Saturday, January 2, 2010

Samsung ST10, My outstanding haptic digital camera


Samsung digital imaging is releasing the ST10 having haptic function, 3 inch touch screen, and innovative smart functions.



The ST10 is small and simple with the size 91×60x19mm. The weight except battery and memory card is only 124.2g. Metallic front part has its own feel, and it has simple horizontal pattern.


The biggest feature of the ST10 is the lens and lens cap. The lens is not a protruding type, but working inside the camera. The lens cap reminding me of the moon in the sky is not an automatic opening type, but an innovative rotational lens cap. On the back, poly-carbonate has been used to make the design better with combination of smooth feel of plastic and colors.



Unlike other digital cameras, the back of the ST10 has used the big 3 inch haptic LCD. Former touch LCD has some problem to see the color and reflection light, because they used one more touch screen panel on the LCD. However, the LCD has the touch screen panel on the lower part of color expression part, so it provides more vivid and bright quality, and allows you to see clear images under the sunlight. Through the haptic function, it lets you know the touch by vibration, and the vibration makes the boring moment of adjustment interesting.



The use of the ST10 is different from the beginning. When turning on a camera, normally we open a slide cap or push a power button, but you need to rotate the rotational cap for the ST10 on the front. On the top, a power buttons is provided to use play and settings without opening the cap, and if you push the play button long, you can turn it on as a play mode.
Former slide cap type products had a cam on the grip part, so the cap used to be closed due to miss operation. However, the rotational type will not be closed, so it’s very convenient design.
Even though it has the PMP function, the ST10 is a digital camera. Therefore, it has a smart auto mode and perfect portrait system which Samsung digital imaging provides.



At first, there’s a smart auto shot mode selection mode. Various modes such as ‘Night scenery’, ‘Night human’, ‘Backlight scenery’, ‘Backlight human’, ‘Human’, ’Closeup’, ‘Closeup character’, ‘Tripod’, ‘Moving object’ are supported, and when focusing with a half shutter, CCD takes the scenery, internal image solution analyzes it, and optimized mode will be set. This smart auto shot mode fills the spot of manual mode which is for experts, so you can take a picture on the optimized mode any time without using a manual mode.
The ST10 has unique ‘Smart face recognition’ function. It remembers up to 10 faces, and when taking those faces, the camera confirms the priority of those faces with a bar graph, and according to the priority, focus and exposure are set. Not only this. It also stores pictures on each folder automatically, so you don’t need to sort pictures manually.



The perfect portrait system can be used for, if eyes, nose, and mouth of the object can be recognized. If there’s a human in the scenery recognized on the CCD, it automatically recognizes the face and sets focus/exposure/fix/shot with the face on the center. Most of the digital camera users take the pictures of them to upload their blog or mini homepage. At this time, this camera automatically takes and optimizes pictures focused on the human, so it’s such a convenient system.



‘Normal’ recognizes faces on the CCD, and set focus and exposure automatically. If there’s more than one face, it recognizes the closest face as a main one, and displays it with a green box, and the other faces are displayed with gray boxes to show that the camera recognizes them.
‘Beauty shot’ function compensates recognized dark circle in eyes, skin light, and noise faces. Since you can get splendid pictures, you don’t need any other editing program.



‘Self guide’ recognizes faces with a beep sound when taking a self shot. When a face is in the scene, it repeats the sound to let users know the face is recognized, and the face is in the center, the sound repeats more quickly. Because you can’t take a self show with looking at the LCD, it’s so convenient. There’s a one way. You can see your face using the rotational cap, and takes a picture. Then you will see your face is almost in the center. If you don’t want the sound, you can turn it of on the setting.
‘Smile shot’ recognizes faces, sets focus and exposure automatically, and takes a shot automatically, when the faces smile. But you have to smile showing your teeth or big smile to be recognized well.
Among the flash setting, ‘Red eye reduction’ and ‘Red eye editing’ functions use the face recognition system of the Perfect portrait system, and through the algorithm of red-eye recognition, it automatically fixes the colors, when it recognizes red-eye effect.
‘Face’ among the way of sorting in the smart album using the smart face recognition mode and pictures which faces can be recognized sorts pictures by the order of the most frequent faces.
Besides, there are many convenient functions such as frame guide, photo style selector, smart album, and smart touch AF.





The Photo Style Selector helps get various feeling of pictures by loading the style effect, when taking or playing pictures. It has Soft with soft and bright feeling, vivid with strong feeling, forest with natural color, retro with brown and old feeling, classic with blue and cool feeling, negative with color reversion style, and custom RGB.



The ‘Smart album’ managing pictures and videos through the internal recognizing algorithm automatically sorts files by time, month, color, type picture/video/voice, and face, so file management by theme is convenient. When pushing the arrow button on preview, it gives a vibration to show the skip, and pushing it long, you can skip them quickly.



When setting the Smart touch AF, there’s a white box on the center, and once clicking the spot you want, then it sets the spot as a focus region. Since this has no limit for focus region, you can set focus anywhere you want.



The Auto shot mode is to take a picture automatically with changing white balance, ISO, and flash to get optimized pictures. Here, users can set flash, focus type, timer, focus region, face recognition, resolution, quality, picture style and voice memo.



Program shot mode is the same as the normal program mode, and you can use all options which the ST10 supports.



13 various scene options are already set on the scene mode. These 13 options have been picked by researching the most frequent situations, and it’s the most among cameras of the same range.



For the IS function, you can reduce the hand blur through DIS. It’s a good function in the dark place or when users are moving.



The video shot mode supports SD resolution 800×592(20 fps), 640×480(30fps or 15fps), and 320×240(30fps or 15fps). Optical 3x zoom is possible, and using the MPEG4, it has a good video quality with a small size of files. There are options such as exposure compensation, white balance, IS, photometry, image style, and voice recording, and pause is possible when recording.



Recently I see a lot of people using portable multimedia devices. For example, using the PMP to listen to music and watch video lectures, movies, and animation and taking pictures for foods, friends, and scenery are the general digital life.






The ST10 supports not only the music mode with MP3, but also video modes such as SDC converted by Samsung converter program and AVI. And it supports most of the functions which PMP has such as 32x searching function, skip files, auto skip, previous file, and remembering the last spot,



The ST10 supports text mode with TXT file extension, and also supports auto scroll function with the speed of 1 ~ 5, and background music is also available.



The hVGA 3 inch touch LCD reduces the reflection light, so you can enjoy pictures, videos, text, and TV videos even in the sunlight.



Connecting this product supporting USB 2.0to a PC, this is recognized as a moveable disk and you can see folders. MP3 files go to the MP3 folder, SDC files converted with Samsung Converter go to the PMP folder, and text files go to the TEXT folder. That’s it.



The ST10 by Samsung digital imaging mixes 2-3 things in one. The internal 3 inch Hybrid Touch screen Panel is enough to enjoy pictures and multimedia. And the haptic effect responding selection and decision provides another pleasure to use the rotational lens cover 9.2M pixel digital camera.



This review represents the sole opinion of their individual authors and HANDSONMOBILE 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.
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