Digital Camera:Samsung ST1000 Review

Forget cables. The feature-packed Samsung ST1000 has built-in WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity for transferring images wirelessly.

Retrieving images from a camera can be troublesome if you don’t have a data cable, card reader or laptop handy.

With the Samsung ST1000 that’s no longer an issue as it also has built-in WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity.

You can easily transfer photos from the ST1000 to an online image repository or another Bluetooth device. The 12.2-megapixel camera also has a GPS chip for geotagging photos.

Plus, It has a 3.5in WVGA touchscreen which supports smart gesture, Pictbridge port, supports ISO of up to 4800, and a microSDHC slot.

In terms of design, the camera looks rather sleek in its compact black frame.

ALL IN A ROW: The GPS transmitter is located on top 
together with the power, shutter and zoom buttons.

Easy access

The camera has only a few buttons as most of its settings are only accessible via the finger-friendly 3.5in touchscreen.

A cool feature of the camera is that the screen uses haptic technology which makes it vibrate slightly and beep when a function is accessed.

And as it has a built-in accelerometer you can just tilt the camera to select a menu setting or scroll through images.

The ST1000 uses a proprietary port for charging the camera and also for data transfer which means you have to always have the cable around with you.

I learned the hard way as I misplaced the cable and couldn’t use the camera once it ran out of battery. As the cable uses standard USB, it can also be hooked up to a PC to be charged or a wall socket with the included adaptor.

Going wireless

There are six options listed for the wireless networking — Internet, e-mail, camera-to-camera, shared, camera to DLNA-compliant devices and Bluetooth.

DLNA (digital living network alliance) is a technology for transferring content wirelessly to other electronics devices. I couldn’t test this feature as I didn’t have any compatible device handy.

The other options allow you to send the photo via e-mail or upload directly to Picasa, Facebook, YouTube and Samsung’s depository site called Imaging.

Uploading images to the sites was easy as long as I found a decent WiFi connection. To reduce the uploading time, the camera will automatically resize large photos to 2-megapixel images.

In our tests, trasferring images via Bluetooth was much faster because the photo size is further reduced to best fit the resolution of the device’s screen.

Meanwhile, the built-in GPS can be used to tag photos with latitude and longitude info which will be stored in the EXIF file.

This is really helpful if you plan to upload your photos as most sites can use the info to categorise images by location.

The camera also has a list of popular cities and you can search your photos by region.

Looking good

The camera uses a 35mm Schneider Kreuznach lens which has a 5x optical zoom.

It records 720p HD video at 30fps (frames per second) in H.264 format which is a more efficient method of storing videos than the MPEG4 and MJPEG format.

You could easily view the images and videos on a bigger screen as the camera can be hooked up to a HDTV via HDMI.

To help users take better pictures, the ST1000 offers a number of modes such as the motion timer — the camera will shoot a photo as soon as it detects movements like when a person waves his hands.

There are also other useful modes such as face detection and blink detection, smile shot and more.

There are also plenty of special effects to choose from — Snow, Sunset, Fireworks, and Frame Guide to transform your simple images into works of art.

The camera’s Dual IS, which combines optical and digital image stabilisation, comes in handy for compensating unsteady hands when shooting without a tripod.

To help users search and organise photos better, the Smart Album feature groups images by categories such as location, face, timeline, week, and colour.

Photo and video quality were good and on par with other cameras I tested recently.

The images looked crisp and colours came out quite well, especially when the photos were shot outdoors on a sunny day.

As expected when there is not enough light the images turned out a bit grainy. The built-in flash helps but not by much.

Interestingly, there is also a built-in feature called Beauty Shot that you can use to remove imperfections on a subject’s face such as wrinkles, blemishes and moles. There are two options to even out skin tone and complexion.

In terms of battery life, the camera lasted about two days before needing a recharge.

Conclusion

It’s handy to have WiFi or Bluetooth to transfer images but I still prefer to use a card reader or connect the camera to a PC to retrieve the images.

This is mainly because a wired connection still gives you the best speed for transferring images. Plus, the image isn’t downsized to speed up the transfer.

What I found really useful is the geotagging feature which helped us categorise photos easily.

Overall, the Samsung ST1000 is a decent camera with a lot of really cool features.

It’s a little pricey compared to other cameras but if you are looking for wireless connectivity then you should check out this model.

Pros: Good picture quality; WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity; built-in GPS,

Cons: Pricey; uses proprietary port.

Compact digital camera
Manufacturer: Samsung

Sensor: 12.2-megapixels (4,000 x 3,000-pixels)

Lens: 35mm Schneider Kreuznach with 5x optical zoom, 5-80cm f/3.0-f/4.8

Shutter: 30sec – 1/4,000sec

ISO range: Auto, 80 – 4800

Viewfinder: 3.5in touchscreen LCD

Storage: MicroSD

Interface: USB 2.0, HDMI (via shared proprietary port)

Other features: DI stabilisation, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, Face Detection, Smile Detection, red-eye reduction, motion timer

Dimensions: (w x h x d): 100 x 61 x 19mm

Weight: 176g






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