Easy to use and programmable (Samsung Digimax V4)

Member Name: plodder

Product:	Samsung Digimax V4
Date:	22/08/03 (1025 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: image quality, features , easy to use

Disadvantages: x3 max optical magnification, too bulky for very small pockets

Digital cameras are one of those things that vary so much, and the best depends very much on what you want to do. I wanted something that would slip into my pocket, be easy to use for my wife and kids, but also capable of more creative and controlled work. After reading reviews on the net and in Digital Camera mag I settled on a Samsung Digimax V4. My Jessops local shop originally priced it at £299.99, but agreed to match a NET price of £262. Full credit to them.
The camera is 105mmx55mmx38mm and weights a light 165g without batteries. It comes with a lithium non-rechargeable battery and can take a special Lithium chargeable, ormore usefully two Ni-H rechargeable AA batteries. It comes with a 32M SD card and can take TIFF (1:1), superfine (1:4), fine (1:8) and normal (1:12) resolution photos. The size can be set between large2272x1704pixels, photo 2272x1504, medium 11120x840 and small 544x408 pixels. The number of photos stored on 32M can be from 676 phtos (small-normal) to 2 (large-TIF). I guess I will use photo-superfine where 32M sotores 14 photos and prints up to A4.
There are 8 modes including EASY where you point and click, the camera works everything out. In other modes shutter can be set, Aperture set, or aperture and shutter set independently. ISO can be varied to 100, 200, 400. to make the camera more sensitive to light. The Schneider lense gives optical magnification of x3 and can also add digital x4. It has multi-spot and single spot focussing. There is also supermacro down to 6cm.
As you can see it has loads of features and what attracted me is on easy MODE you can ignore these as the camera sets them automatically. On other modes you can vary almost everything you would want to. Usefully some modes are suited to portraits and landscapes where aperture etc are set appropriately. It has an internal flash, that can be set to red eye reduction, auto, fill-in and off. The shutter goes up to 1/2000s, which is pretty fast. To help edit phtos MGI
Photosuite 3SE is provided or the PC and a USB cable to connect them.
Enough of the specs and features. What's like to use.
It fits easily into the hand. It is small enough to fit into your pocket, but still big enough so you know it is there. It comes with a soft carrier bag, which is more than most do, and a cable for the telly. The viewfinder does not show all of the picture taken, which is better than showing more and you thinking you have photoed more than you did. The LCD viewer is 1.5inches; it would be nice if it were a little bigger. You can see what you photoed but not really test the quality. Whilst there are loads of features Samsung have somehow got the menu right. You navigate this on the LCD. The manual is a daunting 139 pages but I quickly learnt my way around the camera menu and it is very intuitive. After reading the brochure once I was able to set up super macro and photo from 10cm, setting the shutter speed to 1/1000s, and resolution to fine, and ISO to 400. These are quite a few things I wanted to try and I found them all quite easily in the menu. You can even get the camera to remember up to 3 special combinations of settings you like.
I have printed my first few photos taken with photo size and superine resolution on my Canon S520 printer on A4 paper. The results supassed my expecations. Excellent
I am sure there are better quality cameras, but this was £262 of geat value. There are smaller cameras, but reviews indicated their picture quality would not be as good. I wanted to blow some photos up to A4 so wanted a 4M pixel camerea I could aford. My 5* rating takes into cccount the excellent value price. As an added bonus the samsung site says that or orders before the end of August, you can download a orm and they will send a free 64M SD card or more capacity. Mine just arrived as promised.
For other views you can see professional reviews on http://www.megapixel.net, http://www.dcresource.com/. The sales site internetc
amerasdirect.co.uk have links to lots of reviews that list specifications and show sampe photos. PCadvisor.co.uk also have a review and test winner as intermediate camera.

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