Samsung NV7 OPS: Review

Product Details Details at a glance Megapixels: 7.4 Optical Zoom: 7x Digital Zoom: 5x LCD: 2.5" TFT Storage: sD, MMC Internal: 19MB Size: 106 X 62.3 X 20.9mm Weight: 245.2g We clicked with Great Zoom, Solid Feel Shots in the dark Noise, Distortion at Wide Angle, Fiddly buttons, Dreadful battery life. www.samsungcamera.co.uk Price Comparison: Samsung NV7 OPS

For a gadget girl like me the Samsung NV7 has so many features and fancy stuff that I was itching to play with it. All the little funky buttons are intriguing. It feels solid and there is a good zoom too.

However, you soon get fed up with the funky smart touch buttons when you keep getting the wrong button and you have to use your finger nails to make sure you don't hit two at once or select the wrong one.

The battery is poor on the NV7. From first charge to the camera shutting down I only managed to take a measly 40 photos. It warned me that the battery was low but as I had taken so few I didn't believe it. But it was!

Build me up Buttercup Baby

Huge isn't a word you naturally think of when you think about a compact camera. But the Samsung NV7 has a huge lens and a huge feature set. When you pick up the Samsung NV7 you can't help but be impressed at the feel of it. It has a metal case and feels solid. It's an odd shape though. Flat on one plane with a huge lens in comparison. This is because it has a massive 7 times zoom - equivalent to 38-270mm. See the photo below.

It's odd to hold and use even for someone like me with smallish hands. I let my husband use it for a while and he struggled. Ok, he has fingers like sausages but then lots of men do. The best way I found to hold it was with my left hand holding and supporting the lens with my right hand on the slightly angular grip. Touchy? The second thing to hit you when you first take hold of the Samsung NV7 is the little buttons along the right hand side and the bottom of the LCD screen on the back. 13 of the little blighters. When I say little, that is the operative word. They are tiny and close together. (Can't do much about that I guess on a compact.)

Samsung have tried to get away from the menus that go several layers deep on lots of other cameras and to a certain extent they have done that with the touch-sensitive smart buttons.

You can scroll through your photographs by sliding your finger across the bottom buttons. Touch one on the right with the bin showing on the screen and box comes up saying Delete one or all. You then have to go to the bottom of the screen to the button that lines up with one to choose that option. Another box pops up on the screen saying Delete, Yes No. Then you have to go to the button next to Yes which is at the side. A different button to your original one. See Screenshots below.

You'll notice that inadvertently I had scrolled to another picture having intended to delete the bad macro of a pine cone and keep the dragonfly on a glass. This is one of the problems of the buttons being close together and the touch scroll. It's also difficult to get your finger on the button you want first time.

Scenes are chosen in a similar way. Turn the button on the top of the camera to scene then press the top right button and the options below appear. Choose the one you want by touching the equivalent button at the bottom. The buttons are all context sensitive and have different functions according to what you have chosen on the mode dial.

Ear Defenders?

Yep, I think you're going to need them. Although the photographs at ISO 100 are fairly bright and punchy with lots of detail you won't want to use it at much higher than this. The Samsung NV7's photographs are very noisy even at ISO 100 and ISO 160. See the examples below.

A Closer Look

The Samsung NV7's zoom is available by pushing up or down on the button top left. It's quite quick in use and zooms in impressively. In the two photographs below of the 'lovely' County Hall in Aylesbury you'll see it taken from across the road on wide angle then zoomed in on the top. There's quite a bit of distortion of the building (it doesn't really curve!) in the wide angle mode. Zooming in gets you really close. One of the best features of the camera in my opinion.

However, when you zoom in to 100% on the screen that's when the noise becomes apparent. Both the above photographs were taken at ISO 100. The picture below is a crop of the County Hall Zoom photograph. Note the noise in the sky and the building. On higher ISOs it's even more apparent and makes the photograph soft. You would only be able to make small prints.

Shaky Hands?

I've got terrible shaky hands (probably the booze!) So I have a lot of problems with blur in my photos if I hand hold. The Samsung NV7 has two image stabilizing features OPS (Optical Picture Stabilisation) and ASR (Advanced Shake Reduction). As far as I can tell the ASR function uses a higher ISO to reduce blurring in the photograph (not what you want with this camera). OPS selected on the Samsung NV7 makes the sensor shift with the shake of the camera. There are two positions (accessed by a dedicated button on the back of the camera). OPS1 which enables the stabilizing function the moment the shutter captures the image and OPS2 which activates when you press the button half way down. You can hear it constantly whirring and seeking while in use in OPS2 mode. That's what probably eats up the already woeful battery. See below. I would stick with the OPS function and skip the ASR altogether.

It's Special

The Special Effects function on the NV7 lets you choose various frames for the photos which are applied in camera as you take the photo.

It makes me look even more stupid. There's lots of other stuff that I wouldn't buy a camera for when you can do it all in a decent image editing package, like GIF creator and multiple image creator etc. It also has a video mode at 640 x 480 which should give a decent enough playback but I could not get to play properly my pc. The sound was there but no picture.

Innocent as Charged?

With all the extra featureson the Samsung NV7 the battery life suffers. I got a measly 40 photos before it conked out on me, which is disappointing to say the least. I know, in the “old” days we went out with a 36 exposure film and came back with some unused. But nowadays you would expect to be able to take at least 100 photos on one charge. I suspect it was down to me trying out the OPS, playing back the photos on the LCD and using the flash quite a lot.

Our verdict:  

Camera specification

Camera specification

Mega-pixels:	7.4	Photo:	JPEG, RAW
Optical Zoom:	7x	RAW:	No
LCD:	2.5 inch TFT	Focal Length:	equiv. 38-270mm
Aperture	f2.8-3.7	Digital Zoom:	5x
Dimensions:	106 X 62.3 X 20.9mm	Shutter:	30 sec to 1/4000
Weight:	245.2g	Exposure:	ISO 100 to 1000
Storage:	sD, MMC	Movie:	640x480@30fps
Int. Mem:	19MB	Battery:	Rechargeable SLB-0837
Interface:	USB 2.0, AV	PictBridge:	Yes