Samsung MV800 Digital Camera 16 Megapixels with Swivel Screen white

Product Information

The MV800 camera offers enhanced picture quality, capacitive touch screen technology, as well as many innovative and user-friendly features to ensure that all users can relax and enjoy their shooting experience. Consumers can be confident they will be able to capture even the most challenging shot whether they are behind or in front of the lens. Like the ST95, the MV800 has shoehorned in a 5x optical zoom, here starting out a usefully wide angle 26mm (in 35m terms) and running up to 130mm at the telephoto end, with a maximum aperture of f/3.3. Resolution is 16.1 effective megapixels in total from a 16.4MP 1/2.3-inch CCD sensor, while video resolution is fixed at 1280x720 pixels. Whilst that falls short of Full HD, there is at least an HDMI output, alongside the dual USB/AV output in a shared port hidden under a plastic side panel. There's also four slots for the built-in mono speaker. I just don't understand the continuous negativity on these forums. Are photography hobbyists depressed as a class? With the MV800, the smartphone influence is more obvious than ever. Everything from the touch-based control to the "home" button to the app-like treatment of the shooting modes shouts "Samsung Galaxy." It's an interesting take, and one that could've bombed horribly; on a more serious camera, this would not work. But the MV800 is aimed squarely at casual users, the types of folks who have an iPod Touch but haven't heard of the Nikon D40. In that context, it's fine that the MV800 works more like a gadget than a camera. Especially compacts, it's like companies aren't even trying to innovate, and it gets boring and frustrating.

Additionally we get the ability to turn face detection on or off, timer and burst settings, adjust photo size and quality, metering (multi, spot or centre weighted), tweak brightness, contrast and saturation in-camera, optical image stabilizer and 'My screen' mode, which displays all your commonly used settings as on-screen icons, all in one place. It feels like Samsung is giving us a surfeit of riches that most of the point and shoot brigade the camera is obviously aimed at will never use. Still, it makes the camera as future proof as possible and staves off any chance of boredom. The LCD is one of the MV800's characteristic features: It's a 3-inch widescreen unit that can flip up and face forward. This so-called MultiView model builds on the (apparent) success of Samsung's DualView series, which feature front-facing as well as rear-facing LCDs to make self-portraiture more accurate. is a lot to ask for a compact camera with so-so image quality and only a 5 x zoom lens, so its vital that the MV800 delivers on its main aim of being the ultimate point and shoot. Happily it largely succeeds on that promise, allowing us to recommend the Samsung NV800 as a great social camera with a literal twist.The innovative Live Panorama function, meanwhile, enables easy photography of large groups by simply holding down the shutter button, then previewing the whole scene that’s being captured, via the LCD. Moreover, by simply connecting the Samsung MV800 to a 3D HDTV, images and panoramic shots can be viewed in outstanding 3D in-depth quality instantly.

