Manual Control Options
The Samsung i8 is not a camera for advanced photographers who need lots of manual controls. Rather, it is a trendy model for less experienced shooters favoring simplicity and ease of use. There are no controls for shutter speed or aperture, but the camera does include manual options available in the Program mode, such as metering, ISO speed, white balance, and exposure compensation.
Auto Focus
The i8 features TTL (through the lens) autofocus technology, a widely used method of autofocus in digital cameras. In the Shooting menu, the camera offers two autofocus options, Center and Multi. The Multi mode uses several points, shown with green boxes, to find the best focus for each shot, while Center mode only focuses on the center of the screen. There is a yellow assist light to help the camera achieve focus. The i8 does not appear to have any Continuous autofocus mode, meaning each time you move your camera or change the zoom, you will have to refocus by pressing down halfway on the shutter button. Samsung reports a range of 80 centimeters to infinity in Normal mode, 5 to 80 centimeters in Macro mode, and 1 to 5 centimeters in Super Macro mode.
As we mentioned in the Components section, the i8 has a Macro mode that works quite well, getting as close as 2 inches before losing focus. The camera also has a Face Detection mode, which looks for faces and focuses on them. Samsung reports the i8 can detect up to nine faces at a time. Our experience with it showed the camera could indeed detect faces if they were facing the camera directly. We couldn’t get nine faces at once, but the mode looks helpful for achieving sharp focus in group shots.
Manual Focus
The i8 does not have a manual focus option. This is just as well, because manual focusing in point-and-shoot cameras is almost never easy to use.
Exposure
There are no shutter speed or aperture controls in the i8, but there are metering and exposure compensation options. As is typical of many point-and-shoots, the exposure compensation can be adjusted from -2 EV to +2 EV, at 0.3 EV steps. There is also an exposure bracketing mode in the Burst tab of the Function menu in Program mode. Users will have to determine the correct exposure by eye, because there is no live histogram display.
Metering
There are three metering modes available, Center Weighted, Spot, and Multi, located in the Function menu. This gives a good range of options for different shooting situations, from backlit scenes (Spot metering) to scenes of high contrast (Multi metering).
White Balance
The i8 includes Custom and Auto white balance options, as well as a number of presets for different types of light sources. The presets include Daylight, Cloudy, Fluorescent H, Fluorescent L, and Tungsten. The Custom setting is quite easy to use; just point your camera at something white and hit the shutter. These options give shooters a lot of control of white balance, which is very important if you find your photos are taking on odd color casts. However, there aren’t more advanced white balance options, such as Kelvin temperature adjustment, white balance compensation, or white balance bracketing.
ISO
ISO speed can be adjusted in Program mode through the Function menu. ISO speeds of Auto, 80, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, or 3200 (at only 3 megapixels) can be chosen. This is a solid range for a point-and-shoot, but we’ll have to wait until we get the camera in our test lab to see how noisy the high ISO settings are.
Shutter Speed
Samsung reports the i8’s shutter speed ranges from 1 to 1/2000 of a second, with exposure length increasing up to 16 seconds in Night mode. Shutter speed cannot be adjusted manually. This is a reasonable range, and even allows users some room to experiment with longer exposures in Night mode.
Aperture
The aperture range on the i8 is f/3.5 to f/4.5, and like shutter speed cannot be adjusted manually. Often a problem in internal lenses, this limited aperture range may not let in enough light for low light shooting, causing blurry photos.
