Customer Rating: 
Summary: Extremely disappointing; poor pictures, terrible battery consumption.
Comment: I was very displeased with this camera - possibly the worst digital camera I have personally used. The lens is poor quality, such that my iphone (yes, my IPHONE) takes better pictures. Shake reduction? Uh, no. It was nearly impossible to take clear pictures, and I found the depth of colour lacking. Sure, they might be extremely high resolution, but who needs gazillions of pixels of badness? I've always known that megapixels mean little, but this camera really drove the point home.
In addition to taking very poor quality photos, I found the controls unintuitive - not completely unmanageably so, but annoyingly enough. The flash also doesn't carry very far. The zoom, however, worked pretty well and 5X is more than adequate for a point and shoot at this level. But since the camera is neither that small nor that lightweight, it's not even that portable, and you'd be better off saving up for a GOOD SLR, or going with a cheaper, tinier, better pocket model.
Lastly, and perhaps most frustratingly, this device consumed batteries more hungrily than a river rife with famine-struck piranhas, or perhaps a stoned goat. I'd get about 15 pictures per pair of AA batteries, regardless of battery type used (I tried 3 different sorts). Unacceptable! I will not ever buy another Samsung camera - and I was generally a Samsung fan prior to my experience with this item.
Customer Rating:
Summary: I'm no photo expert, but all my photos look great.
Comment: At first when I read other reviews I was a bit skeptical about this product, I keep looking for similar items an always kept coming back to this one. I Mean 10.5MP and 3"LCD display for less than $200.
The products works fine even with alkaline batteries, though you may consider switching to NiHm for longer battery life. You should take a few minutes to play with all options on the camera so when you using it in public know exactly which option is best for the situation.
Photos are always gorgeous and if you consider that 10.5MP is too large to mail your friends, don't worry... You can always use the option for lower MP's.
I'm already had a Samsung Digital camera, but I like this one so much more, that ended up recommending it to a friend that after just one look enter amazon.com to buy one.
Belief me, it is a great product.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great for snapshots, decent video an unexpected bonus
Comment: Got mine from Woot and received it today. Heard my Blackberry go off with a message from FedEx. Said the package was here. Opened the front door and lo! There it was. The 200 shot Red Ryder BB gun with built in compass and sundial. No wait, I mean the camera. Looked down the street in time to see the FedEx truck turn the corner. Talk about real-time updates.
Brought the package in. It was below freezing outside. Convinced myself to let the package get warmer before opening. Decided after 30 seconds it was warm enough. The camera came in a neat retail box. Everything inside was packaged nicely. Popped in some old rechargables into the camera. Popped the included alkaline batts into my shaver. Perfect. Put in a 2Gb chip and tried to format it. Camera says "format failure". Tried another chip. That one worked. No worries. Took a few test shots.
Indoor pics taken with flash on worked very well. The flash is *bright*. Flash recharge time is about 3-4 seconds. During that time, the screen goes dark and you can't do anything with it. Pictures taken indoors without flash generally turned out well, but a steady hand (or nearby wall to lean against) helps a lot. My old Sony DSC-P92 (5Mpix) did better under similar conditions, tending to choose faster shutter speeds so shake is less of a problem.
With a 2gig chip, the camera reports space for 370+ pictures at the 10 Mpix superfine setting, or 1h 20 min of video at 720x640 @ 30 fps. 2 gig probably works fine under most circumstances. Still, I'd go for the biggest chip I can afford. if you're going on a vacation its nice not to have to worry about running out of memory. I took 500+ pics at 5Mpix when I spent 5 days in Hawaii.
Took it to the park. Pictures outdoors are pretty good. I found the shot-to-shot time a little long when trying to follow the antics of a vigorous subject (read: 2 yr old Aussie Shepard. Tends to move much faster than your average subject. Your mileage may vary).
As a definite and unexpected bonus, I also found this to be a reasonably good video camera. At 720 x 480 @ 30 fps, the video tends towards DV quality. Media Player Classic (part of the K-lite codec pack) says that the video codec is XVID 720x480 30.00fps 1771Kbps, while audio is MS ADPCM 22050Hz mono 88Kbps [Audio 1]. Motion artifacts during a fast pan are noticable if you look for it, but otherwise the image is sharp at native resolution. With almost 100 mins of video recording capability, Samsung is at least within sight of that Holy Grail of digital media devices: good quality still pictures and video in one compact package.
