A good no-frills starter camera (Samsung Digimax 800K)

Member Name: Squiggles

Product:	Samsung Digimax 800K
Date:	09/08/00 (490 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to operate, Ideal for beginners

Disadvantages: Low on features, Zaps battery power in no time

Samsung’s Digimax 800K is a great little camera for those who want to try a digital camera for the first time, not have to spend too much money or need a degree to work their way through a whole bundle of clever tricks and features. This camera is very limited in extras, but for a beginner, would make an ideal purchase.

It’s priced fairly reasonably compared to others (around £80 to £100 if you shop around) and the first thing I noticed about it, was how light and plasticky it seems to be. The camera comes in a small silver plastic body and is incredibly lightweight, less than 200g. At first appearance, you would be forgiven for thinking this was a toy!

Features are limited but you can get some excellent photographs with this one, especially outdoors in natural light. The flash gives pleasing indoor photography results but these can sometimes be a little distorted if battery power is weak. It runs using 2 AA type batteries and be warned, these go flat in a very short space of time and your photographs will suffer if the batteries are not fresh. I used fresh batteries, took 14 pictures using full flash and the batteries were almost completely dead! There are three separate flash features included, automatic flesh detector which will add flash to your pictures where the camera thinks it is needed, fill in flash or cancel flash altogether. Note, there is no LCD display with this camera so you cannot view your images until you have uploaded them.

The camera has a macro photography feature, but as yet, I’ve not really had very impressive results, pictures seem to be very blurred nine times out of then. It also has a useful timer feature that is great if you want to be in the shot yourself.

The camera has a mere 2Meg memory card that is quite restrictive, allowing you about 16 standard resolution photographs before it is full. However, you can purchase higher memory cards at a price!

Uploading your pictures t
o the PC is very straightforward and takes just seconds for each one.

Accessories consist of a snug carry pouch, handle strap, batteries, 2MB memory card, serial cable to connect to your PC, MGI Photosuite software and TWAIN driver disc. You can also purchase an AC adaptor as an extra. Plus of course, you do get an instruction manual too, not too in depth but does explain the features in a straightforward way.

All in all, it’s a good basic little camera, and ideal for those wanting to start with something simple before laying out big money on a big featured camera. It’s a simple point and click camera that anybody can use but you will need a very steady hand with this one, the slightest tremble and your pictures will be blurred! A good choice for the youngsters in the family.

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