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Samsung NV10 - Four Stars by Jon Sienkiewicz Three stars—that’s what Samsung means in Korean—but the new Samsung NV10 gets four stars for looks, compactness, ease of use and performance. Article rating: 8.71

Samsung has been around for nearly seventy years. The company was founded by chairman Byung-Chull Lee back in 1938 as a trading company that dealt mainly in dried fish, vegetables and other foodstuffs. The company grew and diversified into a modern superpower with assets greater than 230 billion dollars. Today Samsung is involved in an incredibly diverse range of industries, not the least of which is cameras. Because of their portfolio of core competencies, Samsung is one of the few camera companies that are truly vertically integrated.

What does vertical integration mean to you? Samsung makes the camera body, imaging sensor, LCD monitor and lens. Almost every other company relies on an OEM supplier for at least part of their product. This gives Samsung a competitive advantage in two ways: lower production cost and better quality control. In other words, it enables them to offer a better product at a lower retail price.

And that’s why the Samsung NV10 has a street price lower than $300—very low for a 10-megapixel compact camera with a 2.5" wide-view LCD and 3X Schneider-Kreuznach zoom lens.

At first glance you’ll be impressed by the NV10’s matte black finish and large LCD. The body casting is metal (durable aluminum, actually) and the industrial design is quite futuristic. The menu system is controlled by a set of buttons that utilize a unique combination of capacitance and pressure sensitivity. Samsung calls them “Smart Touch Controls.” You really have to see it to understand it. Slide your finger along the row of buttons and the menu changes. Press the button where your finger stops to activate a command. It’s quick, cool and intuitive.

The NV10 offers 11 Scene Modes to help you make the most of nearly any situation. The list of modes includes Beach and Snow, Backlight, Children, Dawn, Fireworks, Landscape, Night Scene, Portrait, Sunset and Text Recognition. The Text mode should be of particular interest to business people. It allows you to photograph a document and later extract text from the image by using the included software, sort of the way an OCR scanner works. Although the NV10 does not have actual mechanical anti-shake features, it does automatically boost the ISO setting to 1000 so that the camera can select a faster shutter speed—one that’s fast enough to stop action indoors and prevent camera shake. And the built-in Red-eye Reduction feature is sure to please when you decide to shoot with flash.

The Samsung NV10 stretches the limits of what can be done with a compact digital camera in several exciting ways. For example, you can shoot full motion GIFs. The GIF setting allows you to capture up to 50 sequential images, save them as a single image file, and then play them back as an animation. You could set the camera on a tripod and focus on a miniature NASCAR ten inches away. Shoot a frame, rotate the car a few degrees (keeping the center in the same place) and shoot again. Repeat until the car has rotated one full turn around its center. When you play back the GIF it appears that the car is spinning 360 degrees.

Another built-in special effect allows you to add a frame-like border to your images—automatically. There are nine different borders to choose from. Yes, it’s something you could add later, but it’s still a fun feature.

And that underscores the conclusion that the Samsung NV10 is a fun camera.

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