Digital Camera Review

First Impressions Review

Jan 11, 2009 - By Tim Barribeau
The HZ10W from Samsung squeezes a substantial 10x zoom wide angle lens and 10-megapixel sensor into quite a small, well built package. We got our first glimpse of this camera at CES 2009, and after some time working with a pre-production sample, gained some insight into what sort of beast it is. Overall we were quite impressed, as you'll see in this First Impression review. Expect to see the HZ10W in stores in January for $299.99
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Auto Mode
While in Auto mode, the only available choices are image size and focus type. Other than that, you'll have to trust the camera to do figure things out for you.

Movie Mode
The movie mode on the camera is noticeable for shooting at 720p resolution (in both normal and high quality), as well as 640x480 and 320x240 in the slightly unusual format of H.264. At all resolutions you can shoot at 30 and 15 fps, and at the smallest you can also get 60 fps. The camera retains a certain degree of manual control during filming, and lets the user control metering and stabilization, though oddly not white balance. One nice touch is that you can optically zoom while recording in movie mode, but at a much reduced speed so that the whirring of the lens doesn't overwhelm the microphone.

Drive / Burst Mode
The camera offers three levels of burst speed. The first is continuous mode, which takes about one frame per second until you take your finger off the shutter button. High Speed mode takes three images in one second, but then stops automatically. Finally, Motion Capture mode reduces the resolution to 640x480, but manages to squeeze our five frames per second continuously.

There's also a decent array of self-timers associated with the camera. 10 seconds, 2 seconds, 10 then 2 seconds (two photos in all), external remote, and motion sensor. The last we'll have to wait to get into the lab to report properly on how it functions.

Playback Mode
During Playback mode, you can zoom in to 11.4x magnification, and trim down to image as displayed on-screen at any point. Pulling back takes you all the way out to thumbnail view of nine images. There's also a fairly comprehensive image editing toolset built into the camera. You can resize and rotate the images, adjust the color (to black and white, sepia, red, green, blue, inverted or custom), use the ACB tool (which is a type of dynamic range optimization), red-eye fix, face retouch (which smears over skin flaws with a trowel full of digital foundation), change the brightness, saturation and contrast or add noise.

Custom Image Presets
This Samsung camera has a decent array of scene modes. It can be set to beauty shot, night, frame guide, party, children, landscape, close up, text, sunset, dawn, backlight, beach and snow, backlight, self-shoot, food and café.

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