Audio was a little soft. It also cuts off when zooming, presumably so you don't hear the zoom and AF motors humming. When taking video, AF has difficulty catching up during a zoom. The image goes out of focus during the zoom, then comes back into focus when zoom stops.
Transferring images was easy. Windows XP (Vista? Ha!) recognized it as a mass storage device without having to install any drivers. The included cable connects to the camera with something even smaller than a miniUSB plug. The connection was uncomfortably tight. It takes some carefully controlled tugging to pull it out from the camera after transferring pictures. The rubber plug covering the USB port is also little too close and interferes when you try to plug the cable in.
Battery life was decent. I used a pair of 3-year old Duracells rated at 2000mAh. The last time I charged it was 2 weeks ago. It lasted me all afternoon, or about 275 Mb of data, or 78 stills and about 5 mins of video total. It died sometime this evening when I was going through the results. Really people, that's pretty decent batt life.
Something nobody seems to have mentioned: Be careful when opening or closing the battery door. It's held closed by a grey plastic tongue (door part) through a square loop of black plastic or metal (hard to tell). If you break this, you can't close the door, the batteries lose contact, and the camera becomes unusable.
Many reviews have panned the image noise level. You do get noise if you zoom all the way in. However, almost all picture viewing is done either on a display screen or printed out on photo paper. At max res, it works out to about 300 dpi when printing a letter sized picture. dpi goes even higher for smaller prints. Pixel level noise can be difficult to see at this resolution, assuming they even remain as discrete dots on an inkjet.
The average screen does not display all 10 Mpix at native resolution. If you have a halfway decent image viewer, the image is nicely interpolated and scaled to fit the screen. The result becomes spectactular, since the scaled image is effectively supersampled from the original.
Overall, this camera is great for taking casual snaps and videos. It's compact enough that I can take it with me anywhere. I especially like the fact that I can get both decent quality video and stills on one device. Neither are of record breaking quality, but the convenience factor means I'm more likely to bring this than two separate devices. Plus, you can't beat the feature set for a hundred and twenty bucks (Woot). I think was worth what I paid for it.
It's been a week since getting this, and I've found out a few more things about this camera. There has been many conflicting comments about battery life on this camera, so I decided to do a test. I bought a set of brand Energizer rechargables rated at 2500 mAh. I charged them for 5 hours on a Duracell Rechargable-Accu 4-channel charger (i.e. full charge). Next, I put two batteries into the camera with an empty chip, then pointed it out the window at a street scene and set the camera to record video.
After 1 hour 20 mins, the chip was full and recording stopped. The battery indicator was still full. I deleted the file, then started another video recording. 1 hour 55 mins into the process, I looked at the viewfinder and the battery indicator had turned red. Almost exactly 2 hours later, the camera shutdown due to low battery. Note that this was a controlled shutdown (i.e. lens retracted etc).
So it would appear that with decent rechargable batteries, runtime exceeds the chip's recording capacity. Running full out capturing video with the LCD display on all the time, I got a total of 2 hours on a set of brand new batteries. After turning the camera off and immediately turning it back on again, the battery indicator went up by a bar. I would expect you can probably get more with normal usage patterns.
Customer Rating:
Summary: does not work
Comment: I bought the camara and with every single picture that I tried to take, the camara will have a problem. Example will shut down or display a low battery sign even thought I tried 2 different sets of new batteries, the lences will no work corectply or the click will get stuck.
Customer Rating:
Summary: surprising
Comment: Plenty of battery life with rechargeables. I have had no problems with batteries. Great features and specs for the price. The most surprising is how nice photos with flash look. Even up close results are soft and highlights are not blocked up and washed out. The large viewing area is helpful for eyes which are not as good as they used to be. I would like a viwfinder option, though. This camera doesn't have one.
Summary: Extremely disappointing; poor pictures, terrible battery consumption.
