ntages: Flash is in the wrong place

I went on my first proper holiday in years last October so dug my decade old trusty camera out. Looking at it I realised that it was three mega pixels and the camera on my mobile phone was of a better specification. With this realisation I decided it was about time I replaced it. Then came the big question, what to replace it with?

Now the last thing I wanted was a huge camera around my neck making me look like a Japanese tourist every time I went out and as I'm no avid photographer a big SLR wasn't necessary so a compact camera was certainly the way to go. I did my research and this being a new release had by far the best specifications being a mighty 14.7 mega pixels and having allsorts of options which we'll go over later.
I purchased this camera in October 2008 from Play.com and paid £169.99, unfortunately it didn't arrive so they resent it and I finally got it in the November after my initial holiday. Not a good start but I have used it many times since, so onto the camera:

Packaging

The box it comes in is much smaller than I expected being roughly the size of five stacked DVDs. Upon opening the box everything was well packaged. The box contains the camera itself, manuals, and software. A component HD cable so you can connect the camera to your TV for playback functionality, a USB cable which also doubles as the mains charger and a wrist strap. Also included is the rechargeable battery but no memory card.

USB cable

The USB connection on the camera is unique to Samsung so only a Samsung cable will connect. The included cable has a indicator light at the camera end. This changes colour from red to green when the battery is fully charged. The connections are all very robust and I've never felt like they're likely to get damaged or snap. The other end of the cable is a standard USB connection so it easily connects to your computer, TV or other USB compatible device such as an Xbox. This same cable also doubles as your mains charger, included with the camera is a mains adaptor which the USB cable plugs into so you can also charge the camera from a wall socket. A very well designed multiuse cable.

Appearance

The overall size of the camera is a mere 94.9 x 59.5 x 19.9 mm making it very pocket friendly.
This camera comes in a variety of colours but mine is silver with a black edging to the top, bottom and one side of the camera, it looks very sophisticated. The bottom of the camera has the battery and memory card hatch, the USB/charger connector and a tripod mount on it.
The top of the camera has the power button which is small and difficult to accidentally press in your pocket but easy to use when you want to. It also has the shutter button which changes colour from red to green when the auto focus has done its bit and a dial settings selector which I'll discuss later. The flash is of a popup design on top of the camera on the left hand side so when it is not in use the lines of the camera aren't intruded upon.
The front of the camera just consists of the impressive wide focus Schneider lens, the flash viewfinder and has Samsungs logos on it.
The rear of the camera has a large 3 inch touch screen with several small buttons down the side of it which access the menu, slideshows and control the zoom.
Overall the camera is very attractive and looks classy and elegant.

The Flash

The flash unit automatically pops up when you depress the shutter button if it is required. As I've mentioned the flash is on top of the camera on the left hand side which unfortunately is the exact place where you would naturally put your finger so it can catch you by surprise. This is the only badly designed thing about an otherwise impeccable camera. The flash itself performs well and can light up even the darkest environments although on close up pictures it can reflect back at the lens making part of the picture far too bright.

Settings

You can edit just about every setting imaginable on the camera in manual mode, I actually have no idea what half the things are for so I stay well away from that and stick to the other modes which are: Automatic, Video, Scene, Beauty shot, Night mode, Anti-shake and Program.
I generally stick to the Automatic mode, which despite the name is fully automatic as you still have to set whether you want landscape or macro (close up) mode. Although you can manually change most of the settings such as flash, focus style and picture quality it isn't really necessary. I just set the picture quality to maximum and everything else to automatic and the resultant pictures are incredible.
Anti-shake mode is very good if you're cold or have had a couple of drinkies as it makes turns on both stability modes which makes a huge difference and the pictures come out without any blurriness.
The video shoots in 720p high definition and, if watched back on a HD TV look as good as any television channel.
Beauty shot is a very clever idea; it takes out any blemishes in a persons skin tone allegedly making them look more beautiful. I'm not sure it actually makes too much of a difference to the end result but maybe that's because I'm so beautiful without it.
Scene and Program modes are very similar, you chose from a variety of pre-programmed situations which should result in the best photos. I never actually use these as I find automatic mode more than sufficient.
For Night mode to work effectively you would really need a tripod as the shutter stays open for a long time in order to get enough light for a good shot. To hold the camera in this mode makes the image very blurry just from your breathing. I have tried it by putting the camera on a wall and the image is actually very good.

Functionality

The touch screen is the best I have ever come across. It always knows exactly where you've touched and makes no mistakes. When the camera is on there are virtual buttons along the bottom of the touch screen which you use to change the camera settings. The screen is quite easily scratched as I found out after two days of owning the camera so a suitable case is a must.

The 3x optical zoom is accompanied with a follow on digital zoom meaning you can focus successfully on something a long way into the distance. While the optical zoom functions perfectly with the Schneider lens the digital zoom is a little disappointing. When the digital zoom is in use the resultant pictures are grainy and can be out of focus. I have actually taken to using the extent of the optical zoom and going no further so I do not use the digital.

Because the camera is 'Plug & Play' I have not ever actually installed the Samsung software. The included software is the generic Quicktime and Adobe along with Samsung Master which can be used to edit photos and videos although as this can easily be done with Windows I'm not sure why you would use this.

Battery life on the camera has been remarkably impressive; one charge has easily lasted me a two week holiday of normal camera use. I would say the battery lasts for approximately three hours before a charge is required.

When you have the camera set to 14.7 megapixels and the quality set to superfine the pictures are about 5MB which is a very large file. A lot of websites will not allow you to upload photos of this size so if that is your intended use for the photos you'll need to adjust the settings. I find with the settings on 'Fine' and 8 megapixels the file sizes are about 1.5Mb which seems fine for websites.

Due to the potentially very large file sizes the onboard memory of 40MB is nowhere near large enough and an additional memory card is therefore a necessity. The camera supports MMC SD and SDHC memory cards. I opted for a SDHC as these are available in a large 8GB capacity.

Other capabilities of the camera which haven't come up elsewhere but I feel are worth a mention are the smile and face detection technology. This is capable of monitoring numerous faces at once and automatically taking a photo when everybody is smiling.
You can also create a slideshow on the camera and add music and effects to create your own unique gallery.

A superb, well made camera with a myriad of options and functions for everybody of all experiences. Reliability and picture quality are second to none and I would recommend this camera to anybody. Even a year on this hasn't aged technologically or aesthetically. You can still expect to pay about £170 for it today, still worth every penny!