Customer Reviews

Samsung Digimax S630 6MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Advanced Shake Reduction Zoom (Black)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(20)

 

 

this should really be a 4 1/2, but it does not give that option, so I rounded up since I like almost everything about the camera, and it is great for what I bought it for. I bought this lightweight small camera to keep in my purse-for those unexpected shots you want to take. I have a Sony Cypershot with a 12X optical that I normally use. The Sony is great for action shots and taking marching band shots from the bleachers. This one, I'm not sure could do that. It has a 3x optical, which is fine for zooming in on a person across the room, but not as far as into the football field. The in-camera zoom is ok for trimming, but I noticed it does lose some of the clarity on the shot.
The one drawback to this camera is the lag time between shots. If you like capturing shot after shot quickly-avoid this camera. However, if you are someone who generally takes shots of people at birthday parties, or objects on your vacation, this might be a great camera for you. It is a decent camera for the price. For what I wanted it for, it is perfect.
Ok, to sum up:

PROS
Small, lightweight
Good picture quality
Can take an SD card up to 4GB (That's A LOT!)
Easy to use
Inexpensive-goes on sale sometimes for around $100
Can take rechargeable batteries (I recommend for ALL digital cameras)
Video capabilities
Software compatable with older Windows(in case you need that)

CONS
Lag time between shots
In Camera Zoom loses picture quality

As you can see, I like most of the features. If you are looking for a decent, inexpensive point and shot type camera, then this might be the one for you.

Most people don't know how to change the factory settings for better effect. I use this camera along with a much more expensive Canon camera I have and they are rougly equal. But these cheaper cameras have a longer lagtime.
Otherwise if anything the Samsung is better because it takes equally good pictures with excellent color accuracy inside and out, and needs less tweaking on auto.
Some reveiwers reveal their ignorance because they use alkaline batteries in the first place and yet complain of short battery life. Alkaline batteries last about a third as long as rechargeable Nimh ones, and the latter can be charged 500-1000 times. Alkaline batteries make no sense.
Moreover, there is a setting for Nimh batteries and Alkaline. If you use Nimh, youll get astonishly long battery life, but not if the factory setting of "alkaline" isn't changed.
I might also add that Nimh batteries can be normally in the 1800-2700 range, and the higher they are the longer the battery life.
I don't change the batteries on this camera very often at all, but I use some of the energy saver settings and 2700 NIMH batteries of the type that don't lose hardly any of their charge (sold cheaply on Amazon). Otherwise regular NIMH batteries lose 40% of their charge EVERY MONTH just sitting around.
I bought my battery charger including 4 2500 NIMH batteries for $13 from Amazon with no shipping charges or tax. Get the batteries that hardly lose their charge too.


There are many setting that extend the battery life as well, such as "lcd save", "normal" vs. "fine" and "ultra-fine", lcd "bright, normal and dark", and also how long you want the image to show after taking it (1-5 seconds), and how much time yould like to elapse before the camera shuts off (3-10 minutes).
All digital cameras have difficult menus and poor manuals, so it's no wonder users struggle often with the wrong settings. Some of the settings cannot be made on "Auto" and must be made on "P" (program).
Now the 7 and 8mp version are out and they are even cheaper. The settings and quality on the 7mp are the same; the settings on the 8mp
have been rearranged a bit, but it is smaller with the same size monitor.
So get either of those instead.

I bought this for my mom for Mother's Day and I'm disappointed. The picture quality just isn't there, all the pictures feel a little flat. Not blurry, per se, just never crisp. That being the primary function of a camera, I can't get too up on this thing. I have a 5 year old Nikon Coolpix 2100 that I paid the same price for back then (87 bucks on sale) that takes better photos than this. Cheap optics on this camera, I suppose.

The battery life seems to be fairly limited as well and the response time seems a tad slow. If an inanimate object could have malaise, this camera would.

Everything works, and nothing's bad enough to make me feel ripped off, but by no means is this little thing impressive, certainly not as great as what some of the other reviewers have made it out to be. It is what it is, I suppose, but I'm still a little bummed.

We bought our German exchange student a digital camera for Christmas. It was a different make, and it lasted all of four months before heading to the great recycling center in the sky. When I discovered the camera we had bought only had a 3 month warranty, I felt badly and decided to get her a replacement that might actually last for a decent period of time.

After researching various cameras, I discovered this particular camera. It was the right price, had similar features to the one we had previously given her and it had a 1 year warranty. Also, the warranty is good worldwide, allowing her to get warranty service in Germany if it becomes necessary. That is not a common feature in other makes.

After several weeks of use, she is thrilled with the way it works. It takes wonderful pictures for a point and shoot, and is constructed of far better materials than similar priced cameras. I will admit that it does take a little while to record a picture, and it does inhale batteries, but these are problems that we saw in her previous camera, and I think are a function of the price.

