Samsung Digimax Pro 815 8MP Digital Camera with 15x Optical Zoom and 3.5-Inch LCD

by Samsung

Product Details

Product Manual [19.95mb PDF]

• Product Dimensions: 9 x 9 x 9 inches ; 1.9 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 6 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000BBF2XI
• Item model number: 120815
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14,877 in Camera & Photo (See Top 100 in Camera & Photo)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 7, 2004

Product Description

Manufacturer Description

The Pro 815 enables you to handle any shooting condition and situation, and demonstrates all the technologies of Samsung Techwin, the leading camera manufacturer in Korea. The release of the Pro 815 provides evidence that Korean digital camera designs are equivalent to or better than Japan's in terms of technology. The Pro 815 employs the world's best 15x optical zoom, the world's largest 3.5-inch LCD, the world's first top-of-camera LCD, and a Li-Ion battery with the world's largest capacity (as of fall 2005).

The world's longest built in zoom, 8-megapixel high-specification digital camera
The Pro815 equipped with a 15x optical zoom with a focal length of 28 to 420mm (35mm equivalent), this means you can shoot from wide angle to telephoto with one lens. Normally it is not possible to incorporate both 28mm wide-angle and 420mm tele-zoom capabilities in a average high-end camera, since they generally only come with a 7 to 8x zoom, With SLR systems, different lenses need to be switched to shoot wide-angle and ultra high zoom pictures, this means carrying lots of equipment, missing some shots due to lens changeover, and buying multiple lenses. The Pro815 has four low-dispersion glass lenses specially manufactured to minimize chromatic aberration that can occur when wide-angle and ultra high zoom are supported at the same time. In addition it employs two aspherical lenses for the correction of spherical aberration and lateral colors for the entire zoom range from wide to tele. This world-renowned Schneider-Kreuznach lens offers outstanding reliability.

A high-powered built in flash
The Pro815 is equipped with a high-powered built in flash to let you obtain a perfectly exposed picture even in dark environments. The Pro815 not only has a powerful flash that allows shooting at up to 7.7 meters (wide settings) but can also control an external flash depending on the surrounding exposure environment.

Professional manual photography features
The Pro815 offers comprehensive manual photography features that should meet all the needs of aspiring photographers. Manual exposure (Aperture/Shutter/Manual) and manual focus control features are included as standard. Three rings surrounding the lens controls manual zoom, manual focusing and EV compensation, providing you with the direct control of manual operations. The dual jog system, which is used to control aperture and shutter speed, also delivers precision in manual operation. The camera has various focusing modes including AF Lock, Continuous AF, and Select Area AF. Its direct manual focusing feature lets you switch to manual focusing from AF instantly by turning the manual focus ring. In addition, bracketed shooting is allowed for exposure, focus, and white balance. In particular, which balance is available in Preset, Custom, and Color Temperature Adjust modes. This lets you express colors exactly as you want. Contrast and saturation can also be controlled for creative expression in the depth of color required. The camera support Adobe RGB Color Space as well as an 8-megapixel non-compressed RAW file, making it the perfect choice for enthusiast image output.

The fastest response time in its class
The Pro815 achieves the fastest response times in its class. Its start-up and shot-to-shot speeds have been reduced to one second each, and it delivers a fast AF speed even in tele-zoom mode by utilizing a passive AF sensor. The shutter release lag of 0.05 seconds lets you capture those shots without fail. It also allows you to shoot subjects moving at high speed by offering shutter speeds up to 1/4,000 second. Pro815 includes high-speed continuous shooting at 2.5 frames per second, normal continuous shooting that lets you shoot while viewing an image taken on the LCD, and ultra high speed continuous shooting that allows you to shoot up to 10 1-megapixel-sized images per second. As it has high-speed USB 2.0 connectivity, images taken can be transferred to a PC quickly.

The world's first top TFT LCD for waist-level shooting (1.44-inch wide view)
Another great feature of the Pro815 is waist-level shooting, enabled by its top LCD. The 1.44-inch wide color TFT LCD of the Pro815 displays a preview screen in real time, allowing the waist-level shooting style often adopted by professional photographers. This LCD position enables high-level shooting as well as taking pictures from various angels. The top LCD can also be used as a status LCD to display shooting information. Since the required information is available on the LCD at all times, you can shoot a subject of choose a desired function more quickly.

