Here is a long review about Samsung ST10 digital camera
Filling life with fun, ‘ST10’
To have fun time, it’s the best to spend time with friends, lovers, and family, but a little record of my days alone can fill my diary sufficiently. As my life partner, the Samsung multimedia camera which has fun of touch, hearing, and taking is the best. This concept is Samsung’s own from long time ago. This year, the Samsung has started to be on the market with the ST10 adopting haptic touch screen LCD and multimedia function such as MP3/MPM/Text viewer.
Haptic touch! Starting fun from finger tip
Haptic! Almost all of you might have heard it. It’s the title of Samsung’s best seller cell phone. Vibration of body gives fun when pushing it, and makes my day. It’s not just simple touch, but when taking a picture, by touch it can set AF and trace, so it gives unique fun as a digital camera, and with various multimedia functions, it will be my friend when I’m lonely. The ST10 is a kind of my partner giving me joy everyday instead of my friend.
3 inch hVGA(460K pixel) crystal haptic touch screen
The 3 inch 460K pixel haptic touch screen is the same as the face of the ST10. 3 levels of haptic intensity is supported, and touch action can be set as haptic/sound/haptic+sound, so you can choose it. You can just touch it with your fingertips, and the touch feeling is great. Rather than the skin of fingertip, by the nail of fingertip, it works exactly, or you can use the included touch pen.
The LCD is really vivid. The newly installed internal hTSP is upgraded one from normal TSP in slimness and vividness. It’s completely different from the NV100HD which has a hard panel. Taking out the reflection light, it raises transmission rate and reduces noise. Therefore, in the sunlight outdoors, it has better visibility and it’s more vivid indoors. However, due to this TSP system, it leaves some afterimage for 3 sec when touching. At first, it made me embarrassed, but after using it for a day, you can feel there’s no problem at all. When taking a picture, it has really great viewing angle, so shot from various angles is possible. One weakness is that it’s easily stained with fingerprints or oil, so you have to clean it up frequently.
AF area setting by touch and Smart touch chasing objects
One more advantage of the haptic touch is AF area setting and touch tracking. On AF mode, after setting on smart touch, by touching the AF area on the screen, it follows the first AF point even if you changes composition. It’s especially useful when taking a closeup shot which is easy to be out of focus. And when taking a human picture, you can focus exactly on the human after setting the compositon.
More fun with the haptic
The ST10 has no 4-way button. Except zoom and shutter, almost everything depends on touch. Play is also the same. Up to 16 thumbnails can be displayed, and through the menu, playing by date (Week/Day) and color is possible.
Self shot with seeing my face
When the ST10 has released, people have focused on the rotational lens cap on the front. At first, people said ‘I don’t understand’, ‘It looks cheap’, and so on, and when I got this product, I also didn’t know what it is. Yes. But, anyway it excited a curiosity. And this is really good. The best thing is that i could take a self shot with seeing my face and checking my handsome angle.
To be honest, the rotational lens cap doesn’t give high quality feeling. However, when taking this outside, I could find out some other good things. This lens cap moving with 50 degree plays a role of quick power control instead of the power button on the top. Besides, the glowing chrome plating surface is a substitution of mirror for women. It’s funny with plastic which seems distorted. The rubbing feeling of gear is quite unique.
Like compact cosmetic women carry, I can feel affection. Looking at this, using the self guide, you can check composition, expression, and handsome angle. If you are a woman accustomed to a cell phone, you will enjoy taking a self shot with the ST10 in rest room, subway, coffee shot, and street. It could have been better if it’s made of strong material, but it’s a bit sweat if looking at this in hands.
19mm slim compact, high glossy metal
To become an MP3, good portability is needed with slim design, because we wear light clothes on spring. For that, the slim design and high glossy metal body of the ST10 are really good choice. Rounding edge and rotational cam is a bit protruded, but the body style is rectangular, so you can carry this in your pocket. On the front, there’s a microphone and flash, and on the side, there’s lens and AF. With hair line process, it gives higher quality feeling.
It comes with silver/red/black/gold. As a champagne gold color, this is harmonious with black color. The red color will be popular in young people like unique things.
