Zoom
A good 3x zoom range, though moderate performance.

39mm	117mm	5x Digital Zoom

The Samsung Digimax i5 zooms over the equivalent of a 39-117mm range, which provides a slightly longer telephoto than the average digital camera in its class. Details are somewhat soft at wide angle, and still slightly soft at telephoto. However, coma distortion at wide angle is only slight. The 5x digital zoom takes it out to 15x total, though with significant loss of quality.

Macro
A small macro area with good detail and high resolution, though flash is too bright. Super Macro mode captures a very small area, but with rather soft details.

Standard Macro	Macro with Flash	Super Macro

The Samsung Digimax i5's normal macro setting performs well, capturing a small minimum area of 1.75 x 1.31 inches (45 x 33 millimeters). Detail is strong and resolution high, with a moderate amount of softening in the corners from the lens. (Most cameras have some softening in the corners in macro mode.) In Super macro mode, the minimum area measured only 0.53 x 0.40 inches (13 x 10 millimeters), however, details were rather soft throughout the frame. The flash had trouble throttling down for the macro area, and overexposed the shot beyond usage. (Plan on using external lighting for your closest macro shots with the i5.)

Distortion
Moderate barrel distortion, though low pincushion.

This is the tendency for the lens to bend straight lines outward (like a barrel--usually at wide angle) or inward (like a pincushion--usually at telephoto). The Digimax i5's 0.6% barrel distortion at wide angle is actually less than average among the cameras I've tested. At the telephoto end, the i5's 0.2% pincushion is fairly low.

Barrel distortion at 39mm is 0.6%

Pincushion at 117mm is 0.2%

Chromatic aberration
High chromatic aberration, several bright pixels of coloration.

Wide: high and bright (top left @ 200%)	Tele: virtually none (top left @ 200%)

Chromatic aberration is rather high at wide angle, showing about 8-9 pixels of fairly bright coloration on either side of the target lines. At telephoto focal lengths though, chromatic aberration all but disappears. (This distortion is visible as a very slight colored fringe around the objects at the edges of the field of view on the resolution target.)

Corner Sharpness
Some softening in the left and right corners of the frame, strongest effect in the upper left corner.

Wide angle: Some softness in upper left corner.	Wide angle: Reference from center of frame.
Telephoto: Good sharpness (bottom right was the softest).	Telephoto: Reference from center of frame.

The Samsung Digimax i5 produced soft corners in a few shots, the greatest loss of sharpness occurring at wide angle focal lengths. At telephoto zoom settings, the centers were slightly softer than at wide angle, but the corners were sharper, producing a more uniform sharpness across the frame.

Exposure and White Balance

Indoors, incandescent lighting
Problems with Auto, best color with the Incandescent white balance setting, lower than average exposure compensation required.

Auto White Balance +0.3EV	Incandescent WB +0.3EV
Auto White Balance +0.3EV

Color balance indoors under incandescent lighting was best with the Incandescent white balance setting, though the Manual option also produced pretty good results (just a bit reddish). The Auto setting resulted in a very strong orange cast, a problem for purely "point & shoot" users who may not know to use the other white balance options. The i5 only required a +0.3 EV exposure compensation boost to get a good exposure, much less than average for this shot. Overall color is slightly dark, most notably in the blue flowers, which have some purplish tints as well. (A very common outcome for this shot.) Our test lighting for this shot is a mixture of 60 and 100 watt household incandescent bulb, a pretty yellow light source, but a very common one in typical home settings here in the US.

Outdoors, daylight
Good color balance with the Auto setting, vibrant color. Better than average exposure accuracy.

Auto White Balance, +0.7 EV	Daylight White Balance, +0.7 EV
Manual White Balance, +0.7 EV

Outdoor shots generally showed slightly bright exposures with blown out highlights. The Auto white balance setting did the best job here, as the Daylight shot was quite orange, and the Manual shot slightly red. Shadow detail was also slightly limited, with high noise. Exposure accuracy overall was better than average, though, as the camera required less exposure compensation than average.

See full set of test images with explanations
See thumbnails of all test and gallery images

Resolution
High resolution, 1,200 lines of strong detail.

Our laboratory resolution chart revealed sharp, distinct line patterns down to about 1,200 lines per picture height, with extinction at around 1,800, a good performance for a 5-megapixel camera. (The camera produced slight color artifacts at lower line frequencies though, visible in the full-sized res target shots.) Use these numbers to compare with other cameras of similar resolution, or use them to see just what higher resolution can mean in terms of potential detail. Beware that while you might be able to make out what looks like distinct lines at numbers higher than those we've mentioned here, the camera is just doing its best to continue interpreting the lines. If you zoom in and follow them from the wider portions, you'll see the lines converge and reappear several times, so the lines you see at 1,500 and higher are really only artifacts generated by the camera's imaging system.

Strong detail to 1,200 lines horizontal	Strong detail to 1,200 lines vertical

See full set of test images with explanations
See thumbnails of all test and gallery images

Sharpness & Detail
Fairly crisp definition of high contrast subjects, though noise suppression does interfere quite a bit with lower contrast areas.