The World's largest digital camera LCD
Another feature of the Pro815 is that it has the world's largest 3.5-inch RFT LCD used in a digital camera. Conventional high-end or SLR cameras use a relatively small 1.8- to 2.0-inch LCD and the screen does not show the shot at the point of taking the picture. With the Pro815, anybody can easily take a picture and view images through its large LCD. The large LCD is also a real benefit for better composition. By using Transmissive with Micro Reflective (TMR) technology, you can share your images with other people because the viewing angle is wide and the colors are well reproduced. There is also an electronic viewfinder.

What's in the Box:
Digital camera, user manual, warranty card, camera strap, software CD, 64MB CompactFlash card, lens adapter, lens hood, lens cap, AC cord, battery charger, SLB-1974 rechargeable lithium-ion battery, USB cable, AV cable.

Product Description

The Pro815 equipped with a 15X optical zoom with a focal length of 28 - 420mm [35mm equivalent], this means you can shoot from wide angle to telephoto with one lens. Normallyit is not possible to incorporate both 28mm wide-angle and 420mm tele-zoom capabilities in a average high-end camera, since they generally, only come with a 7-8X zoom, With SLR systems, different lenses need to be switched to shoot wide-angle and ultra high zoom pictures, this means carrying lots of equipment, missing some shots due to lens changeover and buying multiple lenses. The Pro815 has four low-dispersion glass lenses specially manufactured to minimize chromatic aberration that can occur when wide-angle and ultra high zoom are supported at the same time. In addition it employs two aspherical lenses for the correction of spherical aberration and lateral colours for the entire zoom range from wide to tele. This world-renowned Schneider-KREUZNACH lens offers outstanding reliability. The Pro815 is equipped with a high-powered built in flash to let you obtain a perfectly exposed picture even in dark environments. The Pro815 not only has a powerful flash that allows shooting at up to 7.7 m[wide settings]but can also control an external flash depending on the surrounding exposure environment. The Pro815 offers comprehensive manual photography features that should meet all the needs of aspiring photographers. Manual exposure [Aperture/Shutter/Manual]and manual focus control features are included as standard. Three rings surrounding the lens controls manual zoom, manual focusing and EV compensation, providing you with the direct control of manual operations. The dual jog system, which is used to control aperture and shutter speed, also delivers precision in manual operation. The camera has various focusing modes including AF Lock, Continuous AF and Select Area AF. Its direct manual focusing feature lets you switch to manual focusing from AF instantly by turning the manual focus ring.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

179 of 187 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Get your pictures the Old fashioned way..., November 18, 2005

By 

Sinister Minister - See all my reviews

This review is from: Samsung Digimax Pro 815 8MP Digital Camera with 15x Optical Zoom and 3.5-Inch LCD (Electronics)

