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Compact Digital Camera With Wifi – Samsung WB250F 14.2MP CMOS Smart WiFi Digital Camera with 18x Optical Zoom, 3.0″ Touch Screen LCD and 1080p HD Video (Gun Metal) Reviews
Compact Digital Camera With Wifi
- Low Light 14PM BSI CMOS Sensor
- Built-in Wi-Fi for File Sharing
- 18x Optical Zoom
- 3.0-inch TFT LCD Screen
- Full 1080p HD Video
Take crystal-clear photos and stunning video with the WB250F Smart Camera from Samsung. With features such as a 14.2-megapixel backside-illuminated sensor and an 18x zoom lens, the WB250F gives you the creative freedom to take great photos even in low-light situations. And with built-in Wi-Fi, you can easily and quickly share your best shots.
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M. Sarkar
December 25, 2014 at 8:33 pm
I’d rate at 3.5 stars. With some improvements, Samsung could have gotten a 4 or 4.5,
I carry a compact camera in my pocket quite often and generally prefer the older models with CCD sensors over the glitzy newer models with their 1/2.5 inch CMOS sensors. For the past 2-3 years, I’ve looked to upgrade for the wider 24-25 mm lenses and the 12-20x zooms on newer cameras, and had hoped that at least one manufacturer would put in a rotating LCD screen (or even a viewfinder, for those glaring sunny days) in a compact pocketable camera. I am not a pixel-peeper and I try to avoid post-processing on the computer. I do not expect to print any larger than 8×10 inch, so I have reasonable expectations from a compact travel camera. Hopefully, that gives you an idea about my perspective on photography with a point-and-shoot compact.
I’ll touch on some points below, having already posted some thoughts in replies to other reviews here and on the older WB150F model’s pages. Your opinions might obviously vary from mine, but please TEST the camera before you question/comment 🙂
With the WB250F, image quality is quite good. I’ve used the P (program) mode, the Auto and the Scene modes. I’m planning to post pics on Google+ using the hashtag #POAB and maybe even a comparison with the Sony HX10V and my older workhorse compact, the Samsung v70 (1/1.8 inch CCD sensor).
For indoor use, I set ISO to 200. The flash power was adequate and image quality was good, too.
The ability to change settings using the physical buttons, the touchscreen or a combination of both definitely makes this WB250F camera fun to use – and it’s often faster than scrolling though menus.
The placement of the pop-up flash, closer to the middle of the body is much more ergonomic than many other cameras. Unlike the Sony and Canon travel zoom models in/above this price range, you can grip the camera quite nicely with BOTH hands and not have to worry about having a finger over the flash. You have to press a button to pop the flash up. I’m sure users’ feelings are mixed about having to manually pop the flash.
I’ll agree with C. Bruce that the WB250F does pretty well in low light mode: it takes a short burst of pics in low light, then flattens them into a single image with fairly good detail. In my experiments, the ISO climbed to 1280 but the image remained usable. Some cameras like the Sony HX10V might easily climb to ISO 3200 in low light mode, but the pics become noisy.
This WB250F camera has a “Rich Tones” mode that uses HDR. In my tests, mostly on dawn and sunset skies, the HDR result seemed a lot more “real” as compared to the red-shifted “watercolor painting” that I got from a Sony in HDR mode. I like a vivid pic as much as anyone else, but the Sony’s HDR went overboard and seemed too fake to me (I prefer “real” over overprocessed photos designed to elicit “oohs” and “aahs”).
Macros come out fine. Colors are pleasing, and without over-saturation.
You can adjust sharpness and contrast via the menu.
Video quality at 720p, MP4 settings seemed good to my eyes, but I haven’t tested extensively. The dedicated video button is located close to the raised thumbgrip. Zooming during video is possible, but you risk “focus hunting” even if you zoom as slowly as possible.
In playback mode, the touchscreen allows swiping to move back or forth. Not a huge thing, but an obvious touch (pun intended) coming from Samsung’s giant footprint in smartphones. Toggling the “display” button (the top of the four-way controller) quickly shows a histogram and the exposure, etc data. One major frustration in playback mode is that the lower ~1/8th of the screen in playback mode gets partly obscured by a panel containing two “soft” buttons. So, unless you patiently wait a few seconds, you cannot see the entire photo in playback. Utterly irresponsible of the Samsung designers. Rather, incomprehensible, given how many other things have been nicely thought through and implemented in the touchscreen user interface.
The WB250F’s 18x optical zoom is snappy but poorly implemented: it doesn’t zoom in reasonably smooth increments. I wonder if the zoom is too fast by intention, or is the zoom lever too sensitive? The initial optical zoom between 1x – approx 5x is fine. However, after 7.8x, it jumps to about 12x, then about 15x, finally 18x. With the jerky zoom, I find it hard to frame a pic at just the right zoom for the scene. Also, the camera often hunts for focus, even when set to center focus. I’ve played with Program, Manual, Auto and the zoom issue persists. The zoom only gets smoother once in *digital* zoom at 19x and above (but pic quality will suffer if using digital zoom).
