Slimline

There's a 'quality' feel about Samsung's ultra-slim NV10 camera, thanks largely to its well-balanced metal body, which is very nice to hold. A 10.1-megapixel CCD partners a Schneider-Kreuznach Varioplan 3x optical zoom lens, which carries a distinctive blue ring and tucks neatly away behind a built-in lens cover when power is switched off.  No viewfinder is provided and most of the rear panel is covered by a 2.5-inch LCD.

Using the NV10 for the first time is something of a challenge as no menu button is provided. The only controls are a dial on the top panel, which carries settings for auto, program AE, manual, 'advanced shake reduction', special effect, scene, movie clip and 'photo gallery' modes, and a series of buttons along two sides of the LCD (see illustration below). These 'Smart Touch' buttons are supposed to make it faster to navigate and set menu items but, being small and black-on-black, they're quite fiddly to use and you're not always sure that a particular setting is applied. Once you've understood the logic of the system, though, it works well - provided your fingertips are dexterous!

The Smart Touch buttons really shine in playback mode, where you can scroll through stored images by passing a fingertip over the horizontal buttons. Icons displayed on the right side of the LCD let you play a slideshow, protect or delete individual shots, or tag images for printing.

Camera settings accessible via these buttons include: flash, AEB, white balance, exposure compensation, drive modes and RBG adjustment. The latter allows you to fine-tune colour settings using the LCD. Samsung has not explained how its ASR (anti-shake) system works but our tests showed it wasn't based on increasing the ISO. It countered camera shake in most low-light conditions, provided shutter speeds remained above about 1/20 second.

Eleven scene modes are provided (including a text mode), along with auto, Program AE, manual, movie and voice recording. To adjust aperture and shutter speed settings in manual mode, you run a fingertip along the lower row of buttons, stopping at the setting you want. It's a nice concept but takes some getting used to and only two aperture settings are provided. The full auto mode provides linear adjustments for colour and brightness, the former ranging from 'cool' to 'warm'. Four self-timer settings are provided: 10 sec, 2 sec, double and remote, and the supplied remote control works up to five metres from the camera.

Drive modes include single, standard and high-speed burst, 'M Capture' and AE bracketing. Eight 'effects' settings are provided, including one that lets the user adjust red, green and blue values independently and a GIF animation facility. Nine Photo Frame effects (a few of them quite usable) can be superimposed on shots. Composite shooting allows users to combine up to four images in a single shot. Video clips can be recorded in MPEG-4 format with 'TV quality' (VGA) at 30fps.

Playback facilities include single and index, up to 11.4x playback zoom, slideshow and a new Photo Gallery function that lets users add effects during playback. The NV10 also has on-board album facilities, along with rotating, resizing and trimming controls.

Power is supplied by an ultra-slim lithium-ion battery, which can be recharged while connected to USB, or by using the high capacity SBP-4442 battery recharge kit.

 Imatest confirmed subjective evaluations that the test camera produced images with a distinct orange-red cast. It also showed resolution to be excellent near the centre of the field of view but reducing towards the periphery. Test shots looked sharp and exposures were accurate but overall high contrast caused highlights to blow out slightly. Imatest revealed chronic, mid-level lateral chromatic aberration but we found no coloured fringing in our outdoor test shots.

White balance performance was best with the custom and manual pre-set modes and more natural-looking colours were recorded under fluorescent light than tungsten. Low light shots were noise-free up to ISO 400 but both pattern and colour noise were evident at higher sensitivity settings. The flash had no problem lighting up an average-sized room at all ISO settings.

The NV10 took roughly a second to power-up and shut down and we measured an average capture lag of 0.6 seconds, which reduced to 0.2 seconds with pre-focusing. Shot-to-shot times averaged 3.7 seconds. In standard burst mode, we recorded shots at 1.4 second intervals, while the high-speed burst recorded three shots at 0.6 second intervals. The M Capture setting captured up to 20 XVGA shots (1024 x 768 pixels) at 0.2 second intervals.

IMATEST GRAPHS

SAMPLE IMAGES

Image sensor: 7.18 x 5.32mm CCD with 10.3 million photosites (10.1 megapixels effective)

Lens: Schneider-Kreuznach Varioplan 7.4-22.2mm f2.8-5.1zoom lens (35-105mm in 35mm format)

Zoom ratio: 3x optical, up to 5x digital (playback zoom to 11.4x)

Image formats: Stills – JPEG (Exif 2.2); Movies – AVI (MPEG4 + WAV) at VGA/QVGA at 30/15 fps.

Shutter speed range: 1 to 1/1500 sec (to 4 sec. in Night & Fireworks modes)

Focus system/range: TTL AF; range 80cm to infinity; macro 4-80cm

Exposure metering/control: Multi, Centre and Spot metering; Program AE/Manual exposure; 11 scene modes

White balance: Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Fluorescent (x2), Tungsten, Custom

Flash modes/range (ISO auto): Auto, Auto & Red-eye reduction, Fill-in, Slow sync, Flash off; range 0.4-3.2m (wide). 0.5-1.7m (tele)

ISO range: Auto, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1000

Sequence shooting: 0.7 fps to memory capacity

Storage Media: 20MB internal memory plus SD/MMC card slot

Viewfinder: n.a.

LCD monitor: 2.5-inch colour TFT LCD (230,000 pixels)

Power supply: SLB-0837 rechargeable lithium-ion battery

Dimensions (wxhxd): 96.5 x 60 x 18.5mm (projecting part 8mm)

Weight: Approx. 148.7g (without battery or card)