Customer Reviews

Samsung NV24HD 10.1MP Digital Camera with 3.6x Optical Ultra Wide Image Stabilization Zoom (Black)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'm glad I did not read the poor reviews @ Amazon before I bought my NV24HD. Instead I relied on the Mfr SPECS and bought it. This is a GREAT camera. Anyone who says less does not understand modern technology. This camera fits a small niche... First it is a Point & Shoot with "Wide Angle" Optics. So if your expecting a Handycam with 30x Zoom this is NOT your camera. You should be doing limited zooming with this camera as it is limited to 24mm Wide to 85mm Portrait range. The camera is perfect for family environment. It takes amazing photos and the HD video is decent compared to any P&S considering it's size. Is the HD Video perfect? no but IMO it's pretty decent. While there are minor issues with the camera the key word is "minor". I don't agree the issues other reviewers cite are relevant I.e. its bad for landscape? Well Duh? The NV24HD delivers and is made really well. The AMOLED display is amazing, place this beside any other P&S with both on and see for your self how much more this offers with the Wide Angle Optics. If you have a need for a P&S and can accept Wide-Angle to Portrait range optics you owe it to your self to get this camera.
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This camera is absolutely wonderful. After shopping around and looking at cameras for what seemed like forever, I finally found this little wonder. Now people may be hesitant, as to the Samsung brand, I was too, but I am in love with this camera. The price tag of only $250 was great as it is probably one of the cheapest HD cameras you can buy (from a reputable brand), and its image quality simply rocks. I must say that I am a more advanced user who was looking around for manual controls to make my images pop, and this camera's manual mode does just that. You can control virtually everything (minus some very complex things like manual focus, but you really don't need control over those in a little point and shoot.

The camera takes excellent quality videos in the HD mode (be forewarned that you may need a beast of a computer though to play back the movies smoothly). Also people have been complaining about average image quality from this camera and I see nothing of the sort. Colors are vivid and can be mad more or less so by changing effects either before or after taking the picture. One smart feature that Samsung included was the fact that the camera is so speedy with its smart touch interface that it gives a quick update of filters and effects when you roll your fingers over the button. This is great when you want to take pictures in oddly lit situations and you need to quickly find out what looks the best for your photo.

One thing I was really worried about was the pop-up flash on the top of the camera. Moving parts scare me as they tend to break easily and when I looked at the little brother to the camera, the NV15, I saw that the flash didn't really close all of the way after being played with. This flash however feels solid and like it will always close all of the way and will always open promptly with the half push of the shutter button. Not to mention this flash is POWERFUL, it can light up a whole room, not like it's a Canon Speedlite, or anything, but this is by far the best flash in a Point and Shoot I have ever seen.

The smile mode is a hilarious feature, people get so surprised when you just hold the camera and when they smile, it just snaps away. Also, the red-eye reduction is a great feature and just edits away red-eye, unfortunately it can't do pet-eye.

Now of course there must be some downsides to the camera. The first camera received from amazon was defective, a whirring noise always came from the lens when it was at the widest zoom. Samsung confirmed this problem and promptly offered to fix it, I was satisfied with their prompt response (although I was unhappy to speak with Raj in India about how removing the battery might fix my problem, do they not think that I would have tried that???) Anyways I returned it and a new one was at my house the next day (way to go Amazon!) This one being without the whirr. I have a complaint about the whole zoom and loose sound thing, I think I could live with motor noise in my video, and even if I didn't like it, you can edit out the video. Another thing to mention is that the software that comes with the NV24HD is flat out weak. It is a photo sorter and basic editor. Basically iPhoto or whatever the windows version of iPhoto is. The last complaint I have is that the camera has no dock. Honestly a little plastic dock would not cost that much and would make me feel better about charging my camera so I wouldn't have to rest it on its brilliant screen or the nice Schnider lens.

Even with my little quips about the camera, I have to say that for the price I would rather have this camera any day over a Nikon Coolpix or a Canon Powershot.

I've had the camera for about a week [see below for my update after a month and two months]. So far, I am quite happy with the camera. The zoom has worked well for me and is an improvement over my previous camera. Likewise, the HD video is great on my HD TV. I've been looking for a device to replace my camcorder and my digital camera. In many ways this is the device.

The only negative I have noticed so far is that when recording video if you zoom, the audio cuts out while zooming (or a second or two before the zoom starts). This is not a deal breaker, but it should be fixed so that you can zoom while recording audio. Seems like a pretty common thing to do.

Things to remember: get a large memory card if you intend to record HD video. I got a 16GB (SanDisk) card and it is working well and gives well over an hour of video. As most people know, the internal memory is small so if you are doing any video you'll get about 10 seconds without a card.

July 21, 2008:After using this for about a month, I had a few more comments: First, the battery life is the main drawback so far. On one trip I didn't get good battery life, but on a different one, I got more than 4 days of pictures (about 220), so watch the battery to make sure you aren't running low.

