Samsung NV10 Digital Camera review
Design
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| As well as the lens at the front of the camera you’ll also find AF assist lamp and sensor for the remote control as well as the sculptured handgrip that makes holding the camera easy even with one hand. At the top of the camera you’ve got the pop-up flash as well as the on button which we love with its blue outer ring, the shoot button and the control dial for changing the eight modes provided. Now what’s really special about the NV10 is its innovative back. Turn the camera around and the first thing you’ll see is the 2.5 inch LCD monitor with its 230,000 pixels. And then to the right and below the screen you’ll find the “Smart Touch” interface which is basically 13 small unmarked black buttons. It’s really exciting because to start with you know they are there for a reason but you’re not quite sure what. Rather than going for the standard, dull D-pad and menu buttons Samsung have opted for these buttons which let you flick from manual to automatic options and lots of other simple and complex functions. There’s also a zoom rocker and a small, round play button. At the bottom you’ll find the battery, a tripod holding hole and the charger. | ||
| Setup/Installation | ||
| Like all cameras you’ll just need to charge up the battery which is located at the bottom of the camera and you’ll be ready to shot to your hearts content. | ||
| Features | ||
| Let’s start with the front again and the zoom lens. The Samsung NV10 has the F2.8-5.1 Schneider-Kreuznach Varioplan lens with a focal length of 7.4 - 22.2mm (35mm equivalent 35-105mm). We’ve already mentioned it has 10.1MP resolution too and a 20MB internal memory as well as a slot for a MMC/SD card of up to 1GB. The NV10 has the usual Auto and Program modes, and several scene modes including; Night, Portrait, Children, Landscape, Text, Close-up, Sunset, Dawn, Backlight, Fireworks, Beach and Snow. You can select either minimum or maximum aperture as well as shutter speeds from 15 seconds to 1/1500th sec. The camera has an ISO of 1000. Like the NV3, this one also comes with Samsung’s proprietary Advanced Shake Reduction (ASR) electronic image stabilization system, which works really well. We decided to shake the camera around while taking photos and somehow it still managed to lock on to the picture and create a sharp image. The MPEG4 movie taking isn’t bad either and offers 640 x 480 at 30fps, and you can zoom in and out while taking moving footage as well as voice recording functions. On the filming side there’s also an animation function which takes a short film clip, turns it into an animation and loops it. As well as all this you get the fun Special Effects setting that gives you the option of superimposing frames around your photos like a heart or cupid, and also has an animated GIF mode. Other modes include an unusual Effects setting, which offers the same rather silly superimposed photo frames as the NV3, different colour effects, trimming, rotating, resizing and a photo Gallery function for convenient picture viewing. | ||
| Performance | ||
| This is truly one of the nicest camera’s we’ve seen in a long time. The first thing you’ll notice is the start up time which takes a short two seconds to power up and get ready for snapping. As well as the sing shot which takes around two seconds to ready itself for the next round you can also use a high speed mode that triggers three sots in two seconds before saving it to the card. As well as taking quick shots, the camera focuses really quickly too and even in low lighting you can focus in on the subject easily because of the nifty AF light (which has a range of around four to five meters). And if it gets too dark the flash pops up ready to cover a range of up to 3.2 meters. The most innovative thing about the NV10 is the back. To start with you might find the Smart Touch buttons a bit intimidating but you quickly get used to them and by pressing the buttons you realise that diddy icons appear on the screen telling you what they do. And it doesn’t take long to work out that you can change any of the settings on the Samsung NV10 with two buttons without having to scroll through menu bars – so you select the function from the bottom row, like say the ISO setting, and then you click the corresponding button on the right to select whether you want to go for the Auto, 100, 200, 400, 800 or 1000 setting – brilliantly simple and easy. Image quality on this was really very good and the ASR was superb, the only slight problem came with the exposure levels which could go a big funny at times. | ||
| What's In The Box? | ||
| NV10 digital camera, remote control, charger, pouch. | ||
| Overall Opinion | ||
| This is a stylish, well designed camera that looks classy and understated. It’s full of lovely functions meaning you can use it as a novice by aiming and clicking or you could use its manual functions turning it into a sort of SLR camera. The picture quality was excellent and the fact it’s a 10MP digital camera means that you can take photos of up to A3 size. There’s really very little to complain about on this camera and we’ll be keeping our fingers crossed that other manufacturers ditch the D-pad for this new navigation system. |
By Babita Wakelin
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Pros + Looks great, + Good pictures + Easy to use + Great anti-shake + Lots of special features + USB Charger |
Cons - Exposure can play up. |
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Picture Quality 8/10
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Battery Life 8/10
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Setup Simplicity 8/10
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Build Quality 9/10
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Ease of Use 8/10
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Overall Rating 
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By Babita Wakelin
4/10/2006 at 3:17:14pm
4/10/2006 at 3:17:14pm
Read Samsung Reviews
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Samsung NV10 If you can get past its unusual interface and sluggish performance, the Samsung NV10 is a nice digital snapshot camera with some great manual features... read | |||
Ecoustics
2/10/2007 2:38:00pm
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