Samsung Point and Shoot and Non-DSLR
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Samsung Point and Shoot and Non-DSLR
Samsung NV40 Digital Camera Review
by Tim Barribeau
Published on August 18, 2008
Auto Mode (6.75)
The NV40's auto mode offers the bare minimum of controls to the user. Flash settings, self-timer, focus area, focus mode, image size and compression are the only options you can control in this mode. Thankfully, the NV40 has excellent auto ISO and auto white balance, as can be seen in our testing section. So if you are shooting in automatic mode, your photos will probably come out very well.
Movie Mode (8.25)
The camera records .avi files at 640 x 480 or 320 x 240 resolution, and at frame rates of either 30 or 15 fps, and is accessed via the right control dial.
The NV40 offers a variety of controls for movie mode. The full range of white balance settings can be used, as can exposure compensation, metering modes and image stabilization. There's even a selection of image effects that work in movie mode, so you can shoot in negative or with a blue tint if you want. The full 3x optical zoom can be used when shooting movies, but digital zooming is disallowed in this mode. Even so, at 3x zoom expect a fair amount of image shake due to the lightness of the camera.
The only limit to the length of the movie shot is the size of your memory card.
There are very minor editing tools for videos in camera. The only options you have are trimming the length of the movie, and grabbing a still frame as an image.
Drive / Burst Mode (7.30)
There are three options to increase the speed at which you can take photos. The first is continuous mode, which simply allows the camera to keep taking pictures if the shutter button remains depressed. The speed for this will vary on your camera settings, especially resolution and flash. Motion Capture takes seven shots per second up to a maximum of 20 photos, but limited to 1024x768 resolution. This is great if you're only taking images to share over email or the Internet, or aren't planning on printing the resulting pictures. There is also a full- resolution High Speed mode, which takes three shots in quick succession, at 1.75 frames per second. This is only available at ISO 400 or lower, a fact not relayed in the manual. None of these modes is usable when shooting in Auto mode.
Playback Mode (5.75)
The playback mode on the NV40 suffers most noticeably from the awkward control scheme associated with the two perpendicular lines of buttons. Swiping a single finger along the bottom row controls browsing pictures, which is imprecise, especially when going through a large number of images. Alternatively, you can use one of two scroll buttons on either end of the row. These are not permanently designated for this task, and only control scrolling when in playback mode. Images can also be sorted by date.
The zoom control allows you to magnify an image and crop the picture down to the area viewed on screen. Zooming out brings up a thumbnail view, which is locked at 9 images at a time. Usually, one of the advantages to using a thumbnail view is being able to select multiple images at a time for deletion or locking. However, in this mode you have to use the button swipe to scroll through the images, then tap one button to select the photo you want. Unfortunately, the buttons are so small that when selecting an image, it's very easy to accidentally bump a neighboring button, which the camera interprets as a scroll command. Consequently, selecting multiple images can be an exercise in frustration. We did find using your pinky finger was marginally more successful than using your index, just due to size. Users with delicate hands may suffer less from these problems.
The limited editing controls in playback mode let you rotate an image, or resize it down to 7 megapixels, 5 megapixels, 3 megapixels or 1 megapixel. There are three sets of image effects. The first, in the Effect menu, alters the color of the image. These will convert the picture to black and white, sepia, blue tone, red tone, green tone or negative. Special Color adds a few more options on top of this. You can add noise, use the Elegant function (which brightens colors and raises saturation), Shaded (which brightens the center and darkens the outer edges) and Color Filter (removes all but the brightest colors from an image). Finally there's the Image Adjustment mode, which will let you alter saturation, contrast or brightness, Auto Contrast Balance (which adjusts backlit images to improve the foreground exposure) and Red Eye Fix.
Custom Image Presets (7.33)
The NV40 only has two presets on the control dial; nighttime and portrait, but a scene tab on the control dial provides access to another twelve. There is no sports mode to catch fast action, which is unusual for a point-and-shoot, but it does has a self-portrait mode that will inform you when your face is on screen and in focus by beeping in different tones. The image presets available are: Night, Portrait, Café, Food, Self Shot, Beach & Snow, Fireworks, Backlight, Dawn, Sunset, Text, Closeup, Landscape and Children.
