Samsung Digimax S800 8.1 Megapixel Compact Camera - Silver

Samsung S800 - Feature rich at a great price

Strengths: Inexpensive, small & light, great video capability

Weakness: A bit slow, noise as at ISO settings above 100, image quality not as good in Auto setting

I bought the Samsung S800 as a supplemental camera to the Canon S2 IS that I already own. I love my Canon but it's too big to carry around every time I want to take a picture. So, I wanted to get a 2nd camera to fill the gap for those times when I just wanted to be able to put a camera in my shirt pocket and go somewhere and take a few pics without having to lug around the big Canon. The camera I...
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I bought the Samsung S800 as a supplemental camera to the Canon S2 IS that I already own. I love my Canon but it's too big to carry around every time I want to take a picture. So, I wanted to get a 2nd camera to fill the gap for those times when I just wanted to be able to put a camera in my shirt pocket and go somewhere and take a few pics without having to lug around the big Canon. The camera I wanted had to meet the following criteria: relatively inexpensive, very small in size, at least 7 mega-pixel, able to capture video using MPEG-4 compression, and be able to take decent pictures. The Samsung S800 met all of these criteria so I bought it.

The S800 has a lot of nice features for a camera that is so inexpensive. It pretty much has most of the same features as my Canon and even a few more. It's a lot smaller than I expected which for me is a good thing. You can easily fit it in a shirt pocket. And for a camera this small, it has a pretty good sized LCD at 2.4 inches. The auto focus works flawlessly. The user's manual is well written and very detailed. If you buy this camera, make sure to read the pdf version of the manual contained on the CD as it will provide much more detail than the hardcopy manual.

The S800 shoots 640x480 video at 30 fps, which is impressive for such an inexpensive camera. I also like that it captures video in MPEG-4, which seems rare among digicams. This compression format is very efficient and results in very small video file sizes. You can shoot a lot of video and not have to worry about using up all the space on your SD card, which is a constant problem with Canon cameras that create huge video file sizes.

Another feature I really like is the 8 second minimum shutter speed. You can shoot nice pics in very low light by setting an 8 second exposure, though you will definitely need a tripod when doing this. I've seen a lot of cams in this price range that only have a min exposure of about 1 second.

And now for the not so good. I will preface this with saying that my dislikes result mainly from doing a direct comparison of the S800 with my Canon, of which I paid 4 times as much for. In my opinion, Canon makes some of the best cameras out there, but you also have to pay much more them. The shot to shot recycle times of the S800 seem a bit slow for me, especially when you use the flash. It is certainly not horribly slow and I suspect if I used a faster SD card, the recycle times may improve. This camera shoots best with ISO 50 or 100. Anything higher than this and you will get a good deal of noise. I have found the picture quality to be somewhat mixed. In some cases the picture quality is not as good as my Canon and in other cases I have found it to be better. You can definitely get good pictures out of this camera, but not as much with the mode dial in the Auto setting. It doesn't seem that all of the settings are quite optimized as well as they could be in the Auto setting. I keep the mode dial in the Prog setting and manually set the ISO to 100 and will set the white balance to correspond to the prevailing light conditions. By doing this, I can get pretty decent pics. Also keep in mind that perceived image quality can be very much a subjective judgment call.

Overall, I like this camera and would recommend it. It has a few shortcomings but none so serious that would make me regret my purchase. It's a nice little camera that can do a lot for the price you will pay.

By pcDude101 - Dec 17, 2007

A fantastic upgrade from my old 3-MP Canon

Strengths: 8MP, lightweight (but solid construction), SD card

Weakness: none so far

I bought this to replace my trusty old 3MP Canon. For the price I am EXTREMELY happy. It takes great pictures, is easy to use, and has decent battery life. Also, big screen and it takes SD cards, better than the cards for Sony and Fuji cameras. If I can find this camera again on sale I'll be buying a few as presents for Xmas '07!

By linda_greenwich - Mar 23, 2007

Good camera for the price!

Strengths: High MPs, low price

Weakness: Samsung Optics. LCD. Feels "cheap". AA batteries

This is a good camera given the price point. Was able to pick up for $100 shipped, making this one of the lowest cost 8 MP camera out there. Samsung doesn't have the same quality optics like a Canon or Nikon. Decent pictures though. LCD was okay. Camera is light and doesn't really feel solid. AA batteries versus LiIon. For the price you can't go wrong.

By Shadow6934 - Feb 26, 2007

Really good camera + video camera

Strengths: 8 MP -- with lens just as good! Battery capacity (180 pictures + 10 minutes of video on two 2200mAh batteries).

Weakness: None, really, except maybe that there is no automatic volume control. Making videos of people not more than 3 m away is OK, but the sound from small birds in hight trees don´t record very well.

I bought this camera 6 weeks ago and after more than 700 pictures + about 100 videos ranging from 10 sec to 8 minutes each, I am still amazed about its quality, both still picture and video come out very well. Highly recommended!

By orvarlyckholm - Jun 15, 2006

NICE CAMERA, WELL WORTH THE PRICE!

Strengths: GREAT PICTURE QUALITY, LIGHTWEIGHT AND FAIRLY COMPACT, GOOD FLASH

Weakness: WEAK BATTERY LIFE WITH ALKALINE BATTERIES,NOT THE BEST BUILD QUALITY, AND A LITTLE SLOW IN AUTO MODE(COMPARED TO CANON'S DIGIC 2 CAMERAS)

EXCELLENT SHARPNESS IN PIX, AND OVERALL A SATISFACTY CAMERA.PLENTY OF FEATURES BUT YOU MUST READ THE OWNER'S MANUAL TO REALLY TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT. CAN BE A LITTLE SLOW IN AUTO MODE(BUT THERE IS A CHILDRENS MODE) FOR RESTLESS KIDS OR PETS. DEFINATELY A GOOD BUY! TRY IT BEFORE YOU TAKE YOUR FINAL DECISION

By dinkap - Sep 5, 2006