We've seen some
interesting looking shooters from Samsung before, but nothing quite like this latest charmer, a 12 megapixel mystery model that's just appeared on Amazon's site. It features a 5x stabilized zoom lens on the front, which is nice and all, but the real bits of intrigue are elsewhere. Beaming back at ya will be a 3-inch OLED screen, a rarity for a digi cam, but it's also got a pair of those analog gauges we loved on the
NV9 on top that show battery life and remaining storage. Sadly, other than Amazon saying it'll sell for a penny under $330 we don't know a thing about it's availability, but we'll be keeping an eye out for it and its dashing red arrows.
[Via
OLED-Info]
Update: The actual MSRP is $379.99, as
confirmed today via a Samsung press release.
posted Feb 19th 2009 10:13AM
i have a samsung camera. mine and all the other models i have tried have huge amounts of digital noise.
I can haz gauges
If they're going for retro, it would have been nice (and functional) to have included a viewfinder. They work better than the digital screen when shooting in bright daylight.
Forgetting retro for a moment, these look pretty cool to me. They'd be brilliant in bright light.
You would be brilliant in bright light too.
The New Phillius Fogg range
Too bad the needles are for battery and memory, and not for something useful like exposure.
You beat me to it. I'd rather it show ISO & exposure w/ a wheel knob on either side to set them.
I wish more stuff had analog battery meters as apposed to digital ones that way you could tell how fast it is draining compared to three little blips.
The blips were necessary because it honestly didn't know how much battery was left, except for a vague ballpark figure. Needles wouldn't be useful there because it wouldn't know where to put the needle. But with the new chipped batteries they have they can tell battery life with better accuracy, and I guess Samsung is having a little fun with the idea.
If it's like my old Nikon DSLR, it's 3 blips of completely different sizes, too!
whoaa... its got nice features but if i consider looks, i would go for the Casio Exilim
tool.
Maybe it's for overclocking....
Reminds me of the Nikon 35ti. When digital was big they came out with this p/s with a killer lens and analog dials.
I just covered this at ZingZama. Unfortunately, if you're willing to choose a less-capable model because it has cheesy bells and whistles, you might be trying too hard.
http://zingzama.com/reviews/samsung-releases-new-camera-for-douchebags/
I have the nv24hd, which also has an oled screen. The analog gauges are nice, but with the large memory cards nowadays, you can take thousands of pictures on highest quality. Its hard to take 2000 pictures and not notice- this makes the analog (memory) gauge seem like a gimmick. The battery one is very useful though, as its more detailed than the standard draining battery icon.
The analog gauges look cool, but unfortunately this amounts to little more than a gimmick. If they really wanted to go retro, they could have included some actual manual controls on the camera. Or a viewfinder.
Who cares what the zoom factor is on these dinky cameras?
The most important functional question is how WIDE does the lens go.
LCDs are usually washed out in sunlight, but since this is an OLED screen, I'd think it'd retain much of its color and contrast in direct light.
In my experience OLEDs are worse in sunlight. Since the technology is purely emmisive (it only emits light, it can't reflect any of the much more powerful sunlight).
you guys obviously missed the TL9 about 8 months back. try gooling it