Samsung S800 Review

The Samsung Digimax S800 combines an eight megapixel CCD imager and a Samsung SHD-branded 3x optical zoom lens with a fairly standard 35 - 105mm equivalent focal range. For framing images, the S800 forgoes any form of optical viewfinder - increasingly rare on digicams these days - in favor of a large 2.4" LCD display with 112,000 pixels. The lack of an optical viewfinder, while not unusual, is a shame since they add a good degree of versatility - letting you get the shot when you can't make out the LCD in bright sunlight, or save battery life by disabling the LCD when accurate framing isn't vital. Images are stored on Secure Digital / MultiMediaCards, or in 20MB of internal memory.

The Samsung S800 has ten scene modes to help beginners achieve the results they're looking for without the need to understand subtleties like shutter speeds, apertures and the like. The S800 determines exposures with multi or spot metering, and offers 2.0EV of exposure compensation in 1/2EV increments. Seven white balance settings are available including an auto mode, five presets and the ability to measure a custom white balance. ISO sensitivity is controlled automatically or manually, ranging from 50 to 400. The Digimax S800 also offers a movie mode, capturing clips at up to VGA resolution with audio, using MPEG4 compression - which offers higher quality and better compression than the MotionJPEG compression used in most cameras. Power comes from two AA batteries - either Alkaline disposable, or NiMH rechargeable.