score_bars comp_num="1", scores="Color Score, Noise Score, Resolution Score, Video Color Score, Video Sharpness Score, Stabilization Score"}} Casio TRYX Comparison As a CCD-sensor based camera, the MV800 is a slow performer. There is a continuous drive mode, but no burst mode to speak of, not even at a reduced resolution. Speed was clearly not on the minds of Samsung's engineers when they designed this camera. Shot to Shot ({{product.raw_scores['Shot to Shot Score']}}) For a camera with mediocre still-photo color accuracy, the MV800 is actually alright in terms of video color. On an absolute scale, it's nothing special, but compared to most point-and-shoots, it's quite good. It blows the video-oriented Casio Tryx out of the water, handily beats the Samsung PL120, and comes up behind the Canon ELPH 500 HS, which earned a very good accuracy score. More on how we test video color.The MV800 offers a better overall user experience too. The Tryx's rotating screen makes it easy to shoot from tons of odd angles, but the MV800 is no slouch in that regard, and, unlike the Tryx, it actually has a zoom lens, which opens up framing possibilities that the Tryx can't. The Samsung also has an excellent user interface, where the Tryx is just OK. Slightly lower down on the scale of usefulness is a Pose Guide mode that serves up an on-screen outline of a classic model pose for you to arrange your subject into, an Intelligent Portrait mode that takes three shots for the price of one, and a Face Zoom feature that automatically zooms in when it detects a face to get a slightly tighter crop of your subject. Our shake-test rig is under repair, so we have not yet tested the MV800's stabilization performance. We will update the review once our lab equipment is fixed. More on how we test image stabilization. Video Mode Here are two 100% crops which have been Saved as Web - Quality 50 in Photoshop. The right-hand image has had some sharpening applied in Photoshop. The out-of-the camera images are a little soft and ideally benefit from some further sharpening in a program like Adobe Photoshop. You can also change the in-camera sharpening level. The menu system is one of the most interesting aspects of the MV800. Samsung is known more for its mobile phones than for its digital cameras, and their mobile phone (and tablet computer) user interfaces (UIs) are generally excellent. We've gotten the impression from previous Samsung digicams that the phone division has had a hand in designing camera UIs lately as well, which has resulted in some good-looking and high-functioning menu systems.

Thanks once again to the lens, the MV800 didn't show too much chromatic aberration. There's some purple fringing in the crops at the edges of the frame, particularly at the wide-angle setting, but it's well controlled for the most part. In real-world situations, it might show up in high-contrast areas of a shot, particularly at the edges of buildings, but it isn't a big concern. Again, as with the SH100, there isn't a dedicated video record button on the MV800, a now expected feature on even the humblest of compacts, a virtual one has been provided instead. Tap the Smart Movie icon and one unexpectedly appears centre bottom of screen, the red button in the midst of a white square subconsciously recalling the Japanese flag, despite Samsung's Korean heritage.The MV800's interface is that camera's greatest asset—just a charm to use—but it's the ELPH 500's biggest flaw. The resistive touchscreen is clunky and unresponsive, which is especially problematic for a camera with manual controls that plenty of users will want to access. But Samsung markets the MV800 as a picture-taking gadget for very casual photographers, and the gadget-y aspects of the design are actually pretty cool. The flip-up screen is genuinely useful—more comfortable for self-portraits than the front-facing LCDs on Samsung's DualView cameras, and handy for framing low-angle shots, too. The touchscreen is actually responsive, and the interface is as elegant as a smartphone's. And as frivolous as it might seem, the quantity and versatility of the effects is as awesome as we've seen on a point-and-shoot.

The fourth of five screens includes Intelligent Portrait, which takes three different pictures of the same scene at the same time from different angles, Auto Zoom Shot which automatically zooms in on a face, Timer Shot, Touch Shot which takes the image simply by touching the screen, and Pose Guide, which shows your subjects how to position themselves for the perfect shot.All that said, the MV800 does actually seem to have a decent lens on it. There's no way the sharpness score could've been this impressive if the optics were total junk. We'd love to see better clarity at the wide angle, but overall, this is a pretty good showing for the class. Chromatic Aberration ({{product.raw_scores['Chromatic Aberration Score']}}) The Samsung MV800's maximum shutter speed is 16 seconds in the Night scene mode, which is excellent news if you're seriously interested in night photography. The shot below was taken using a shutter speed of 6 seconds at ISO 80. The big talking point here, of course, is the flip-up screen. This rotates through 180-degrees, allowing you to stand in front of the camera and see what’s in-frame. Of course, you can also use it to take low- or high-angled shots with an on-board gyroscope ensuring that the image is always displayed the right way up. To be fair, the MV800's color profile is fine for landscapes and other still-life scenes. Plenty of casual photographers seem to prefer a slightly oversaturated quality in their shots, since it makes the sky bluer, the grass greener, and flowers more vibrant. But it does wreak havoc on skin tones, which is problematic in a camera marketed for its self-portraiture abilities.