Samsung NV7 OPS

Recently Viewed Products
Olympus FE-230 $85 Kodak EasyShare Z650 $155 Olympus Stylus 1030 SW $339 Olympus Stylus 830 $280

Top Point & Shoot Cameras
Max Price: $1020 $0 $255 $510 $765 $1020 Filters All Canon Casio Fuji Kodak Nikon Olympus Panasonic Pentax Sony All Compact High-End Pocket Ultra-Zoom 1. Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX1 Ultra-Zoom $400 2. Canon SX1 IS Ultra-Zoom $527 3. Panasonic DMC-ZS3 Compact $318 4. Samsung HZ15W Ultra-Zoom $280 5. Canon G11 High-End $499

NV7 OPS Prices

Latest Camera Reviews
DSLR Point & Shoot Panasonic DMC-GF1 Canon G11 Pentax K10D Panasonic DMC-ZS3 Olympus E-P1 Canon PowerShot A650 IS Canon EOS 5D Kodak EasyShare Z950 Nikon D3000 Nikon Coolpix S630

External Reviews
CNET - Cameras Samsung NV7 OPS DPReview Samsung NV7 OPS Review Trusted Reviews Samsung NV7 OPS LaptopMag Samsung NV7 OPS DCResource Review: Samsung NV7 OPS

 

The retro-style camera keeps its back side more modern than its front. The back doesn’t have room for an optical viewfinder, but it does have a 2.5-inch LCD screen that provides a live view. It has great resolution and a wide viewing angle in all directions, so it really does have a high-quality view. Besides, it has 100 percent coverage of the recorded frame unlike most optical viewfinders. When pictures are snapped, the screen blacks out only as long as the shutter is closed which usually isn’t long at all. The exception to this is in the burst mode, where users can only frame the first shot.  All of the shooting info can be displayed on the screen, or it can be hidden. This can be adjusted in the setup menu. The good size, great resolution, accurate coverage, and wide-viewing angle make the Samsung NV7’s live view a desirable feature.

 

As discussed in the previous section, the LCD screen is pretty amazing. It measures 2.5 inches and has 230,000 pixels of resolution. The size is good, but there's enough room to grow, perhaps it'll come true on a future sucessor. The Samsung NV7 provides a great live view, which is equally useful in playback and is the critical component in the NV7’s Smart Touch interface. It displays all of the shooting icons that can be scrolled to and controlled with the buttons surrounding the screen. The information shown on the screen during recording and playback can be controlled. Full, Basic, Hide, and LCD Save are all the options to adjust the on-screen info. The brightness of the LCD screen can also be changed to Dark, Normal, and Bright within the setup menu. Overall, the LCD screen looks great in whatever mode it is in.

 

The flash unit is placed above the lens, which is helpful in creating even coverage. However, the physical construction of the unit itself is concerning. The flash remains flush with the camera body when off. When the camera is turned on, users must adjust the flash setting from the following options: Auto, Auto with Red-eye Reduction, Fill Flash, Slow Sync, and Off. Once the flash is set to fire, it pops up when the shutter release button is partially pushed. This process doesn’t take too long, but a quarter of a second can seem like an eternity. The flash unit is set on a wide hinge, but it still seems rickety. The portion of the flash that actually sends out the light is a wide rectangle and its height from the hinge is nice, although the poorly-constructed unit looks like it could get broken off fairly easily. The flash range is respectable: 0.2-5.8 meters in wide and 0.6-4.0 meters in telephoto. The flash took about 3-4 seconds to recharge for my test pictures, but the specs claim it takes about 5 seconds. Pictures that used the flash didn’t look very natural. Portraits and other fairly close-up pictures had undesirable highlights, while subjects about 10-12 ft away looked much better. Unfortunately, there is no way to adjust the flash output.

 

The Samsung NV7 comes with a Schneider-Kreuznach VarioPlan lens that measures 6.3-44.7 mm. This is equivalent to 38-270mm in 35mm format. This doesn’t give photographers a very wide angle at all, but does offer 7x optical zoom which is quite good for a camera this size. The lens doesn’t fold up in the body. It has a wide barrel that is threaded at the end for 43mm lens filters and perhaps future conversion lenses. The zoom is controlled with a wide, thin paddle that is moved up and down with the thumb. When the paddle is moved, a small vertical bar appears on the left side of the LCD screen. There are no numbers or letters or labels of any kind, but it shows a vague representation of where the zoom is at within its range. The paddle isn’t very sensitive; when I tapped it lightly it stopped at 11 different focal lengths in the 7x range. The zoom and auto focus systems did well when zooming in on subjects, but jolted and breathed a bit when zooming out. The camera’s flagship feature, Optical Picture Stabilization, certainly helps the lens stay steady. The stabilization mode can be activated with the bottom button to the right of the LCD screen; the mode has two functions for "shooting only" and "continuous". The stabilization system works well and keeps hand shakiness out of the picture.