Samsung Digimax V800

Viewfinder
There is no viewfinder on the V800: everything is done through the LCD screen. This is pretty common with cameras of this type, and it isn’t really a problem. The LCD screen provides a fast preview of the image that’s good enough to shoot accurately.

LCD Screen
The 2.5-inch, 230K pixel screen is quite bright and clear, with impressive detail and accurate color. We saw no evidence of solarization on this screen, but we weren’t able to test it under different lighting conditions. Although the screen is smaller than the 3-inch screen on the Fujifilm FinePix V10 and the Kodak EasyShare-one, it’s the same resolution. This means that it’s not quite as good for showing pictures, but it’s big and bright enough for a couple of people to view pictures upon it easily. We weren’t able to test the coverage of the LCD against the recorded image, but it looked pretty close to 100%. The cover of the screen is shiny and can show reflections of lights above, though, which can be somewhat distracting.

Flash
Samsung claims that the flash has a range of between 9.8 and 6.5 feet (at wide and telephoto zoom settings respectively), and our limited testing would seem to bear this out. Modes for auto, auto & red eye reduction, fill-in, slow synch and off are available: None of this is anything to write home about, but on the other hand it’s not a lacking selection or range.

Zoom Lens
The lens is a Schneider-Kreuznach, the same type commonly found on compact Kodaks. It has 3x zoom with a range of 7.8 to 23.4mm. That’s equivalent to a 38mm to 114mm on a 35mm film camera: a pretty standard range for a camera at this price point. When the power is turned off, the lens folds back into the case and a lens cap slides out to protect the front element. In macro mode, the lens focuses down to 4cm, and in our limited testing, the lens produced sharp images.