Samsung NX11 camera review, specs, price, release date

Samsung just announced a new digital camera with the new i-Function lens namely Samsung NX11 camera. The Samsung NX11 is a successor from NX10 digital camera with features that allows users to easily adjust settings, such as aperture, EV, ISO, shutter speed, and WB directly using an adjustment ring round the outside of the lens. the NX11 camera will be available in stores in February 2011 with starting price at $650 with a bundled 18-55mm zoom lens and will be showcased at the CES 2011 next week. Samsung NX11 digital camera comes with three version, NX11 18-55mm i-Function lens, Samsung NX11 a 20mm pancake and a NX11 20-50mm zoom silver colour lens. The device is offers a 3.0” AMOLED LCD screen, 14.6 megapixel CMOS sensor, Face Detection (up to ten person), built-in flash and built-in an electronic viewfinder (EVF) with resolution of 640 x 480 pixels. NX11 mirrorless interchangeable lens camera also has large APS-C sensor that allows the videos to be recorded with shallow depth of field, providing effects that are shown in motion picture movies and capable to record 720p high-definition video (1280 x 720 pixels) at 30 frames per second.
Other specification and features of NX11 Samsung digital camera are Electronically controlled vertical-run focal plane shutter, High Definition Movie Recording with MP4 (H.264), Smart Flash, Auto, Auto + Red-eye reduction, Samsung External Flash, and Beauty shot, Children, Close Up, Text, Sunset, Dawn, Backlight, Fireworks, Beach & Snow, Night, Portrait, Landscape, Sports. Dimension of Samsung NX11 are 123 x 87 x 39.8mm and weight 353g without battery and card.

Read More

Olympus TOUGH TG-810 Compact Camera Review, Price and Features

Olympus Imaging America Inc has launched new rugged digital compact camera, that called TOUGH TG-810. The new OLYMPUS TOUGH TG-810 Digital camera is designed with support GPS, electronic compass and a manometer for users to tag images with location information and to be dustproof, waterproof to 10m (33 ft), crushproof to withstand weights up to 100 kilograms (220 pounds), freezeproof to -10 C (14 F) and shockproof to 2m (6.6 ft) for compliment the niche audience partaking in extreme activities.

Olympus TOUGH TG-810 Features

The Olympus TOUGH TG-810 Compact Camera support In-Camera landscape function, mechanical Sensor-Shift image stabilization function and digital doubles and Beauty Fashion and AF Tracking technology. The TOUGH TG-810 compact digital camera also offers Magic Art Filters includes Pop Art, Fish-Eye, Pin Hole, Drawing, Watercolor and Soft Focus. OLYMPUS TOUGH TG-810 also support two Magic Art Filters, New Punk to create two-tone images full of rock and roll spirit and New! Sparkle for shoot photos with the luxurious feel of added twinkling lights.

Olympus TOUGH TG-810 Specs

The TOUGH TG-810 rugged camera features has a TruePic III+ image processor, a 14 mega-pixel CCD image sensor, a 5x wide optical zoom lens with metal barrier for protection and 28mm wide angle lens, SDHC/SDXC memory card slots and a 3-inch Super Precision HyperCrystal III LCD (920k dot res.). Other specifications of OLYMPUS TOUGH TG-810 Digital Camera includes support up to 720p HD movie recording, Eye-Fi Card support (offers wireless uploading to computers), 3D photo capture mode (in-camera 3D no two lenses on this camera) and an HDMI output port.

Olympus TOUGH TG-810 Price

Olympus has also made the camera with a built-in manometer and 3-sensor electronic compass for GPS functions that allows images to be tagged with the location it was shot, ensuring you know exactly where it was taken and you can use it for geo-tagging captured content too. Olympus TOUGH TG-810 Rugged Digital Camera available now in Black or Silver body colors and you can purchase the TOUGH TG-810 now with price tag at €299.

Read More

Pentax Optio WG-1 GPS Full Review

Announced in February 2011 as the company's 12th generation of adventure series compact digital cameras, the WG-1 GPS is accompanied to market by a WG-1 variant that, not surprisingly, omits the GPS function that tracks and records positional data with captured images. While the former camera is the subject of our review, aside from GPS the features of both cameras are identical, so for the sake of brevity we'll just call our camera the WG-1 unless stated otherwise.


