Superb simplicity from samsung. (Samsung S1050)

Member Name: thebigc1690

Product:	Samsung S1050
Date:	20/07/08 (337 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to use and user functions that work well.

Disadvantages: Very few!

I will start this review off by saying that the Samsung S1050 knows what it is and does not try to be something that it is not and that I think is what makes it as good as it is. What I mean by that is simply that a lot of point and shoot digital cameras these days are trying to get results above their station and usually they fall flat on their faces. With the Samsung S1050 you get a good point and shoot camera that knows its boundaries and performs inside them very, very well.

The camera does have lots of useful settings but it knows that it cannot compete with top of the range Cybershots or DSLR cameras so it does not try to it simply offers you a lot of good settings that mostly work very well. Amongst the settings on this camera are things like; ASR (advanced shake reduction), this allows you to get steady pictures even with a bit of a shaky hand, Face Recognition, a function which detects faces within the shot and optimises focus and brightness and a 5x optical zoom which allows you to zoom in on the subject you are shooting which is very useful for trips to the zoo and the likes when you cannot physically get close to the animals.

The zoom on this camera impressed me because even when fully deployed the image hardly suffered whereas some cameras reach about three quarter zoom and the picture quality decreases dramatically. The ability to use the zoom to its maximum capacity really impressed ma and went a long way to me being really impressed with the camera overall.

Another thing firmly in this cameras favour is the scene modes and their effectiveness. DSLR cameras offer scene modes and when used you can clearly see the difference in the images taken but all too often with point and shoot digitals the difference is unnoticeable or very slight. The options of scene modes on this camera is a bit limited but they do all work fairly well.

The Scene modes that the camera offers are; night, portrait, children, landscape, beach & snow, dawn, sunset and fireworks. The only one I was really disappointed with was the beach and snow setting which is supposed to offer crystal bright whites when used in snow and keep sunburst (a bright circle on the image) at bay when used in bright sunshine. It failed to produce brilliant white images when used in a pure white studio setting produced to emulate snow and certainly did nothing to prevent sunburst when shooting in bright sunlight. That setting aside though the scene modes performed admirably and in particular the night setting which is usually the setting to let most cameras down worked brilliantly for such an inexpensive camera.

The night setting is to allow you to capture images in poor light without the use of a flash so you can encapsulate the dark surroundings as well as the lights and the subject being shot. It does this by automatically slowing down the shutter speed to let in as much light as possible (just like your eyes getting used to the dark). The problem with this setting on cameras is that you have to keep your arms still for longer because any movement when the shutter is open will be captured on the image causing trails. The shake reduction on this camera eliminates a lot of the movement allowing for clear crisp night shots that really impress.

This is one of the few point and shoot cameras that offers semi professional setting for adults like, manual white balance and adjustable ISO settings as well as offering a selection of fun add on`s for kids like; colour changing, digital framing and cartoonizer which can all be used to alter the image whilst still on the camera. The large 3 inch screen allows you to use the digital enhancement technology with ease and also allows you to get a very good look at the image to decide if it is good enough to be kept or whether there are better shots.

This camera is available in silver, black or pink, whilst the black version is very plain and a bit boring looking the silver and pink are very bright and a lot more attractive. The pink one is quite limited in availability but it is available right now from Argos at the reasonable price of £79.99 but there are better offers to be had online for the silver or black model with the lowest I have encountered so far being a mere £61.99 for the silver one from Amazon.

Even at the more expensive price this camera is good value for money in my opinion. Having used it for a full 4 hour test session and put it thoroughly through its paces using every setting and even using it for a portrait shoot that I would normally do with a DSLR costing over £1000 I come to the decision that I was using a good piece of equipment for a person wishing to progress in their photography and also a camera that could be a great option for teenagers as a first camera.

This camera was one of many I have tested over a week or so as you will know if you have been reading my reviews from the last ten days. This camera impressed me more than a good few that cost twice its price and it produced some exquisite images under studio conditions that to the untrained eye could have been taken as professional. The 10.1 mega pixels that this tiny camera boasts go a long way to making it the camera that it is giving you the option to zoom in on final images and crop them to suit. You could also enlarge the images taken by this camera to as large as poster size without losing any clarity, we did this with three images and they compared with images taken from the Fujifilm s5700 (a very useful bridge camera costing around £120).

This little unit runs on two AA batteries, I would suggest using Energizer lithium's which will outlast anything else on the market. It takes a SD memory card and can cope with one up to a 4Gb giving you plenty space to store your images. The camera also takes video footage but as with other reviews I will not go into this too much because I a reviewing it as a camera for shooting stills and as that it is very good as a video camera it is poor but almost all cameras are.

I would give this camera an overall 7/10 and I would recommend it to people who are just getting to grips with photography and looking to improve or to people who are confident with their capabilities at amateur level and would like to have a camera that they can use in manual as well as auto mode.

If you are looking for a camera to get you to a stage ready to think about stepping up to DSLR¬s then this camera will fall short with a lot of settings not available but as I said at the start it knows what it is and does not try to be more and I admire it for that.

Samsung S1050 Specifications & Features

10.1 Megapixels
5 x Optical Zoom
5 x Digital Zoom
25 x Smart Zoom
1cm Focusing Distance
Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Fluorescent H, Fluorescent L, Tungsten and Custom White Balance Settings
2.5" TFT, 230,000 pixels
Scene choices of night, portrait, children, landscape, beach & snow, dawn, sunset and fireworks.
Auto, Auto and Red-eye reduction, Fill-in flash, Slow sync and Off Flash Settings
Maximum Image Size 3648 x 2736 Pixels
800 x 600, 30fps Movies
Secure Digital, MMC Memory Card, with 45MB Internal memory


As well as the camera itself being very good and easy to use, the software with it is also easy to use and simple to install. The user's manual is fairly clear and understandable and if read in full should set you well on your way to understanding the controls you have at your fingertips.

Thanks for reading!

©2008 thebigc1690

Summary: A useful inexpensive little camera from samsung

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