Second, someone has said in the comments that the audio cutting out while zooming is to ensure that you don't record the sound of the zooming and is consequently a feature, I must disagree. I have had a lot of other video cameras that can zoom while recording audio without recording the zooming sound, JVCs, Sony etc. To me, if you can't record sound while zooming there is a problem: either the sound cut-out or the fact that it would record the sound of zooming is a design flaw because other manufacturers have managed to have this feature for decades without a problem.

I ordered and received this camera from Amazon after seeing the ad from Samsung that it had the equivalent of a 24mm lens (on a full frame 35mm camera). 95% of these compact cameras have the widest equivalent to a 35mm which is fine for snap shot of friends, but really bad for photos of a room, or a landscape. the camera has a great feel, made of matte black metal. I have a lot of cameras and so I had others to compare it to-- that is where it falls down. You can't control the automatic noise reduction and even with the sharpening turned all the way down, and the images stabilization turned off, the files look very processed and the detail is very poor.. My favorite "happy snappy" is the Canon SD800 IS. Even though the technical maga pixel count is lower on the canon, and using interpolation to upres the canon file to the same res, using a professional focus chart from Century optics, you can see that the files from the Canon are WAY cleaner, and more color neutral and over all more pleasing. Even though the SD800 IS doesn't have as wide a lens (equ to 28mm) I much prefer it. That said, it is really amazing to get HD video out of this little guy!

Straight out of the box, I set up the camera with the time and date, and to imprint the date on each photo, and found the interface absolutely amazing. Samsung has done a brilliant job on it, making the camera very user friendly. I have used it indoors and out, have printed 4x6 and 5x7 prints, and downloaded images to my Kodak M1020 digital frame, all with excellent results. Picture quality is great, wide angle zoom gives great flexibility, and there's no other stuff to lug around! A camera this small with this much zoom naturally involves some design trade offs, and Samsung engineers have really nailed it, It won't replace a digital SLR, but for convenience, ease of use, and picture quality, I haven't seen anything in it's size or price range that I thought compared to it!

I just got the new nv24hd and it is a bit of a disappointment. The zoom operates much faster than the autofocus, so images are always blurry while zooming. Movie images snap into focus about a second after I stop zooming. (This is zooming while taking a 720p HQ movie of still objects in a well-lit environment.) The Zoom is also fast--too fast, in fact. The camera zooms from minimum zoom to maximum zoom so quickly that it is hard to get the camera to zoom to a specific level between the extremes. The zoom rocker-switch does not allow fine control of the zoom, and there is no setting for slow zoom, nor is there a "don't zoom faster than the autofocus can handle" zoom.

Also, if you like to take an audio 'voice memo' with your pictures, this is not the camera for you. The camera can take up to 10 seconds of "voice memo" audio after taking a picture, which is short but bearable. (Grandparents & family *love* hearing a sound-bite audio memo with each picture.) However, unlike image size, focus area, and other settings, the 'voice memo' setting resets to the default (off) after every picture. That means there is no way to have this camera automatically take a voice memo after every picture; you have to press several buttons to turn the voice memo feature back on before each and every photo that gets a voice memo. (I spent 45 min, mostly on hold, with Samsung tech support to confirm that there is no workaround to get an audio voice memo after every photo.) Casio & Sony have great voice-memo-after-every-picture settings (Canon & panasonic cameras, and apparently Samsung's nv24hd, do not have passable voice-memo-after-every-picture options).

On the plus side:
The wide angle is noticeably wider than on my Canon SD850 (28mm).
The OLED display is very bright and crisp, easily visible from any angle.
The unusual user interface, with ipod-ish buttons along the side and bottom of the display, is very intuitive and easy to work with.
The camera build feels very solid and reliable, but small and light.

Conclusion:
I really like the specs of this camera on paper, and I paid top dollar to get it as soon as it came out.
Since I bought this camera for the wide-angle still photos + 720p movies, I expect I'll return it. The blurry images whenever the zoom is used means zoom is not really useful in the movie mode. So the 720p is nice but blurry images when zooming + inability to limit zoom to a pace the autofocus can handle make the movie mode a real disappointment. And the all-but-useless voice memo settings make me wonder what other badly configured options await as I learn more about this camera...

I do a lot of hiking, biking and whatnot and miss too many shots because my stupid macho adrenaline-junkie partners generally refuse to indulge me while I futz with my digital SLRs.

Problem is, I sometimes need to turn those outdoorsy moments into cash. Since dinky cameras have gotten quite good image-wise, I felt it was time for pocket point&shoot whose images might be coaxed into commercial use. My desires, in order of importance:

1. Wide angle. A real wide angle, at least 28mm.
2. Reasonably crisp images -- a good starting point for Pshop, anyway.
3. Manual exposure setting.
4. Histogram.
5. Raw capability.

The Samsung NV24 does not have the last two features. The cameras that do -- Panasonic Lumix LX3, various Nikons or Canons -- are far more pricey. (I did test a different Lumix with imaging hardware similar to the LX3. Unimpressive pixels.) Knowing that the camera would also be a beater (throw camera in jacket, forget about camera, throw jacket into car) made this Samsung, with its 24mm lens and easy cost, worth an experiment.

