Samsung S850

Auto Mode
The auto mode is the only green position on the mode dial; the rest of the modes are displayed as white letters or text. Once the mode dial is positioned correctly, the auto mode takes over most functions. It does allow users to change the image size and compression in the "+/-" menu, a few basic colors in the "E" menu, and the display info and auto focus mode in the recording menu. The functions on the multi-selector are also available: flash, self-timer, and auto macro. Overall, the auto mode is the easiest exposure mode to use on the Samsung digital cameras.

Movie Mode
Samsung’s movie mode has more resolution than most. It isn’t shooting widescreen format, but uses more pixels with a top video size of 800 x 592. This large movie file records only 20 fps, which is less than the standard 30 fps offering. However, 30 and 15 fps frame rates are available with the smaller video sizes (according to Samsung). The pre-production model kept freezing, but did record a bit at 640 x 480 and 30 fps. Samsung’s published specs claim sizes of 640 x 480, 320 x 240, and 160 x 128. However, the menu showed these options: 720, 640, and 320. Either way, it’s still enough resolution to record television-quality video, possibly a bit beyond. The auto focus system doesn’t work well in the movie mode; everything looked a little fuzzy while shooting. That could have been because of the low light in the convention center, not to mention the very early pre-production status of the floor model. The optical zoom lens could be used while recording, but only up to 3x zoom. Advanced Shake Reduction (ASR) is also available with the movies; it is a digital algorithm that attempts to stabilize the image. This could not be tested because the camera kept freezing. In the "+/-" menu, the following options were available: metering, white balance, and exposure compensation. The colors are available from the effects menu too. This is a lot of options for the S1050’s and S850’s movie mode. In the playback menu, movies can be played back, fast forwarded, and rewound. Samsung claims in its specs that these cameras will have movie trimming and still image capture abilities too, but those options weren’t seen on the pre-production S1050 and S850.

Drive / Burst Mode
The Samsung S1050 has a burst mode available from the Drive section of the "+/-" menu. The following menu items appear: Single, Burst, AEB, Movie Capture, and Interval Shooting. The burst mode isn’t exceptionally fast, but that is expected for a compact 10.1-megapixel digital camera. The S1050 took a little less than 2 fps, and the 8.1-megapixel S850 wasn’t noticeably faster. The camera took 4-5 shots before blinking its LED for 10-12 seconds to write the images to the internal memory. That’s a lot of processing time.

On the right side of the multi-selector are the self-timer choices. Users can delay the shutter by 2 or 10 seconds, or can activate a double self-timer. I tried to fire the double self-timer, but the camera froze.

Playback Mode
The playback mode has a designated button that is labeled with the triangular playback symbol and the print icon. The print icon is a bit confusing because it looks like a button used to create print orders. But if you enter the playback mode and then push the button again thinking you’re ordering prints, then you’ll exit the playback mode. To make things worse, there is no way to create print orders – at least on the pre-production models.

Pictures can be played back individually and magnified, but scrolling through the images is a bit difficult. The camera displays a blurry image first, and it takes a second for the image to clear up and look normal. The following menu can be accessed with the Menu button.