Here is a review about Samsung C10 camcorder.
Luxurious and Sharp crystal rose cam
The SMX-C10/C14 comes with 3 colors such as red/blue/grey, and by adopting high glossy coating, luxurious and sharp feeling stylish design is outstanding. The size is 38.5mm x 56.5mm x 114mm such a small, and the weight is 156g, and including a battery, it’s just 162g of weight.
The design of this product is based on black tone color and metallic coating around lens, the LCD joint and zoom/recording control part. Through that, it emphasizes the simplicity, and the curved line from the front to the top adopts the double coating reminding the piano, and the gradation with red/blue/grey makes this more luxurious. The plastic of grip part reminding an sand blasted aluminum reduces the slipperiness, and the small body provides better grip.
The 2.7 inch LCD provides cool display which couldn’t be seen from minimalism products. The control buttons around the LCD consist of joystick type which is combination of menu and way buttons and recording buttons. On the side of the product coming out when openign the LCD, power, one touch share, display adjustment, Easy.Q, play button, speaker, and USB port are located.
Free and convenient!
Different from former products, the battery cover opens when pushing it to open direction, and after opening the cover, memory and battery slot, power port, and AV port are noticed. This supports SD/SDHC/MMC plus memory which are widely used and cheap. Composite port(Voice left/right 2 lines, video 1 line) normally used is supported for AV port, and the battery time is 160 min continuous recording and 180 min of continuous playing time. The power source is through the power adaptor and also the USB connection to charge it, and using the adaptor, it takes 2 hours to fully charge, while 3 hours and 40 min by the USB. The USB port is normally used USB MINI-B, so with a computer, you can charge it anywhere, so you don’t need to carry the adaptor.
The SMX-C10/C14 takes the advantage of the HMX-R10 and makes up for the weak points. The 25 degree tilted lens makes it up the weak point of the grip by reducing the size and look better. The 25 degree tilted lens is made up for the wrist bent, so it reduces the fatigue on wrist and joint by not bending the wrist, and by securing the view, it’s very convenient to record a video.
Distortion for TV out by resolution
The SMX-C10 only supports a video recording, and the C10 also supports the picture. The H.264 codec has been adopted for videos, so it reduces the power consumption and size of files to provide the best capacity. With 720×480(60i), this supports TV highest/TV high/TV standard, while with 640×480(30p), it supports Web high/Standard. When TV out, many LCD/PDP TV supports 16:9 ratio, so 4:3/16:9 can be selected. Therefore, you can watch not distorted videos on wide TV, and it’s like this supports 10 resolutions.
Video capacity table
Setting the high reolution and quality, the SMX-C10 can record 12 hours and 40 min with the 32GB SDHC memory, and when it comes to the SMX-C14 has the 16GB internal memory, so 6 hours and 20 min recording is possible, and on top of that, with the 32GB SDHC memory, it supports 12 hours and 40 min, so up to 19 hours recording is supported. The SMX-C14 has the picture function and supports 4:3 / 16:9 modes. The resolution of 4:3 mode is 800×600 and 1600×1200, and 16:9 mode is 848×480 and 1696×960.
Easy, but different!
This camcorder has normal digital camcorder functions, but it’s not easy to understand all the options and use them. The SMX-C10/C14 supports the iScene mode and EasyQ mode. These 2 functions are to automatically set options according to the situations quickly.
The iScene function can be checked and changed through the men, and when changing the mode by the iScene, if there’s a set value which is the same as the automatically set value, it changes to the automatic set value. The iScene supports 15 modes such as sport, portrait, spotlight, beach, snow, fast movement, food, waterfalls, sunny, cloudy, fluorescent light, light bulb, evening, and deep night. When setting the auto mode, it changes to the optimized mode.
Users can set resolution, 16:9, exposure compensation, backlight compensation, focus, HDIS, effects, fader, wind noise elimination, digital zoom, interval recording, and guideline. The video resolution and 16:9 setting can be set like I explained before, and the exposure compensation can be adjusted to +-2, so it’s convenient to change brightness. The backlight compensation makes you get brighter picture, if objects are taken darkly due to the backlight. The focus can be set to auto, face recognition, and manual setting. The auto sets the focus on the close objects, the face recognition sets the focus when it recognizes objects as a person on the screen by eyes, nose, and mouth, and the manual sets the focus by using the way button located on the left side of the LCD. The HDIS has been improved from the DIS, so more smooth videos can be recorded.
This supports 11 effects such as normal, black and white, sepia, reversion, art, emboss, mosaic, mirror, pastel, whitish, and step printing. For normal video, ‘norma’l, for old style video ‘black and white’, or ‘sepia’, for a reversed video ‘reversion’, and for a video like a comics ‘art’ can be selected. You can choose ‘emboss’ for 3 dimension feeling, ‘mosaic’ for mosaic, ‘mirror’ for symmetry video, ‘pastel’ for pastel feeling video, ‘whitish’ for clean and transparent feeling video, and ‘step printing’ for low frame video.
The fader is fading effect like a TV or a movie, and 3 settings such as beginning, end, and beginning-end are supported. When it’s noisy, setting the wind noise elimination, the noise is reduced. Basically, this supports 10x optical zoom, and setting the digital zoom, up to 1200x zoom is possible.
You have seen sunrise and sunset, and flower blooming with sunshine for many times. The interval recording makes it possible to watch the long time scene such as natural phenomenon. This supports 3 guidelines such as cross, lattice, and TV stable region, so according to angles and output type, users can use the appropriate guideline.
For those who don’t want to use the iscene mode, there’s a Easy.Q mode. This mode is an auto mode of digital camera, sets every option automatically and optimizes them. It’s useful in various situations, because optimized setting is possible. However, once using this option, users can’t change any options. The 2 modes and options can also be applied to the picture function of C14 for great pictures.
Through the mode button located on the side, users can check and edit videos. Through this mode, users can preview the recorded video, and for functions, play setting, delete, protection, storyboard print, print, and sharing functions are supported.
The video which the cursor is located can be previewed, and when selecting it, it’s played on the full screen. 4 options such as whole play, play one, repeat whole, and repeat one are supported. Recorded videos can be edited without any separate program, and the basically provided editing functions are divide and mix. Going into the play mode->menu->edit->divide, you can see the selection screen, and once choosing it, it starts to play, and after pausing, selecting the divide button activated, the division is executed. Executing Edit->Mix, the screen becomes the same screen as the screen making the playlist. And selecting the 2 files, the order is displayed, and the OK button is activated. Once touching the Ok, the mix is started.
The storyboard print randomly takes out 16 scenes from a video, and stores them as a picture. Through this picture, people will know the content of the video without watching the video, so it’s very useful, when uploading a video on the web.