Comment: I was very displeased with this camera - possibly the worst digital camera I have personally used. The lens is poor quality, such that my iphone (yes, my IPHONE) takes better pictures. Shake reduction? Uh, no. It was nearly impossible to take clear pictures, and I found the depth of colour lacking. Sure, they might be extremely high resolution, but who needs gazillions of pixels of badness? I've always known that megapixels mean little, but this camera really drove the point home.
In addition to taking very poor quality photos, I found the controls unintuitive - not completely unmanageably so, but annoyingly enough. The flash also doesn't carry very far. The zoom, however, worked pretty well and 5X is more than adequate for a point and shoot at this level. But since the camera is neither that small nor that lightweight, it's not even that portable, and you'd be better off saving up for a GOOD SLR, or going with a cheaper, tinier, better pocket model.
Lastly, and perhaps most frustratingly, this device consumed batteries more hungrily than a river rife with famine-struck piranhas, or perhaps a stoned goat. I'd get about 15 pictures per pair of AA batteries, regardless of battery type used (I tried 3 different sorts). Unacceptable! I will not ever buy another Samsung camera - and I was generally a Samsung fan prior to my experience with this item.
Customer Rating:
Summary: I'm no photo expert, but all my photos look great.
Comment: At first when I read other reviews I was a bit skeptical about this product, I keep looking for similar items an always kept coming back to this one. I Mean 10.5MP and 3"LCD display for less than $200.
The products works fine even with alkaline batteries, though you may consider switching to NiHm for longer battery life. You should take a few minutes to play with all options on the camera so when you using it in public know exactly which option is best for the situation.
Photos are always gorgeous and if you consider that 10.5MP is too large to mail your friends, don't worry... You can always use the option for lower MP's.
I'm already had a Samsung Digital camera, but I like this one so much more, that ended up recommending it to a friend that after just one look enter amazon.com to buy one.
Belief me, it is a great product.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great for snapshots, decent video an unexpected bonus
Comment: Got mine from Woot and received it today. Heard my Blackberry go off with a message from FedEx. Said the package was here. Opened the front door and lo! There it was. The 200 shot Red Ryder BB gun with built in compass and sundial. No wait, I mean the camera. Looked down the street in time to see the FedEx truck turn the corner. Talk about real-time updates.
Brought the package in. It was below freezing outside. Convinced myself to let the package get warmer before opening. Decided after 30 seconds it was warm enough. The camera came in a neat retail box. Everything inside was packaged nicely. Popped in some old rechargables into the camera. Popped the included alkaline batts into my shaver. Perfect. Put in a 2Gb chip and tried to format it. Camera says "format failure". Tried another chip. That one worked. No worries. Took a few test shots.
Indoor pics taken with flash on worked very well. The flash is *bright*. Flash recharge time is about 3-4 seconds. During that time, the screen goes dark and you can't do anything with it. Pictures taken indoors without flash generally turned out well, but a steady hand (or nearby wall to lean against) helps a lot. My old Sony DSC-P92 (5Mpix) did better under similar conditions, tending to choose faster shutter speeds so shake is less of a problem.
With a 2gig chip, the camera reports space for 370+ pictures at the 10 Mpix superfine setting, or 1h 20 min of video at 720x640 @ 30 fps. 2 gig probably works fine under most circumstances. Still, I'd go for the biggest chip I can afford. if you're going on a vacation its nice not to have to worry about running out of memory. I took 500+ pics at 5Mpix when I spent 5 days in Hawaii.
Took it to the park. Pictures outdoors are pretty good. I found the shot-to-shot time a little long when trying to follow the antics of a vigorous subject (read: 2 yr old Aussie Shepard. Tends to move much faster than your average subject. Your mileage may vary).
As a definite and unexpected bonus, I also found this to be a reasonably good video camera. At 720 x 480 @ 30 fps, the video tends towards DV quality. Media Player Classic (part of the K-lite codec pack) says that the video codec is XVID 720x480 30.00fps 1771Kbps, while audio is MS ADPCM 22050Hz mono 88Kbps [Audio 1]. Motion artifacts during a fast pan are noticable if you look for it, but otherwise the image is sharp at native resolution. With almost 100 mins of video recording capability, Samsung is at least within sight of that Holy Grail of digital media devices: good quality still pictures and video in one compact package.