Yea, with this camera you have to earn them! Hi all. SinMin here with what is probably the one review that most of my friends here at amazon have been waiting for, The Samsung Digimax Pro 815. Before we start let me say this first off if you are easily frustrated and/or do not have at least a basic working knowledge of photography DO NOT buy this camera. When Samsung said "Pro" They definitely meant it! I'll get into why later. Samsung? Panasonic? What the heck is up with these blender compainies putting out these monster cameras!I have to say that had panasonic not realeased the FZ-30 this would have been a strong contender for the mega-zoom catagory. So do I place this number 2 to the Z-30? No- more like 3 or 4 but definitelty in the top 5 or 6. This first reason being is that this camera has no image stabilizer, wich is suicide in terms of good low light and ambient light photography. Samsung's trick of speeding up the shutter and boosting the ISO works at best occasionally and when it does the images are in dire need of retouching work! Bottom line the method the camera uses to restrict movement called "High Speed Shutter Mode" Does not work. But, remember that thing you hang your baseball hat on, in your closet? That Uh...Tripod! Well if you use that with the 815 in low and ambient light, and the camera works rather nicely! You may also want to fine tune your shots depending on the effect you want using the camera's shutter and apature settings. If you use the camera like we used to before they invented image stabilization you'll be just fine. Makes you wonder if Samsung knew that all along! So you say what the heck!
Samsung is buddy buddy with Kodak, why didn't they slap one of thier Stabilizers in there? The answer to that one is easy...Power consumption. See, the 815 has a 3.5 inch rear LCD screen, wich sucks power at an amazing rate, combine that with the two other displays on the camera, the flash, etc. etc. there was no way to use a stabilizer and provide enough power for all those goodies. So Samsung figured if they would break ground they would have an easier time doing it with an 3.5 LCD screen rather than a 15X optical zoom stabilized camera.I think they were right because while that 3.5 LCD is nice it has the same image resolution as a screen that is 1 inch smaller, so what happens? You lose definition. So while the screen is great for reference, and for a aging bozo like me it in fact does not produce that great of an image. In fact I have found that the worse a picture looks on that screen, the better it is on my PC!!Resolution in the viewfinder is not much better, but the best resolution (of course) is in the little waist shooting screen. As long as we're talking design... the 815 is one of the coolest looking cameras out there (I think) It is about the same size as the Canon EOS 20D, and a good bit heavier. Yessss!!
The body is solid as are all the buttons and other controls wich are finished in gun metal(Cool). The greatist thing is the Schneider lens with its 3 focus rings. The main ring is your zoom. The second is your fine focus. And the third allows you to fly thru the aperture settings on the fly when you are shooting in manual mode!! The 815 has one of the best feeling and most responsive manual focus modes of any fixed lens camera I've tested. It feels as good and as accurate as my digital Olympus lenses. Above the lens is the hot shoe and the pop up flash. Be careful here, one foopa with the 815 is that the pop up flash is not high enough to prevent shadowing at close range. And I found that the on board flash is way too bright, but thankfully its adjustable. Shot to shot speed is average better provided you turn down or off the review option. With the burst mode set at high quality the camera shoots faster than the Rebel XT, almost as fast as the D70 (no kidding, I was surprised too!)Besides the LCD the next most obvious ground breaker here is that 15X optical zoom! It goes all the way from an incredibly wide 28mm to a whopping 428mm!! All in one lens!All the shots I took (once I got used to the camera) were all well exposed with little or no barrel distortion at the wide angle. Now talking images, I do not like the auto WB setting on this camera it tends to make images appear to have a blue tint. I have gotten much better results setting the WB myself. ISO settings go from 50 to 400, 400 is tolerable if you plan on reworking the image in photoshop, But I got the best results at 50 and 100.For the most part to date all the images I've taken with the 815 have had very good detail, and good saturation of color sometimes its a little too much, But that doesn't bother me, I tend to be artistic about things like that. The 815 also features FX such as Black and white, sephia, and Reverse exposure. It will do video clips in the usual resolutions, and allow you to zoom and record in stereo sound (Kicked Canons Butt on that one!!)It ships with all the standard adjustment controls you would want in a camera of this caliber: Contrast, sharpness, saturation, Color space. It also has a place where you can save three of your favorite shooting configurations and the assign it to a space on the mode dial. The camera ships with a very detailed and easy to use manual,Lens adapter ring, Lens Hood, Video & UsB Cables. I have not used the software yet.The last ground breaking feature of the 815 is its 1900Mwh battery, wich it needs, because of all those LCD Screens! as a result its battery life is about average for a camera this size despite its pumped up power pack.
So lets wrap this up shall we?
The pro 815 in my opinion is an impressive first showing for Samsung as they move into the upper levels of camera design, There are problems, the camera is a Pain in the butt when using low light, No close range flash capability, Resolution on the 3.5 LCD should have been about 150,000 pixels higher(Again where was Kodak with thier HiDef LCD?), And I found the program mode to be a trifle inconsistant in shot to shot exposure reading, It tended to leave my shots with a blue tint at times.And the method to stabilize the lens just does not work.
The pro's of the pro 815? with a tripod and that zoom lens a whole world of possibilities opens up(you just need a cool head and know how), Great construction, design, and menu system, Fantastic lens quality, Astounding burst capability, If you are an outdoor or nature photographer this camera is the bomb! Great fx, Over all quality of the pictures I've taken so far I would rate on a scale from 1-10, at around 8.5 or 9. Color reproduction is vivid sometimes a little too much depending on the shot (I don't see that as a bad thing)See the shots I've posted and you will see, this camera takes great pictures. Great Video mode (Not that I use it but-) I would not reccomend the Pro 815 as your Main camera. Mostly because of the trying times shooting in low light, and the over exposure from the built in flash. I would however strongly reccomend it to anyone looking for a great second or back up camera, It is a well built, versitile photographic weapon, But be warned... you need to know your shutter and aperture relations and settings to get the most out of it, otherwise you could be in for hours of frustration. When Samsung called it Pro they meant it. This is not a point and shoot camera by any means. Had this camera shipped with a 2.5 inch LCD and Kodak (or any for that matter) Image stabilization system, this camera would have been an absolute DEMON.Maybe next time? Until then I have mine, and have plans for using it alot more. I really wanted to give it 5 stars but the whole lowlight thing really erks me!That and putting such a big beautiful lens on a camera with no stabilizer is just irresponsible!! Be well all, thanks for your time and as always..Happy Shooting!!