Focus hunting is fairly common with this camera. This happens sometimes even with good light when focusing on objects without sharp lines, e.g. clouds. Knowing that multi-point focus is more work for the camera, I keep it set to center-weighted focus. So, I’ll lock…
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|John kaufman
December 25, 2014 at 8:23 pm
So far so good,
Photo quality
This was my main consideration when buying a new camera. I have to say that the camera does not disappoint me at all. I’ve taken indoor low light pics, as well as outdoor pictures of my dogs running around at full speed with only the automatic settings, and the pictures have all come out better than expected. Action shots are frozen and crisp, and close up portraits are significantly better than I expected, not $1200 DLSR quality, but for a sub $200 point and shoot, WAY better than expected – I doubt the average person could tell the difference. The portraits show clear subject, no distortion, excellent color and shallow depth of field just like a DLSR and all on auto settings.
Video Quality
Video quality is good, the 1080p video looks decent – the image stabilization is good but not great. The main drawback is that there is a very noticeable noise picked up by the microphone when zooming. – again for a cheap point and click to use for occasional video the quality is good. To use as a primary video camera and create your next masterpiece, not so good.
One nice thing about video is that you can just press the red video button on the back of the camera to begin recording. You don’t have to find a special setting etc… so it’s very quick and easy to go into video mode. The other nice thing is that while videoing you can still take pictures with no effect on the video.
Features
The photo features are what you would expect for a camera in this range. It does also have on camera editing, for cropping, “Instagram Like” effects can be carried out in the camera etc…
One very nice feature is the touch screen. I have a Galaxy Note 2 and really like the feature of touching the spot on the screen that I want focused on in camera mode. This camera has the same feature. So if the camera is focusing on something in the foreground or background, you just touch on the subject on your screen and the camera changes focus to the right spot.
Wireless / Remote connection to phone
This is truly the best part of the camera. It has built in wireless connectivity, so you can e-mail photos, upload to facebook, picasa, upload videos to youtube, etc… directly from the camera. No more waiting until you get home and connecting to your computer to do something with the pictures.
The coolest part of this functionality is the connection to your smartphone. Download the samsung app, and you can use your smartphone as the viewfinder and take pictures without using a timer, or touching the camera. This is great for taking pictures of yourself with your kids.. seriously, I have hundreds of pictures of my kids and I am not in any of them because I’m always taking the pictures, I think this will change that.
It also can be used to download pictures from your camera right to your phone so any pics taken on the camera appear in your phone’s gallery in seconds. That means you can e-mail, text message, facebook etc… from your phone just like you are used to. I LOVE this!!!
Build Quality
Build quality could be better, but what do you expect at the price point? The only thing I really wish it had that it doesn’t and I’m a little disappointed in is the tripod threading is all plastic, instead of metal. I’m worried that using on a tripod will damage the threads and not be able to use a tripod again. I’m also leery of tightening the tripod too firmly because of this.
Conclusion
I was considering buying the Galaxy Camera – but at double the price, I get the similar image quality, it appears to be running android internally although I can’t play angry birds on my camera – which for me was not a huge selling point anyways… So considering the price difference, this seemed to be a much better deal for the same basic photo, video, wireless features. It is a very pocketable size, the photo quality is excellent – way better than I expected, and automatically downloading pictures to my phone – and computer wirelessly are exactly what I wanted.
I am happy with the camera so far, but gave it 4 stars because of the following:
– Tripod threads plastic not metal
– Zoom noise during video recording.
– Remote viewfinder app is amazing, but I wish it gave full control over the camera – changing scene modes, burst shots, etc… The feature is great, but could use a little polish.
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|C. Bruce
December 25, 2014 at 8:11 pm
Makes it worth having a separate device for better quality pics!,
I wondered how point and shoot cameras were going to keep up and this camera is an excellent example. This camera is by far better than any cell phone just with the wide angle and zoom capabilities. With the added sharing, touch screen, and intuitiveness that is integrated it makes it an very neat relatively compact device. It’s not as compact as some but way smaller than the larger zoom cameras and is a great compromise.
I have seen a couple cameras with gps and I know one was powered by android. Nice features but I did not see the benefit of having a lot of those features on my camera when I have them on my phone? Also, the price of that camera was significantly more.
Also something to note. This camera actually has a low light sensor that compensates for the light level versus detecting the light level and adjusting the shutter speed. When your shutter speed is slower to allow more light in this gives you more time to move the camera and means image stabilization has more to process. In other words it doesn’t work very well. The samsung has a quick shutter speed in low light situations and does a nice job of compensating for the light therefore also making your pictures clearer and brighter. This is from my experience and the BB rep gave me a demonstration of it when I had narrowed my choices between a canon elph with wifi and the samsung.
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