’ll ever want to use.
If you do run out of power, though, you can
also slot in a lithium-ion CR-V3 cell or a pair of AA
cells (photo-lithium, NiMH, alkaline and so on –
the rest of the battery ‘types’ in other words). The
ability to slot in a couple of AAs could be a big
bonus if you forget to charge up the lithium-ion
cell properly before you go out.
The advantages of the V50’s dual memory card
slots – SD and Memory Stick – are harder to
fathom. Memory Sticks are the most expensive
card types of all, so you’re not likely to buy them
specifi cally for use in this camera. Memory Stick
compatibility might be an advantage if you own
other Sony equipment, but this feature still seems
more of a curiosity than a selling point.
The V50’s 640 x 480 pixel 30fps movie mode is
good, though, and a genuine alternative to a
digital camcorder for quick video snapshots.
The start-up time is reasonable at three
seconds, and the LCD display quality is very good.
The only complaint here is its slightly excessive
contrast – as we mention in the performance
panel, it might fool you into reshooting with
adjusted exposure settings simply because it
washes out a lot of highlight information that the
sensor records perfectly well. The swivelling
design helps with low-angle or waist-level shots,
though simple upward-hinged LCDs, like that on
the Minolta DiMAGE A2 or the old Olympus E20
are simpler for this kind of work.
The AF system’s a bit of a disappointment. It
can take up to a second to confi rm focus, even at
the wide-angle end of the zooming range. The
zoom action itself is a little noisy, but quick
enough. To activate the zoom, you press a rocker
switch on the back of the camera, and not the
rotating switch around the shutter release. That’s
the camera’s ‘jog dial’, and it does seem an
unnecessary complication.
In many of the modes, this jog dial doesn’t do
anything at all. In the Scene mode, for example,
you’d have thought it could be used to switch
between the nine different ‘scenes’ available. And
in the program AE mode, it could have been used
as a ‘program shift’ control to shift the balance of
shutter speed and aperture.
In shutter priority mode you do use the jog dial
to change the shutter speed, and it’s used to
change the aperture in aperture priority mode.
In manual mode, though, things get more
complicated. Here, both values are displayed
and you have to press the AEL button to switch
between the two for jog dial adjustments.
The V50 offers a lot of hands-on
photographic control – multiple metering
patterns, manual focus, PASM modes – but
then makes it just that little bit too fi ddly so
that you’re seldom likely to actually use this
stuff. On paper it looks good; in practice, it’s
another matter.
The Samsung does have an ‘S’ button, which
acts as a shortcut to some handy functions,
including EV compensation, exposure mode,
white balance and ISO. Nevertheless, the
control layout and design don’t do justice up to
what this camera is capable of. And that’s
actually quite a lot. Some cameras are packed
with features but then fail to deliver on image
quality – but the Samsung isn’t one of them. Its
image quality is well above average, and in a
number of different areas.
Detail rendition is one of them. There’s no
point paying through the nose for a big-name
5-megapixel model and expecting results
signifi cantly sharper than this, because it’s not
going to happen.
Image contrast and saturation are very
good, too. Many cameras produce fl at-looking
images the moment the sun goes in or they’re
presented with scenes that lack contrast, but
the Samsung’s images look punchy and bright,
even when the conditions aren’t. What’s more,
it achieves all this with commendably accurate
colour balance. The white balance control is
reasonably easy to get to on this camera, but
you’re not often likely to need it.
The only fl y in the ointment is a tendency
towards magenta fringing around bright
highlights. This is not chromatic aberration
caused by the lens – this is a different
phenomenon – but appears to be an electronic
CCD artefact common in digital sensors and
particularly in compact models. The Samsung
doesn’t suffer from it all the time, but when it
does you’ll know all about it.
Conclusions
Like many cameras in this price range, the
Digimax V50 is a mixed bag. The image quality
is good, especially for the money, but it’s in the
design and handling that it loses out to the
more prestigious marques.
With that in mind, some of the lesser
cameras in the range are perhaps more
attractive, principally because they’re
signifi cantly cheaper. The V5, for example, lacks
the swivelling LCD of the V50 but not much
else, while the original 4-megapixel V4 can
now be found for £230 or less.
a pretty crowded marketplace, and on
the face of it there’s no single ‘killer
feature’ to help it stand out. Instead, its strength is
likely to be its combination of specifi cations and
price. It needs to offer a lot for the money.
Here’s the V50’s fi rst problem: £300 is pretty
good for a 5-megapixel camera with a full range
of PASM exposure modes and a 30fps VGA movie
mode, too. However, Samsung’s own V5 model
offers all of this and for around £40 less. The only
signifi cant difference between the V5 and the V50
appears to be the V50’s swivelling LCD display.