Optical 3x inner zoom lens
The lens is optical 3x inner zoom type. On 35mm, it has 38-114mm. It has F3.5-4.5, and as an inner zoom lens, it has good specification, chromatic aberration correction function, and smooth zoom control. It’s possible during 1cm Super macro performance and video recording. The surrounded quality is quite. The overall performance is relatively good. But sometimes, it fails to set AF with a red box, so you have to check a green box when AF.
Simple control
Because basic controls are made with touch, there are less buttons. On the top, neat style power button and shutter button are located, and on the back, there is only zoom dial and menu/play button. Since the zoom dial is located on the right position to make thumb control easy, there’s less camera shake. Grip is also not that bad, but due to the smooth body, you can drop the camera. Therefore, you have to use your wrist.
Good battery performance for multimedia
The battery is 3.7v 900mAh wide and thin SLB-0937, and it’s bigger than other slim models. It should have a good battery, because it supports pictures, videos, and MP3. Only for the battery area, it’s one third of the camera. Samsung must have considered much for the battery size. The battery and SD/SDHC memory is put on the bottom, and there’s a safety latch.
The performance is good. Used for pictures, it takes 260 CIPA, 130 min for videos, 330 min (5 hours 30 min) for MP3, 190 min for PMP, and 210 min for text viewer. Only as an MP3 player or movie player, it’s quite good. Of course, if all those functions are used, the battery performance might be different. It’s enough for one day, but to take a lot of pictures and listen to MP3 for a long time, it’s better to have a spare battery.
20 pin connector for Charge, Transfer, AV output, and Earphones
Except AA battery mode, All Samsung digital cameras use the 20 pin connector. The ST10 also does the same thing with the 20 pin connector on the side such as AC adaptor charge, charge, USB transfer, AV output, and stereo earphones. It’s almighty as it is. It takes 150 min for AC adaptor charge, so you’d better charge it before sleeping. It directly connects the body to charge, so if you need more charger, you might have to buy another one.
‘Smart Face Recognition’ prioritizing me
The beauty function of Samsung digital camera originating from Beauty shot becomes the smart face recognition function. This prioritizes and registers faces of people, and set focus and AF for the prioritized faces. In case the focus sets on other people when taking group pictures, it’s very useful. Especially, you can prioritize a person who you love, so you will be loved with this item.
When playing human pictures, once face registration icon comes up on the right, by register the face the camera will remember the face. And with the smart face recognition, when the registered person is in the camera angle, the camera recognizes the person first. Also a color bar next to rectangular box displays the priority. According to the manual, sing an external memory, up to 10 people can be registered.
My handsome face ‘Beauty shot’
The beauty shot makes your skin handsome and flawless without any editing work. It’s in the scene mode, and this is a very popular function by women who has sensitive skin.
The ST10 also can set the skin brightness and fix intensity for 3 levels. The basic fixing performance is kind of strong, so +1 will be effective, and to raise the range and intensity more, Skin compensation +2 or Skin+Brightness+2 will be appropriate. If you set the skin compensation on +3, it affects the background also. (Look at the wall in the Compensation level +3) Also using pictures which were taken, the skin compensation is possible with the internal editing function.
Gift set ‘ST10’ for beautiful faces
Other than the beauty shot, it supports face recognition, self guide, smile shot, blink detection, and motion timers other than the beauty shot. The face recognition function takes a picture with focusing on faces and prevents failure, no matter what mode is selected.
By focusing on the shaded part of faces, it prevents insufficient exposure and dark faces, and expresses faces bright. However, when the situation changes such as backlight, and face angle change, the face recognition rate used to be dropped. Like the WB500, more exact and quick recognition is needed for this part.
When taking a self shot, the self guide makes beep sound with short interval, so users would know their faces are in the center. Because the ST10 has a rotational mirror cap, you can get the right composition more quickly. It makes beep sound with long interval when the face is in the side, so once getting some skill, you will get the composition for your own self shot.
When setting the smile shot, the camera remembers your face, and automatically takes a shot when it recognizes the smile on your face. Since sometimes the moment taking a shot changes after recognition, I think it’s better it had the function recognizing the intensity of smile.
The blink detection is to detect unexpected blink, takes 2 consecutive pictures, and then you can select the better picture.
