It’s no secret that the current digicam offerings from Samsung serve up lots of noise in any image but that may be about to change.  Currently the cameras are very stylish and that tradition continues, what hopefully will not continue is the image noise.

Samsung’s cameras have a knack for producing excessive amounts of noise at any ISO setting, noise is even visible at ISO 100 which is unacceptable.  The company announced new models with redesigned image processor that will hopefully deal with that problem though, whether it does will remain unknown until the cameras hit the “review” circuit.

The cameras have been dubbed the i85, NV8, NV15 and NV20.  The i85 is a pocketable simple point and shoot camera with the standard 3x optical zoom, ISO 1600 sensitivity and even doubles as a PMP (Portable Media Player).  There’s a saying that a multitasking device does everything poorly but does not do one thing well, dare I say this trend will continue.

The new NV series cameras offer a 3″ smart touch panel display (while not a touch screen per se, it is far more effective than hitting up tiny buttons, though that’s down to user preference as I tend to dislike traditional camera controls) and offer between 8 megapixel and 12 megapixel sensors.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, cramming more megapixels onto small CCD sensors is not the answer and I really wish all you manufacturers out there would get it through your thick hair-brained marketing department that adding more megapixels is not the answer, making larger, more sensitive sensors are, along with faster processors and better image processing algorithms.  There, I said it.

Just about every compact camera on the market is going to be “below average” until every company realizes that.  If you don’t mind not being able to take movies and want faster response times, low image noise then please seek out an entry level digital SLR, while you won’t be able to pocket it (easily) it will yield far better results.  In some cases, consumer digicams border on the prices of entry level digital SLRs.

The new line from Samsung fails to impress because it has basically just added more megapixels and maybe not even that… if you are to believe what Steves Digicams has to say on the matter.

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Entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 12:23 am under New Products, Point and Shoot, Samsung.

Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.