Review: Samsung NV10 digital camera

Unfortunately, it’s a good idea imperfectly executed. The control interface is extremely quick and responsive, but perhaps a little too much so. The buttons are small and fiddly, and because they’re touch-sensitive it’s easy for big fingers to find themselves inadvertently activating adjacent buttons.

This sometimes leaves the camera feeling a little out of control and there are so many features that finding them all can become a little frustrating.

In playback mode, buttons don’t always line up with their respective on-screen icons. The Special effects menu houses most of the more esoteric capabilities of the NV10; these include the ability to create animated Gif images, panoramas and composite images.

You can also add pre-designed frame effects to your shots and, if you’re a fan of gurning through seaside cut-out pictures, you’ll love the selection of comedy overlays.

With all these bells and whistles it’s easy to lose track of the camera’s core features.

If you stick to the more conventional modes you’ll find a highly capable camera with anti-blur technology, high-sensitivity ISO modes and VGA-resolution movie capture in Mpeg4 format.

All the main settings are available at your fingertips for quick selection without having to take your eyes off your composition. The high-speed capture modes give you up to 2.5fps (frames per second) at full resolution or up to 7fps if you step down to 1,024x768.

Overall colour balance is good although images do have a tendency to suffer from chromatic noise, even at the lower ISO settings. At the top ISO 1000 setting it becomes very noticeable, although it stops short of rendering the images unusable.

If you’re prepared to make use of the manual controls, this camera is capable of some very creative results, although it’s debateable whether it really needs all 10megapixels to achieve this.

It’s telling that Samsung’s flagship model, the NV7 has fewer pixels, but is fitted with a higher-quality lens.

Our review kit included a smart carrying pouch with magnetised clasp, a docking/charging cradle and a wireless remote control. These should be optional extras and they add about £55 to the price, making the NV10 a little expensive.

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Canon EOS 400D digital SLR
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