The Motion timer is an additional self shot function including the self timer. It senses the motion of human and then takes a shot when they stop moving. It’s very useful for group pictures instead of the self timer.
The frame guide function is to notify preferred composition to other people. When asking someone to take a picture, this function is used. You can just tell them ‘Please, take a shot in the transparent border’, and then the person can take a picture with the composition. This function allows you to have pictures on your preference.
The ACB is a function to compensate the dark part, and make a natural picture when contrast is high. By properly mixing human afraid of sun, or scenery, this makes the natural contrast. With the face recognition, the ACB is better.
Enjoyable day with the ST10
As additional functions, the ST10 supports video, MP3, Text viewer, and PMP functions. On top of that, this can be used as a moveable disk with SDHC memory. With MP3 files and earphones, you can enjoy music when moving, and indoors with the internal speaker, you can enjoy music. To use these functions, you have to make Text, PMP, and MP3 folders in the memory. After that, copy files to complete preparation.
Slide show and text viewer with music
This can play MP3 music files with a speaker or earphones. When loading MP3 files first, it takes a little loading time. Including SRS, various EQ such as live, classical, jazz, dance, and rock, volume control and holding touch are supported. Sound quality is enough as an additional function. According to the kind of music, once setting the EQ, it’s just like an MP3 player. Personally, I prefer the Rock mode, and sometimes listen on the SRS mode. Bass is kind of weak.
40mW+40mW’s output, Noise, and frequency range are similar to the specification of the NV3. Output looks weak, but it’s enough, unless you are in noisy places such as streets or subway. Even though you can take a picture with music, you can see pictures with background music. If listening to music and watching slideshow, you can have a comfort time.
The Text viewer can also be used with music. This supports TXT file under 99,999 pages. Sometimes, it can’t show you Korean properly, but you can solve this by opening it with Notepad and saving it as an ANSI or Unicode type.
Video file play PMP function
Like other Samsung convergence models, you have to convert video files with the software with the ST10. if the video has a subtitle, you have to convert with the subtitle. It takes a long time to convert files, so you have to do it before you go out. I think you are able to understand by looking at the Power off option for PC, don’t you? File extension is the SCD, and once copying on the PMP folder, and setting on the PMP mode, it automatically reads them. It can play a video file for 190 min, so you can enjoy one drama or show, and when taking a long distance train or bus, one movie is good. Video and Audio format is Xvid MPEG4 and MPEG layer2. It could have been much better if it could play video files without converting.
Recognizing 11 scene modes ‘Smart Auto’
The Smart auto of the ST10 recognizes 11 mode such as macro, macro text, white, scenery, action, tripod, night scenery, night human, backlight, backlight human, and human. This function always helps me whenever and wherever.
Depending on brightness, human, and direction of sunlight, the camera judges the mode and the icon on the upper side automatically changes, and the camera sets itself. If there’s no specific mode, just set it on the smart auto mode. The scenery mode which is set by the smart auto mode can express more vivid and clear colors than the normal auto mode.
Scene recognition functions such as closeup, human, backlight, macro text, night scenery, and tripod are very useful function. When setting on the tripod mode, the camera automatically recognizes it, uses low ISO for long time. Such a smart camera. The Smart flash which is automatically set is a function to light the flash automatically depending on the situation, so users need to turn it off depending on the situation. It’s because it gives inconvenience to others with unexpected flash.
Simple function MPEG4 video
The video of the ST10 supports 800×592 20fps and 640×480 30fps. The file type is convenient AVI. When recording, it has the optical zoom function, and there’s no sound quality loss. A little time delay is a bit of weakness after mode change or pushing the recording button, but the quality is enough for normal videos, even though it’s not HD type. Besides, by supporting electronic type IS function, it compensates the shake on tele zoom mode. And the white balance and color style can be applied to videos.
Electronic IS function ‘DIS’
The DIS function is Samsung digital imaging’s own technology to handle shaking images by software. It’s not securing the shutter speed by raising ISO, nor combination of high ISO short shutter and long shutter, but the type taking 1 picture with short shutter, and then eliminating the noise. It’s a new Advanced DIS type, so on DIS mode, it takes a little more time to take. The life is kind of great, so if you take your time, you can get more precious pictures. This is comparison of auto mode and DIS mode on maximum tele zoom, and the ISO is 400 on the auto mode, and 800 on the DIS mode. Compared to the DIS mode, the color sense is a bit reddish, but we can’t feel the noise difference, and there’s no chroma reduction.