Pretty good definition of high-contrast elements, despite slightly soft appearance overall.	Subtle detail: Hair Noise suppression tends to blur detail in areas of subtle contrast, as in the darker parts of Marti's hair here.

The Samsung Digimax i5's images are slightly soft overall, without any strong over-sharpening or edge enhancement on the camera's part, though definition of high-contrast details is actually pretty good. (Edge enhancement creates the illusion of sharpness by enhancing colors and tones right at the edge of a rapid transition in color or tone.)

Noise-suppression systems in digital cameras tend to flatten-out detail in areas of subtle contrast. The effects can often be seen in shots of human hair, where the individual strands are lost and an almost "watercolor" look appears. The crop at far right shows this, with very limited detail in the low-contrast area of her hair.

ISO & Noise Performance
Moderately high noise at the normal sensitivity settings, very high noise that blurs detail at the higher settings.

ISO 100	ISO 200	ISO 400

The Samsung Digimax i5's ISO 100 setting produced moderately high noise, with only slightly blurred detail in the dark areas. As the ISO setting increases, so does the noise level and the amount of blurring that results, and its images at ISO 400 are quite soft, with bright noise pixels that alter the color balance.

Extremes: Sunlit and low light tests
High resolution with pretty good detail, though slightly high contrast and limited shadow detail with high noise. Pretty good low-light performance, capable of capturing bright images under average city street lighting and slightly darker conditions.

+0.0 EV	+0.3 EV	+0.7 EV

Sunlight:
Because digital cameras are more like slide film than negative film (in that they tend to have a more limited tonal range), we test them in the harshest situations to see how they handle scenes with bright highlights and dark shadows, as well as what kind of sensitivity they have in low light. The shot above is designed to mimic the very harsh, contrasty effect of direct noonday sunlight, a very tough challenge for most digital cameras. (You can read details of this test here.)

The i5 had a little trouble with the deliberately harsh lighting in the test above, producing slightly high contrast with strong highlights. Detail in the shadows was slightly limited, with high image noise. (In "real life" though, be sure to use fill flash in situations like the one shown above; it's better to shoot in the shade when possible.)

	1 fc 11 lux	1/2 fc 5.5 lux	1/4 fc 2.7 lux	1/8 fc 1.3 lux	1/16 fc 0.67 lux
ISO 50	3 sec f3.5	6 sec f3.5	12 sec f3.5	16 sec f3.5	16 sec f3.5

Low light:
The Samsung Digimax i5 captures bright images to about 1/4 foot-candle, which is about 1/4 as bright as average city street lighting at night, so the i5 should do just fine with typical city night scenes. Color balance was slightly pink from the Auto white balance setting. Keep in mind that the i5's very long shutter times demand the use of a tripod or other camera support to get sharp photos. (A useful trick is to just prop the camera on a convenient surface, and use its self-timer to release the shutter. This avoids any jiggling from your finger pressing the shutter button, and can work quite well when you don't have a tripod handy.)

Saturation & Hue Accuracy
Reasonably good color overall, though a tendency toward warmer, sometimes pink, color casts. Generally good hue accuracy.

In the diagram above, the squares show the original color, and the circles show the color that the camera captured. More saturated colors are located towards the periphery of the graph. Hue changes as you travel around the center. Thus, hue-accurate, highly saturated colors appear as lines radiating from the center.

Most consumer digital cameras produce color that's more highly saturated (more intense) than found in the original subjects. This is simply because most people like their color a bit brighter than life. The Samsung Digimax i5 follows this trend, though it tends to overdo the strong red and blue tones a bit. Where oversaturation is most problematic is on Caucasian skin tones, as it's very easy for these "memory colors" to be seen as too bright, too pink, too yellow, etc. The i5 did render skin tones a bit on the pink side in many cases, but they still appeared fairly natural. (The exception being the Musicians target, which had a pinkish cast caused by the strong blues in the image, which often trick digital cameras into producing warmer color balances.) Yellows and yellow-greens are also somewhat undersaturated.

The other important part of color rendition is hue accuracy. Hue is "what color" the color is. The i5 performed pretty well here, though the dark blues of the flower bouquet were somewhat dark with purplish tints. - This doesn't show in the color error plot above right, but was apparent in the test photos themselves. what can be seen in the error plot is the tendency to shift cyans towards pure blue, a very common tactic to produce better-looking sky colors.

See full set of test images with explanations See thumbnails of all test and gallery images

Our random "Gallery" shots showed very pleasing color across a wide variety of subjects.

Coverage
Nearly 100% accuracy with the LCD monitor.

39mm eq., LCD monitor	117mm eq., LCD monitor

The Samsung Digimax i5's LCD monitor proved very accurate, showing 99+ percent frame accuracy at both wide angle and telephoto.

Coverage and Range
The i5's flash has a slightly limited range, though our standard shots required less exposure compensation than average.

39mm equivalent	117mm equivalent
Normal Flash +0.7 EV	Slow-Sync Flash +0.3 EV

Flash coverage was uneven at wide angle, and still slightly uneven at telephoto. In the Indoor test, the flash on the i5 underexposed the subject slightly at its default setting, but required only +0.7 EV exposure compensation adjustment to get bright results, less than most cameras we test. The camera's Slow-Sync flash mode produced slightly brighter and more even results, albeit with a very strong orange cast from the room lighting. This shot required only a +0.3 EV exposure compensation adjustment.