There are a couple of other interesting features
to pick out at this point. One is Samsung’s boast
that the V50 can run on nine different power
sources. In fact, it comes with a proprietary
lithium-ion cell (which is one of them), and unless
you run out of power unexpectedly, this is likely to
be all you’ll ever want to use.
If you do run out of power, though, you can
also slot in a lithium-ion CR-V3 cell or a pair of AA
cells (photo-lithium, NiMH, alkaline and so on –
the rest of the battery ‘types’ in other words). The
ability to slot in a couple of AAs could be a big
bonus if you forget to charge up the lithium-ion
cell properly before you go out.
The advantages of the V50’s dual memory card
slots – SD and Memory Stick – are harder to
fathom. Memory Sticks are the most expensive
card types of all, so you’re not likely to buy them
specifi cally for use in this camera. Memory Stick
compatibility might be an advantage if you own
other Sony equipment, but this feature still seems
more of a curiosity than a selling point.
The V50’s 640 x 480 pixel 30fps movie mode is
good, though, and a genuine alternative to a
digital camcorder for quick video snapshots.
The start-up time is reasonable at three
seconds, and the LCD display quality is very good.
The only complaint here is its slightly excessive
contrast – as we mention in the performance
panel, it might fool you into reshooting with
adjusted exposure settings simply because it
washes out a lot of highlight information that the
sensor records perfectly well. The swivelling
design helps with low-angle or waist-level shots,
though simple upward-hinged LCDs, like that on
the Minolta DiMAGE A2 or the old Olympus E20
are simpler for this kind of work.
The AF system’s a bit of a disappointment. It
can take up to a second to confi rm focus, even at
the wide-angle end of the zooming range. The
zoom action itself is a little noisy, but quick
enough. To activate the zoom, you press a rocker
switch on the back of the camera, and not the
rotating switch around the shutter release. That’s
the camera’s ‘jog dial’, and it does seem an
unnecessary complication.
In many of the modes, this jog dial doesn’t do
anything at all. In the Scene mode, for example,
you’d have thought it could be used to switch
between the nine different ‘scenes’ available. And
in the program AE mode, it could have been used
as a ‘program shift’ control to shift the balance of
shutter speed and aperture.
In shutter priority mode you do use the jog dial
to change the shutter speed, and it’s used to
change the aperture in aperture priority mode.
In manual mode, though, things get more
complicated. Here, both values are displayed
and you have to press the AEL button to switch
between the two for jog dial adjustments.
The V50 offers a lot of hands-on
photographic control – multiple metering
patterns, manual focus, PASM modes – but
then makes it just that little bit too fi ddly so
that you’re seldom likely to actually use this
stuff. On paper it looks good; in practice, it’s
another matter.
The Samsung does have an ‘S’ button, which
acts as a shortcut to some handy functions,
including EV compensation, exposure mode,
white balance and ISO. Nevertheless, the
control layout and design don’t do justice up to
what this camera is capable of. And that’s
actually quite a lot. Some cameras are packed
with features but then fail to deliver on image
quality – but the Samsung isn’t one of them. Its
image quality is well above average, and in a
number of different areas.
Detail rendition is one of them. There’s no
point paying through the nose for a big-name
5-megapixel model and expecting results
signifi cantly sharper than this, because it’s not
going to happen.
Image contrast and saturation are very
good, too. Many cameras produce fl at-looking
images the moment the sun goes in or they’re
presented with scenes that lack contrast, but
the Samsung’s images look punchy and bright,
even when the conditions aren’t. What’s more,
it achieves all this with commendably accurate
colour balance. The white balance control is
reasonably easy to get to on this camera, but
you’re not often likely to need it.
The only fl y in the ointment is a tendency
towards magenta fringing around bright
highlights. This is not chromatic aberration
caused by the lens – this is a different
phenomenon – but appears to be an electronic
CCD artefact common in digital sensors and
particularly in compact models. The Samsung
doesn’t suffer from it all the time, but when it
does you’ll know all about it.
Conclusions
Like many cameras in this price range, the
Digimax V50 is a mixed bag. The image quality
is good, especially for the money, but it’s in the
design and handling that it loses out to the
more prestigious marques.
With that in mind, some of the lesser
cameras in the range are perhaps more
attractive, principally because they’re
signifi cantly cheaper. The V5, for example, lacks
the swivelling LCD of the V50 but not much
else, while the original 4-megapixel V4 can
now be found for £230 or less.
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