Review Date: April 18, 2011
Category: Point-and-Shoot
USER’S EXPERIENCE
Thursday, March 24, 2011 – Here’s what I receive in the box:
- Samsung SH100 (red)
- No memory card
- Li-ion Battery BP85A 3.7V 850mAh 3.14Wh
- Travel Adapter SAC-48 (which uses the USB cable to recharge the battery in camera)
- Wrist strap
- Touch pen
- USB Cable
- Documentation: Quick Start Manual
- Software CD: User Manual; Intelli-studio v3.0, PC Auto Backup
Shoot. Sync. Share. It’s more than marketing fluff as far as the Samsung SH100 is concerned, a “more than meets the eye” ultra compact digital camera. In this case, shooting with the SH100, synching with your PC and sharing pictures on your social network sites is as easy as clicking the appropriate icon — once you’ve set it all up properly. Setup can take a couple of tries, but it’s not hard if you’ve done these things before (and most kids on social network sites probably already have).
The Samsung SH100 looks stylish and ultra sleek. Even though it’s an ultra compact camera, the handling is good with a slight projection at the back serving as a thumb grip. The first thing you’ll probably notice is the lack of external controls, this being a touch screen panel camera.
The touch screen panel is very usable. I am not a touch screen fan and find most of them frustrating to use, but am quite happy with that on the SH100. It has a slight delay when you touch an icon or screen setting, so just leave your finger on the screen a fraction of a second longer than you normally would. The only potential caveat is when selecting options in the Menu. On some of the busier menus, it is not that easy to scroll without clicking on an option. On the wheel interface, I find that it is easier if I gently touch the wheel one item at a time until I get to the item I want. Then I touch OK to accept my choice. So, when you try it out, approach it with relaxed and unhurried finger gestures and you should have a perferctly acceptable experience.
All in all, the touch screen experience is uncannily smartphone-like, which is a smart decision on Samsung’s part since most smartphone users should find the SH100’s user interface familiar and easy to use.
Samsung also includes a plastic touch pen which increases the precision, but I don’t know too many people who are still using a stylus anymore and the chance of losing that touch pen in the field is 100% (though you can snap the touch pen onto the wrist strap).
There is basically only two external controls, beside the Shutter Release button and Zoom lever around it: the Playback button and Home button. Press the Home button to bring up a screen of functions represented by icons. Touch an icon to select a function and you can then further select options by touching the screen and bringing up the Menu icon for that particular function.
In actual use, I have no complaints with the SH100, as long as you remember it is targeted to entry-level point-and-shoot users. In fact, it handled some difficult exposure situations better than I expected. For example, it will easily and quickly lock focus in low light situations, which is not always an easy task for many cameras in this category.
A neat feature with movie is that you can pause a movie while recording, change scenes, and then resume recording. In this way, separate scenes can be recorded as a single video without requiring post processing splicing.
The SH100 uses microSD/microSDHC memory card, which is the tiniest card I’ve ever seen. MicroSD cards are fiddly to handle so I’d suggest buying the largest capacity you can afford and just leave it in the camera. After all, you don’t ever need to remove it from the camera. After you have taken your shots, simply go into Menu and press the Auto Backup icon to start wirelessly transferring the pictures from camera to your PC. And, if you have lots of pictures to transfer, you don’t even have to babysit the process since the camera will shut itself down 30 seconds after all the pictures have been uploaded. I simply love PC Auto Backup: the freedom of not requiring a cable to transfer images from camera to PC is priceless.
But wait, that’s not all: if your PC is set to Wakeup on LAN (WOL), the camera will even turn it on if it is turned off, transfer pictures to it, turn it off again, then turn itself off. Sweet!
There is a whole configuration to set up your PC to enable Wakeup On Lan. See the online User Manual, page 125. If you are not computer savvy, you might want to let someone who is do it since it changes your BIOS configuration:
1 Turn on the PC and press F2 while the PC is booting.
• The BIOS setting menu will appear.
2 Select Advanced tab – Power management Setup.
3 Select Resume on PME – Enabled.
4 Press F10 to save your changes and continue booting.
5 Click Start, and then open the Control Panel.
6 Configure the network connection.
• Windows 7:
Click Network and Internet – Network and Sharing Center – Change adapter settings.
• Windows Vista:
Click Network and Internet – Network and Sharing
Center – Manage network connections.
• Windows XP:
Click Network and Internet Connection – Network Connection.
7 Select drivers related to network adapter.
8 Click Advanced tab and then set WOL menus.
It’s a pretty cool feature but if your PC starts out slowly, ensure your camera’s battery is charged up before attempting the transfer; you don’t want to run out of juice while waiting for the PC to boot up. Also, if your PC is old and takes a long time to boot up, the camera may time out.
If you own a Samsung Galaxy S Andoid smart phone, Remote Viewfinder is one feature you’ll certainly appreciate. It’s also supposed to work on other Android phones. Not having an Android phone, I have not tested this feature. It allows you to use your smart phone to control the camera’s setting remotely, practically useful in many situations, e.g. when taking a picture over a crowd, in tight spots or wait for everyone to be ready before taking a group shot. The picture is saved in your camera, and you can also save it to your phone. The maximum distance between camera and phone is 30 ft/10 m. It’s like having a remote tiltable screen and you may never need to use the self-timer again!
I tried the YouTube upload and it worked flawlessly. You can only upload 320 x 240 pixels (labeled 320 WEB) for a clip of 30 sec. max.
What I like about the SH100:
- Very good image quality at ISO 80 to ISO 100.
- Good handling and ergonomics for an ultra compact.
- Touch screen that works quite well.
- Love the wide-angle 26mm equivalent.
- Fast and precise AF, even in low light.
No review is complete without a couple of improvement suggestions:
- Noisy images above ISO 100, though not objectionable if you remain at small prints and for Web display.
- PC Auto Backup setup took a couple of tries and could be more straightforward.
- A slightly more responsive touch screen.
- Please, provide a longer USB cable.
A Quick Start Manual in how to setup and operate your camera is provided in print. The detailed User Manual is on the CD, which means you can’t carry it with you, but on the other hand it is easily searchable (and available in many languages).
The Samsung Intelli-studio Light needs to register your pictures before you will see them in the software. In the My Computer window, browse to the folder where your pictures are saved, Right-Click and select Register to Contents Manager. Answer Yes or No to registering the folder. Only then will you see your pictures. When you hover the mouse over a thumbnail, you can see basic exposure information (shutter speed, aperture and ISO) but you’ll need to go into View – File attribute to open the Properties window and get all the EXIF info.
The Samsung SH100 is an easy-to-use ultra compact digital camera for entry-level shooters that takes great pictures at the low ISOs. The wireless picture transfer is so liberating. Recommended to the younger crowd who will appreciate all the built-in social media features.
Next: Samsung EX1 QuickFact Sheet / Buy