Samsung S850

patmac

Hi I posted this yesterday under the 'what camera to buy@ thread but got no response so thought i would bump it here.
Hi folks was I see this camera Samsung S850
http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Produc...ng.Samsung.htm
is on sale at Argos for €195 looks too good to be true

sineadw

The link's not working

redrob13

I've no experience of samsung cameras, and a quick google didn't turn up any reviews of the s850. But the specs sound quite good, and the price looks good too (its €221 plus delivery from technikdirekt.de). There are alot of small, reasonably spec'ed cameras out there at around the €200 mark, maybe a browse through the reviews at the likes of dpreview.com might be informative.

The press release for the model you're interested in, is here, and a couple of user opinions here. So it looks to have some manual control (if you ever want that) along with the obligatory auto modes, a reasonable range in the lens, a nice sized screen and doesn't use a proprietary battery (so if you run out you can just go the shop and get some AAs).

R

PaulieC

My first digital camera was a samsung. It was very slow and the lens was rubbish. This new camera has the same kind of lens (SHD). Try to get one with the Schneider-KREUZNACH lens, much better

patmac

Thanks guys my wife just bought (literally) a Nikon Coolpix L5 for €230 so you can ignore the title but did she get a good deal?

Ghost Train

patmac wrote:

Thanks guys my wife just bought (literally) a Nikon Coolpix L5 for €230 so you can ignore the title but did she get a good deal?

around 210euro online (pixmania.com) so for buying in a shop 230euro sounds okay

patmac

eolhc wrote:

around 210euro online (pixmania.com) so for buying in a shop 230euro sounds okay

Yeah was happy with this, going for a trusted brand and the local shop in Athlone in case of anything going wrong.

Peanut

This camera (Samsung s850) is €150 now in Argos.

I just got one today as a replacement for a faulty (and rubbish) Kodak C743 that was bought as a Christmas present for a family member. I was a bit meh about buying a Samsung brand as I didn't really know what to expect.

First impressions are that it looks like extremely good value for €150.
It looks and feels like an actual camera as opposed to a Kodak toy, for instance.

Image quality is very good, and for a budget cam there are a decent amount of controls include shutter/aperture priority and manual modes, as well as the obligatory party/fireworks/blahblah scene modes. Quality wise it seems at least as good as my Canon S80, if not better (but without the wide-angle at the near end of zoom). Definitely worth considering if you are in the market for a cheap digicam.

Will try it out a bit more tomorrow, but there's some online pics here if anyone's interested. One thing though is that it does eat batteries, but considering it only uses two AAs it's not that surprising, so you need to use either NiMh's or something like Energizer lithium disposable AAs. (edit: just realised that link is the same one redrob posted, however the sample pics may not have been in that thread at the time.)

unreggd

I had one, but dont like it, its too bulky and they dont make good use of the 8MP

I waws tempted by the 5X opt zoom

pretty blahhh cam that probably just needed more unrequited love


fin

Peanut

hmmm interested about why you say that about the 8mpix.

I think I have an idea of what you mean in if it's in relation to whatever anti-aliasing is performed between the sensor elements. This pic is straight from the camera, so you can see some of the processing artefacts in the grass at the bottom for example. But I don't think it's much worse than many other compact cameras, and it's definitely better than a lot of them. With any high-megapixel compact camera, you pretty much always have to resample the picture down 50% (well.. 75% at least) to get rid of noise/artefacts anyway.

And it's so cheap

edit: a flickr account with some more s850 pics on the first page

Peanut

Took a few macro shots with this recently. All are outside, last one is using flash also. No processing at all except cropping.







large sizes on flickr

PonderStibbons

Lovely macro shots Peanut. I'm always impressed by the macro capabilities of P&S cameras, DSLRs don't come anywhere close without a dedicated lens.

eclectichoney

Lovely pics, picked up this camera myself a few weeks back and hopefully i'll be able to produce similar with some practise! In fairness, for €150 in a high street store it's a great little camera