High speed continuous shot function ‘Motion capture’
The motion capture takes 6 pictures for every 5 sec up to 30 pictures, and files are saved with 640×480 size. It’s not a video. You can express the fun moment of moving with GIF animation.
AEB (Auto Exposure Bracketing) getting appropriate exposure.
People can’t handle the machine perfectly on various circumstances such as too much exposure, or less, so AEB taking pictures with various exposure values is needed. You can select proper pictures which have been taken with the AEB.
Great detail, vivid color
The ST10 has 1/2.5 inch 9M sensor. Compared to other compact digital camera having 10~12M pixel, the pixel is not that good, but the high ISO quality looks better, and supporting the ISO 3200 without size reduction will be quite good function indoors.
Especially, there might be some people who are not satisfied with the optical zoom, but looking at the resolution of center of wide angle with less chromatism or tele zoom, it seems the great details of the NV3 is reborn. Even though it has the inner zoom lens, for me it looks the best among all recent Samsung cameras. The problem is that AF fails with red box, even though the ST10 has quick and good shot function. I hope this will be reduced for official products.
The colors sense of the ST10 is different from the ST50. Skin color ton is similar to the WB500. It’s a little reddish. Especially, the color sense of humans indoors is expressed splendidly by flash light.
It supports 9 colors styles, and RGB color adjustment on user custom. Compared to other recent Samsung digital camera, it’s more perfect in function-wise. On top of that, you can get colors you want by compensating colors with taken pictures.
Special high ISO quality of the ST10
Like I mentioned earlier, the quality in high ISO of the ST10 is really good. Without size reduction, it supports ISO80 ~ 3200. The absence of OIS can be filled by the DIS using the great quality of ISO 800, and like other Samsung digital cameras, the green noise which is made on medium brightness on ISO 200 is less than others. Moreover, detail and color noise elimination will be able to be used for WEB up to ISO 1600 without any trouble.
Looking at the quality by ISO, it’s greater than other compact digital cameras. In conclusion, 9M pixel and multimedia concept are rather successful for me. Dark lens caused by the inner zoom lens can be filled by high ISO and DIS, I think. On Auto ISO, the ISO changes up to 400, so in the darkness, DIS or manual ISO 800 or 1600 will not be a problem. On ISO 3200, magenta colors start to get involved, so it’s better to use up to ISO 1600.
I like the Auto white balance mode indoors. Personally, I’d like to give a high score for the high ISO and inside balance of the ST10. It supports various white balances and RGB on the custom, but I think the Auto white balance will be enough.
Happy haptic touch multimedia digital camera
There were some words about Samsung convergence digital camera. ‘Focus on camera functions…’, ‘Picture quality is so-so’, ‘Battery is weak’, and so on. Of course, there’s no change about multimedia interface, but based on the better picture quality, haptic touch predicts the ST10 as a best seller. Especially, high ISO quality and picture quality are quite great, and the unique rotational cap on the front is sufficient to catch eyes of youngers.
The new installed 3 inch haptic effect is a power source for fun. Vividness of the LCD and the pleasure of control cover all weakness.
However, I was unsatisfied with a little delay when changing to the multimedia mode, smart auto mode recognition rate, AF failure, and completion for additional functions. If Samsung listens to customers’ voice and requirements and makes them up, Samsung multimedia digital camera will be in the great position in the market in 2009.
Like my lover, in my hands it records what I see and feel as a picture and video, and provides MP3 and movies. Perfectly eliminating the word ‘Boredom’, the ST10 will give ‘pleasure’ everyday among youngers.
This review represents the sole opinion of their individual authors and POPCONET and don’t express the opinion of Samsung Digital Imaging Co., Ltd., Samsungimaging.net or the opinion of any affiliates unless specifically marked as such.
For any further questions, or feedback, please visit POPCONET
Read more: http://www.samsungimaging.net/as-my-life-partner-samsung-digital-camera-is-the-best/#ixzz0bdrO3Eky
No comments:
Post a Comment