Overall, for the price and type of camera, we are extremely happy and would buy another Samsung camera in a flash. If you are looking for a sophisticated camera, look elsewhere, but if you want a quick point and shoot camera, this is an ideal choice.

I take pictures of cars for car dealers for a living and this camera is just what we needed, something CHEAP that takes very good photos. The battery life, unlike some other statements, is great for me. I can go all day, usually around 600 shots and not have to swap out batteries. I use 2500mA batteries from Wal-Mart and have used the same set for two years now, every single day! I did manage to drop the camera pretty hard on a parking lot and the battery door flew open and batteries flew out across the lot, but when I put them back in, the camera worked fine and this was a month ago. It did damage the nice red finish, but that's not too important to me. The 2.5" LCD is a little hard to see in direct sunlight, but not nearly as bad as my old Canon Powershot camera. Indoor performance is not so great though, so if you're wanting something to do indoor portraits or lots of flash photography, you better not get this one.

I bought this camera for 99 bucks. Its pretty good. The batteries it comes with only last 10 minutes,problably less. So I went out a bought a 2 hour battery charger from Wolf Camera. It costed me 24 bucks and it came with 4 rechargeable batteries. I strongly recommend the charger because you will spend about 15 dollars every week for special AA batteries. The employee at the store told recommended it to me and he told hes used the same batteries for four years now. But anyways, you have to spend a little bit of time learning how to work the camera. The pics come out pretty good. I recommend the a 512mb card or bigger. You can set the photo quality settings it determines how many pix can record on your memory card.

I like the camera, Ive gotten used to it, but I still have to figure out somethings, but all in all, this camera is well worth it.

At first, like many other reviewers, I was frustrated, even infuriated by the extremely short battery life and I seriously considered returning the camera. But then I played around with the settings a bit--guess what? Turning off the 'beeps' and fake shutter sound, as well as turning down the brightness of the LCD completely get rid of the high battery consumption problem.

I had a bad experience with the last digital camera I had (Casio--what a piece of nice-looking junk!) so I vowed not to spend a lot on my next camera (guess what, there is no correlation between how much you spend and how long a camera lasts--cheap or expensive consider yourself lucky to get two years from your camera--I have a sneaking suspicion this is built-in obsolescence, eg. Canon's infamous 'E18' error).

Well, this Samsung S630 (at a third of the price of the Casio or the Canon) is great so far; I primarily use it to take macro shots of graphics to use in my courses and the sharpness of the close-ups is excellent. The camera does good work in auto mode, or if you prefer to tinker with multiple settings, you can do that as well.

I also like the fact that this camera uses the AA batteries you can buy anywhere, not some proprietary battery type that only the manufacturer sells for beaucoups bucks.

Finally, I'm not a shill for Samsung. I just don't like getting ripped off, and I think that's what the bigger names in the camera business are doing. True, this camera is plastic, not brushed aluminium, and it's not as small as some, but I will gladly take reliability and low cost over stylishness/small size.

Saw this mid-size Samsung S630 for $59 last week, and bought it for my 11 year old daughter without a second thought. It was very light in weight (plastic case)and good built. Photos were nice and above one's expectation for less than 60 bucks. It also has lots of features and a 2.5" LCD screen. I used two Sanyo enelope rechargeable batteries and they are still running after couple hundreds of photos. Video clips were even better in image quality than photos in dim light. This is a great beginner camera in such a low price and good quality. Now my daughter can have her own camera for her school field trips.
Great gift for your kids.

Bad battery performance, Audio recording turn off when changing zoom, when zoom stop, audio recording turn on again. Anyway nothing better for that price, excellent product.

First of all I am not going to cover any of the subjects that have been beat to death on here already. But to anyone thinking of buying this Camera dont walk , RUN to purchase it! This is without a doubt the finest little camera on the market for $89! It will take pictures as good as a $3-400 one [if it is set correctly] And to address the battery issue??? There isnt one........... all the comment about the batterys that came with it only lasting 10 mins that is TRUE .......... however that is the same length of time; they would last, in ANY digital camera. The LCD display takes alot of power to run on ANY camera. The problem is most of the folks on here howling about this camera need to be smarter than the camera and they are NOT. Why so many have said that it doesnt have a battery meter is a mystery to me; as it is shown in the upper right corner and tells you the state of charge at all times. For the camera to take the crispest photos you need to set it to Sharpness=Vivid Plus and Contrast to HIGH. The manual isnt much good to anyone; and you have to wade thru the online one, to find out how it really works: and that is the worst part of the camera the online manual...........
Once this is set up correctly, you couldnt ask for a nicer little camera, for $89 there just isnt one made. 99% of the problem is that people dont understand cameras and they WONT read the manual ......... hence the battery problems, uses to much power, no meter, poor quality pictures, etc.
The camera will take supurb quality photos if you set it up correctly but you do need to know enough about it to make those settings .