And as a personal note thanks to all of you for writing to ask for my advice and taking the time to say how you enjoy my reviews.Believe me I enjoy writing them for you! If I can I am always willing to help!

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great, but could have been better., January 29, 2006

By 

B. Skoczek "actually im her son" (Chicago, IL , USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Samsung Digimax Pro 815 8MP Digital Camera with 15x Optical Zoom and 3.5-Inch LCD (Electronics)

I, like most people was drawn to this camera for its incredible 28-420mm lens and its 3.5 inch lcd screen. However i didnt like the max aperture of 8. But i gave it a chance anyways. First day i took it outside and took a few snapshots with ISO50, which comes in handy. ISO50-400 was fine for me.

Basically this is a great camera but here are some things people can forget or ignore till its too late.

-Aperture max is 8. Might be too small for more professional users.

-Write time for RAW is 15 seconds and for TIFF 25. (supported by http://dpreview.com/reviews/samsungpro815/page4.asp )

-TIFF function is not much better than jpeg and it takes 25 seconds to write.

-Works worse than most cameras in dimly lighted areas(shutter speeds sink down to 2.0" and 1/3 etc.). But you can easily avoid this with opening the flash.

Overall this camera is wonderful. It has some problems but i find the good outweighs the bad by a landslide. Just remember its a 28-420mm zoom. Think of all the possibilities. O yea and it has a 3cm macro that actually works well.

Props to Samsung on a camera well done.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars SLR quality without the SLR price...., May 11, 2007

By 

Jeremy Deats - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Samsung Digimax Pro 815 8MP Digital Camera with 15x Optical Zoom and 3.5-Inch LCD (Electronics)

First, the (now discontinued) Samsung Pro 815 is an outstanding camera. It looks like an SLR, but with the video mode option and it's incorporation of a fixed telescopic/wide-angle "combo" lens, it appears to be impossible to be using an SLR system (although Samsung seems to claim it as such). So what does this mean? It means if you compare the Samsung Pro 815 to an entry level digital SLR like say the Nikon D40, you'll find the D40 produces less noisy pictures at high ISO's (ISO 400 on the D40 seems to have about the same level of noise as ISO 200 on the Pro 815). Also, it will take less effort to get ambient, indoor shots with a true SLR and of course you can change out the lens on all digital SLR's, the Pro 815's lens is fixed/not interchangeable.

On the bright side although it's not a true SLR, the Pro 815 is an excellent camera (see sample photos posted by myself and others) and has received rave reviews from professional photographers even when it was selling for $700+ in 2006. I suppose this is because A. it takes outstanding photos and B. It has an incredible Schneider-KREUZACH combo lens that can handle most photo opportunities without the need to change the lens moving from wide-angle to telescopic. C. It's packaged with more features than the lower end Nikon and Cannon SLR's (e.g. 3.5" LCD on back, waste-level shooting LCD on top, a ton of auto scene selection modes that actually work quite well).

In spite of its mentioned limitations, I love this camera and I doubt I'll outgrow it. Because of its combo lens it will attract pros, but it's price point will attract beginners and intermediates. It's probably the best deal you'll find on a digital camera.