I love this little thing. It feels great in hand. Unlike nearly every other P&S I've handled, the ND24 is a contradiction. It's light and tiny yet it has a businesslike heft. The body feels like it's milled from a solid aluminum billet. You can actually hold it still. In my pocket it does not feel ready to slip out unnoticed.

The image quality is about as good as these teensy chips tend to be. It's plenty good for the web.

Some reviewers here complain about software, connectivity, etc. I apologize in advance if feelings are hurt but . . . this pup is ready for Macs. I plug in the supplied cable. Punch one button on the camera. The camera card mounts and the battery starts recharging.

It is a RTFM camera, especially the "smart button" feature which is actually its two series of buttons. The interface is a clever X-Y axis setup. In some instances, like tweaking exposure compensation, you sweep your finger across all the buttons to scroll.

Kudos to Samsung for the packaging. Small box, no fripperies, mostly recyclable.

Finally, although most all modern digicam have ridiculous never-used "features" -- like the ability to shoot macro with all smiles in focus at night at the carnival (with and without fireworks) -- the Samsung NV24HD is refreshingly non-grotesque in this regard.

Samsung, add to this camera a histogram and a raw file dump and I can name a couple dozen pros who will pay twice as much for it.

I received my Samsung NV24HD Camera on April 30th. I bought a 8gb SDHC Type6 Card with it. The camera meets every expectation I had. The picture quality and movie quality is truly great. I say "Wow Mom Wow" really it's that good. I took photos of some tulips and it was really windy out but the sun was shining through them. The camera had no problem with amazing results both with photos and video. All settings were the highest quality. The 10 sec HD video was a small 9.4 megabytes again it was true HD. I am adequately impressed with the various shooting modes. Controls on other cameras typically are buried in setups are found on the NV24HD on screen in each mode you shoot in. "M" manual mode has immediate control every setting possible F-Stop ISO Etc.

The playback and review of photos and videos is fast and easy. It is very fast to zoom in on/out on pictures and navigate Pan using the edge sliders. The AMOLED has to be seen to be appreciated. While there are larger displays on current point and shoots this screen is a serious display for resolution and color depth and saturation. Looking at it while moving outdoors to indoors is amazing as it adapts on the fly. The navigation of the camera operating system is brisk and fast. It will keep pace when you are in a hurry. I took a picture using DIS (dual image stabilization in a very dark area of my pet. The photo was amazing for the light it picked up considering it did not use a flash. The resolution was diminished naturally but as a snapshot it would be almost impossible to get a shot light that otherwise without flash.

Via USB there is a option to Connect to PC or PRINTER and transfer via VISTA is just like any SD drive transfers. On the PC the Samsung MASTER software is too slow and performs poorly compared to something like Picasa by Google.

IMO this is a Prosumer grade camera and there is nothing cheap about it.

The wait is well worth it.

See photos I took at:
http://rebelrazer360.spaces.live.com/default.aspx

I'm a professional videographer and I think this is a really special item. I bought it for the HD video features. I was able to edit the video on Premiere Pro CS3. I've only had it for a day, but I put it through a few tests. I was surprised by how good the video quality is, and the colors looked great. The sound was surprisingly good (nothing special, but much better than expected). I think the wide angle lens on it is also very good. It's obviously not a professional video camera, but I can imagine using it for very low profile shooting and to capture video when I'm out and don't want to carry a camera with me. I can also imagine using it in situations where a very small light weight camera would be essential. I haven't put it through enough test to decide if I would ever use any of the footage on one of my projects, but it might fit a niche in a project that my larger video cameras can't fill. I really like that it has a wide angle lens, and anyone buying this should realize that you are not going to get much of a zoom out of this thing. My only wish is that it shot in 24p.

Let me begin by saying I am not one of those camera heads that does a tremendous amount of research before buying a camera and then tests the new camera, out trying each setting so I can do my own detailed review. I am by no means any kind of expert. The main reason we bought this camera is that we wanted the HD video functionality it offers.

I think the camera delivers nicely on the videos BUT I am disappointed to see that we can't purchase the cradle that allows you to hook directly to your HD TV to watch your videos. Here I am ready to throw some money at Samsung and they don't even offer it, so I wait. But I do love the videos and the fact that they use the H.264 codec so the quality is great, & file sizes of videos are handled efficiently.

On to the rest of the functionality. Love the smart buttons, gives you the feel of a touch screen without touching the screen. Love the wide angle as well. However, the last 3 cameras we have purchased were Canon PowerShots and they have always had very good picture quality all the way around in my opinion. When taking pictures indoors during the day for instance we have had several pictures turn out blurry. With the flash on at night also some less than perfect shots. Comparing them to the only other type of camera that we've ever owned, the Samsung falls short a bit. The only other beef I have with it is the software that comes with (Samsung Master). When downloading pictures you are not given many options like deleting the files once they've been downloaded, etc. Again comparing to the software that comes with Canon which seems much more thought out (probably because Canon has been doing it longer).

Overall though, we are satisfied with our purchase and look forward to using it (and for that CRADLE to come out!).