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CNET editors' rating:
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Detailed editors' rating - Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 13 reviews
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Product summary
The good: Manual exposure control; RGB intensity controls; relatively low price.
The bad: Confusing menus; no aperture- or shutter-priority mode; exposure adjustments in 1/2-stop instead of 1/3-stop increments reduce degree of control.
The bottom line: The Samsung Digimax S800 has tons of controls for its price range, but confusing menus and poor image quality outweigh these advantages.
Specifications: Digital camera type: Compact ; Resolution: 8.1 megapixels ; Optical zoom: 3 x ; See full specs
Price range: $109.95 check prices
CNET editors' review
- Reviewed on: 06/19/2006
- Released on: 04/15/2006
Measuring 3.9 by 2.4 by 1.1 inches and weighing just 6 ounces, the Digimax S800 should fit comfortably in a jacket pocket, and its curved grip makes it easy to hold. The sparse, silver-and-gray look won't turn any heads but isn't ugly either. Its 3X optical, 35mm-to-105mm (35mm equivalent), f/2.8-to-f/5.1 zoom lens extends outward from the camera's front when powered up and retracts when turned off.
The power button, the mode dial, and the shutter release reside atop the camera, while the zoom rocker, a four-way-plus-menu/OK control pad, and three other control buttons occupy the right side of the camera's back next to the 2.4-inch LCD. The zoom rocker sits about 0.25 inch too far to the right for comfort, though the curved indent underneath it provides a perfect spot for your thumb. The three control buttons let you enter play mode; adjust exposure compensation and access settings such as ISO, white balance, and RGB intensity; and access other options, such as color modes, photoframe overlays, stitch-assist modes, and framing guides to help you line up your subjects. This last button is labeled with an E for effects, while the exposure compensation button is labeled with plus and minus symbols.
The problem is that most manufacturers place options such as white balance and ISO in the regular menu. Not only that, since the camera defaults to show current settings on the LCD (a good thing), including ISO, it's hard to notice that the exposure compensation button gives you access to adjust this and other settings. Furthermore, when in full manual mode, you have to press exposure compensation twice to access these settings--again, not very intuitive.
Still, we were happy to see a full manual exposure mode. Not many point-and-shoot cameras let you select both aperture and shutter speed. Strangely, the Samsung Digimax S800 doesn't offer shutter- or aperture-priority modes, though it includes program and full auto modes as well as 10 scene presets. While it doesn't cover quite as many as some of its competitors, this Samsung takes care of all the basic modes, such as portrait, night, landscape, and sunset. There's even one called Dawn, in case you end up partying all night after shooting that sunset.
Exposure compensation covers a range of plus or minus 2EV in 1/2-stop increments. Most cameras offer 1/3-stop increments, for a finer degree of control. Similarly, the Digimax S800's manual shutter and aperture adjustments use 1/2-stop steps, though again, that's still more control than most cameras in this price range. If you really want to be safe, you can set the S800 to automatically bracket exposures, in which case it will shoot three shots in succession: one normally exposed, one at 0.5EV, and one at minus 0.5EV. Metering options include multi, which averages readings from throughout the image area with an emphasis on the middle, and spot, which measures only the center of the image.
Perfomance was mixed in our lab tests. The camera took a somewhat fast 2.3 seconds to power up and capture its first image, but once it started up, it took 2.4 seconds between shots without flash and 3.3 seconds with flash turned on. The shutter lag was a speedy 0.6 second in high-contrast situations and 1.1 seconds in low-contrast lighting. Continuous shooting was sluggish, capturing 28 VGA-size JPEGs in 30.4 seconds for an average of 0.92fps, and 27 8-megapixel JPEGs in 32.1 seconds for an average of 0.84fps.
The LCD partially washed out in bright sunlight, though it was still possible to see enough to frame our images. It gained up in low light just enough to frame the image, though not as much as some of the LCDs we've seen lately. The flash is rated to provide even coverage out to about 10 feet with ISO in auto mode.
Automatic white balance produced very warm, yellowish images with our lab's tungsten lights, while the tungsten white-balance setting had a noticeably bluish cast. Thankfully, the manual setting produced neutral results, though the audience for these cameras is not very likely to set a manual white balance. Given that even Olympus's dirt-cheap FE-series cameras manage to provide a neutral white balance in auto mode, we don't understand why it should be so difficult for this camera, although it does so many things that those Olympus FEs can't even dream of. In natural daylight, the Digimax S800's automatic white balance did a good job of neutralizing colors, which were natural-looking and well saturated.
Even at ISO 50 (the lowest setting possible with this camera), some noise was visible in our test images, though it was very minor and remained so at ISO 100. At ISO 200, noise was very noticeable, causing even moderately dark colors to become mottled with splotches of varying lightness and colors, though many finer details were still unobscured. By ISO 400, the noise overwhelmed lots of detail, resulting in images unfit for print.
Exposures were generally accurate, though images were slightly soft and had noticeable fringing in highlights, especially with backlit subjects. We also noticed JPEG artifacting, which lent a choppy look to some curved edges.
Samsung's Digimax S800 suffers the same fate as so many inexpensive, high-resolution cameras: the drawbacks of excessive noise and image artifacts overshadow the camera's many useful features.
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- Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 13 reviews
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Where to buy
Samsung Digimax S800 (Silver):
$109.95
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Amazon.com Marketplace
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