The big attraction of the WG-1 is the hardened design that makes it able to withstand conditions that would play havoc with a standard compact digital: waterproof to 33 feet of depth and dustproof as well; shockproof, able to withstand falls of up to 5 feet; coldproof down to 14 degrees Fahrenheit and featuring a crushproof construction that can withstand a weight force up to 220 pounds.
Once you get past that tough outer layer, what remains is a fairly typical compact: the WG-1 is available in black or purple, the WG-1 GPS in gray or green. Both cameras share the same hardware, a 14 megapixel sensor and 5x zoom lens covering the 28 to 140mm focal range in 35mm equivalents. Here's a look at those extremes.

28mm Wide Angle

140mm Telephoto
Beyond that there's a 2.7-inch LCD monitor, 720p HD video, digital shake reduction, face detection, smile capture and blink detection technology, and a nifty digital microscope feature that includes 5 LED lights arrayed around the lens to assist with lighting extreme close ups. The native ISO range is 80 to 1600, but 3200 and 6400 are available at greatly reduced resolution (4 and 5 MP). The camera uses SD/SDHC/SDXC memory media and there is an internal memory capacity of about 97 megabytes. Pentax includes USB and AV cables, a rechargeable Li-Ion battery and charger, camera strap, carabiner strap, macro stand and CD-ROM software with each camera.
The WG-1 is tough enough to go in harm's way, but what kind of images does it produce in the process? Let's find out.

BUILD AND DESIGNThe WG-1 is a bit more elongated than the typical compact digital, with a contoured body sculpted out of rubberized composite material with a bit of metal thrown in. The gray color scheme was attractive and overall the camera's materials and construction seem in keeping with the price point.

Ergonomics and ControlsThe first thing that jumps out at you with the WG-1 is there's no place for the thumb of the right hand on the camera back - where the LCD monitor leaves off, controls start up and the thumb has no place to go but over the controls. Even so, I didn't have any problems with inadvertent activations. The tripod socket is offset to the extreme right edge of the camera bottom and is made of composite material. The shutter button is likewise located fairly close to the right edge of the body, and I had to hold my index finger a bit away from the body in order to get the tip on the shutter.

Controls are simple and for the most part confined to the camera back - only the shutter and power switch can be found on the top of the body.
Menus and ModesThat simple control layout hints at things to come - menus are brief and quite intuitive, consisting of four pages of choices in a record menu and four pages in a setup menu. A two page "editing images" menu can be accessed when in playback mode to modify existing shots in the camera. Actual menu options will vary based shooting mode, with the single manual mode, Program Auto, offering the most user inputs to an otherwise largely automatic camera. Largely automatic, yes, but with the unusual feature of allowing user input for ISO sensitivity in many shooting modes.
Now that the cat's out of the bag on shooting modes, here they are:

• Auto: A fully auto mode that automatically selects the best capture mode from 15 camera shooting modes.
• Green mode: A pre-set automatic mode that is enabled by pressing the camera's green button - the camera defaults to these settings no matter what shooting mode or settings the user has established in record mode menus. 
• Scene modes: The WG-1 presents all shooting options, both still and video, in a single large menu accessed on the monitor via the mode portion of the four way controller - there is no scene "master menu" as such. Scene modes include night scene, underwater, digital microscope, landscape, flower, portrait, digital wide (stitches two pictures together), digital SR (expands ISO range to include 3200 and 6400 at greatly reduced resolution), surf & snow, kids, pet, sport, fireworks, candlelight, night scene portrait, text, food, digital panorama (stitches three captures together), frame composite (captures images with a frame) and report (captures images at fixed 180 x 960 pixels for reports).
• Program Auto: Automatic mode with camera setting shutter speed and aperture, but user has widest variety of input, including sharpening, contrast and saturation, white balance, ISO sensitivity and focus and exposure choices.
• Movie/Underwater Movie: Capture motion JPEG in 1280 x 720, 640 x 480 or 320 x 240 pixel resolution, all at either 15 or 30 frames per second. Clip length is limited to memory card or internal memory capacity, or 2GB. If memory card capacity permits, clips may recorded continuously in 2GB increments.

Display/Viewfinder
The WG-1's 2.7-inch LCD monitor has a 230,000 dot composition and is adjustable for 7 levels of brightness. The monitor measured a peak brightness of 397 nits with a contrast ratio of 536:1. That peak brightness is fairly low, the contrast ratio falls on the low end of the desirable range and the WG-1 monitor proved difficult to use in bright outdoor conditions.

Viewing for composition or capture was difficult if the monitor was anything less than pristinely clean - fingerprints or smudges really took a toll on performance in the bright outdoor Florida sun. Coverage is not specified but appears close to 100%.

Read More