8 ft	9 ft	10 ft	11 ft	12 ft	13 ft	14 ft
1/60 sec f4.5 ISO 100	1/60 sec f4.5 ISO 100	1/60 sec f4.5 ISO 100	1/60 sec f4.5 ISO 100	1/60 sec f4.5 ISO 100	1/60 sec f4.5 ISO 100	1/60 sec f4.5 ISO 100

The Samsung i5's flash only dimly illuminated the Davebox target at eight feet, and intensity decreased incrementally from that point on. Subcompact digital cameras often have very limited flash range, and the i5 is no exception.

Print Quality
Good print quality, great color, very usable 11x14 inch prints. ISO 400 images are soft and a bit noisy at 8x10, fine at 5x7, great at 4x6.

Testing hundreds of digital cameras, we've found that you can only tell just so much about a camera's image quality by viewing its images on-screen. Ultimately, there's no substitute for printing a lot of images and examining them closely. For this reason, we now routinely print sample images from the cameras we test on our Canon i9900 studio printer, and on the Canon iP5000 here in the office. (See the Canon i9900 review for details on that model.)

With the Samsung Digimax i5, we found that it had enough resolution to make very good-looking 8x10 inch prints. At 11x14, its prints were a bit softer looking, but more than adequate for wall or table display. At high ISO, image noise levels were generally held in check, but at the cost of some image softness. ISO 200 photos looked fine printed at 8x10 inches, but ISO 400 ones were a little marginal there, with increased softness and visible colored flecks from image noise. They'd probably be fine for most people to display on a wall or table, but when looking at them more closely, we found the noise a little distracting. Dropping to a 5x7 print size greatly reduced the impact of the noise, and it was essentially invisible at 4x6 inches. Color-wise, the Samsung i5's images looked surprisingly good when printed on the i9900, with bright, vibrant color. We had expected to see the yellows and yellow-greens looking a little dull, based on the color error tests in the laboratory, but with "real life" subjects, the colors were very true and appealing looking. Skin tones were also quite good, the slightly pinkish rendering we observed on the computer screen not really being an issue in the prints. All in all, very good results for a subcompact camera.

Samsung Digimax i5 Timing
Slightly slower than average speed overall, though quick download.

Startup/Shutdown:
Power On to first shot	1.6 seconds
Shutter response (Lag Time):
Full Autofocus Wide	0.73 second
Full Autofocus Tele	1.06 second
Prefocused	0.333 second
Cycle time (shot to shot)
Normal large/fine JPEGJPEG	1.64 seconds
Flash recycling	4 seconds
Continuous mode	1.03 second 0.97 frames/second (1 large/fine frame, buffer clears after each shot.)
Download speed
Windows Computer, USB 2.0	2,846 KBytes/sec

The Samsung i5's performance here is a little below average, with a modest startup time of 1.6 seconds, on the long side for cameras with internal lens assemblies, but faster than most models with telescoping lenses. Shutter response at full wide angle isn't too bad at 0.73 second, but the telephoto setting drags a little at 1.06 second. Shot to shot cycle times are on the slow side of average at about 1.64 seconds for large/fine JPEGs, though the camera clears the buffer after each shot and can continue capturing images at this rate for a while. - This also isn't too bad when compared to other subcompact models. Continuous-mode speed is slow, at only 0.97 frames/second, though again, the buffer clears after each shot. The flash takes about four seconds to recharge after a full-power shot, about average for this class of camera. Connected to a computer, download speeds are actually quite fast, at 2,846 KBytes per second.

See full Picky Details page.

Battery
Relatively short battery life, but not bad when compared to other subcompact models.

The Samsung i5 uses a small LiIon battery and has a custom power connector, so we couldn't perform our usual direct power-consumption measurements. The simple expedient of charging the battery fully and timing how long it took the camera would run in capture mode produced a run time of 87 minutes. This is on the short side when compared to full-size cameras, but fairly typical for subcompact models. Given the short run time, you should definitely consider purchasing a second battery to pack along on extended outings.

Storage
No card is included with the Digimax i5, although it accepts SD/MMC cards; 54MB RAM is built into the camera.

Image Capacity with 54MB Internal Memory		Fine	Normal	Economy
2,592 x 1,944	Images	20	38	57
	File Size	2.7 MB	1.4 MB	943 KB
2,272 x 1,704	Images	26	49	70
	File Size	2.1 MB	1.1 MB	761 KB
2,048 x 1,536	Images	31	59	85
	File Size	1.7 MB	910 KB	629 KB
1,600 x 1,200	Images	52	90	125
	File Size	1.0 MB	595 KB	430 KB
1,024 x 768	Images	112	171	272
	File Size	480 KB	314 KB	198 KB
640 x 480	Images	272	408	466
	File Size	198 KB	132 KB	116 KB

I strongly recommend buying at least a 128MB card, preferably a 256MB one, to give yourself extra space for extended outings.

See full Picky Details page.