Audio was a little soft. It also cuts off when zooming, presumably so you don't hear the zoom and AF motors humming. When taking video, AF has difficulty catching up during a zoom. The image goes out of focus during the zoom, then comes back into focus when zoom stops.
Transferring images was easy. Windows XP (Vista? Ha!) recognized it as a mass storage device without having to install any drivers. The included cable connects to the camera with something even smaller than a miniUSB plug. The connection was uncomfortably tight. It takes some carefully controlled tugging to pull it out from the camera after transferring pictures. The rubber plug covering the USB port is also little too close and interferes when you try to plug the cable in.
Battery life was decent. I used a pair of 3-year old Duracells rated at 2000mAh. The last time I charged it was 2 weeks ago. It lasted me all afternoon, or about 275 Mb of data, or 78 stills and about 5 mins of video total. It died sometime this evening when I was going through the results. Really people, that's pretty decent batt life.
Something nobody seems to have mentioned: Be careful when opening or closing the battery door. It's held closed by a grey plastic tongue (door part) through a square loop of black plastic or metal (hard to tell). If you break this, you can't close the door, the batteries lose contact, and the camera becomes unusable.
Many reviews have panned the image noise level. You do get noise if you zoom all the way in. However, almost all picture viewing is done either on a display screen or printed out on photo paper. At max res, it works out to about 300 dpi when printing a letter sized picture. dpi goes even higher for smaller prints. Pixel level noise can be difficult to see at this resolution, assuming they even remain as discrete dots on an inkjet.
The average screen does not display all 10 Mpix at native resolution. If you have a halfway decent image viewer, the image is nicely interpolated and scaled to fit the screen. The result becomes spectactular, since the scaled image is effectively supersampled from the original.
Overall, this camera is great for taking casual snaps and videos. It's compact enough that I can take it with me anywhere. I especially like the fact that I can get both decent quality video and stills on one device. Neither are of record breaking quality, but the convenience factor means I'm more likely to bring this than two separate devices. Plus, you can't beat the feature set for a hundred and twenty bucks (Woot). I think was worth what I paid for it.
It's been a week since getting this, and I've found out a few more things about this camera. There has been many conflicting comments about battery life on this camera, so I decided to do a test. I bought a set of brand Energizer rechargables rated at 2500 mAh. I charged them for 5 hours on a Duracell Rechargable-Accu 4-channel charger (i.e. full charge). Next, I put two batteries into the camera with an empty chip, then pointed it out the window at a street scene and set the camera to record video.
After 1 hour 20 mins, the chip was full and recording stopped. The battery indicator was still full. I deleted the file, then started another video recording. 1 hour 55 mins into the process, I looked at the viewfinder and the battery indicator had turned red. Almost exactly 2 hours later, the camera shutdown due to low battery. Note that this was a controlled shutdown (i.e. lens retracted etc).
So it would appear that with decent rechargable batteries, runtime exceeds the chip's recording capacity. Running full out capturing video with the LCD display on all the time, I got a total of 2 hours on a set of brand new batteries. After turning the camera off and immediately turning it back on again, the battery indicator went up by a bar. I would expect you can probably get more with normal usage patterns.
Customer Rating:
Summary: does not work
Comment: I bought the camara and with every single picture that I tried to take, the camara will have a problem. Example will shut down or display a low battery sign even thought I tried 2 different sets of new batteries, the lences will no work corectply or the click will get stuck.
Customer Rating:
Summary: surprising
Comment: Plenty of battery life with rechargeables. I have had no problems with batteries. Great features and specs for the price. The most surprising is how nice photos with flash look. Even up close results are soft and highlights are not blocked up and washed out. The large viewing area is helpful for eyes which are not as good as they used to be. I would like a viwfinder option, though. This camera doesn't have one.
Samsung Digimax S1050 10.1MP Digital Camera with 5x Advance Shake Reduction Optical Zoom (Black) Reviews: Page 2 of 5
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