Review: Samsung NV10 digital camera

A novel digital camera with some unusual features

At first glance, the NV10 looks like a rather serious camera.

It’s finished in matt black for people who want to take photographs, not frosted pink for people who want a piece of bling to match their phone. Neither are its credentials emblazoned across its facia.

Yes, it has a 10megapixel CCD and a 3x optical zoom, but good taste precludes such boasts. Instead we get elegant yet stylish understatement and superbly high build quality.

Despite its compact dimensions, the NV10 is no point-and-shoot toy. Enthusiasts will be pleased to hear there’s a full manual mode in addition to the usual scene, program and fully-automatic options.

Just as the quietest of folk are often said to live the most colourful lives behind closed doors, the Samsung NV10 hides a surprising array of features beneath its smart exterior.

This is a camera which does just about anything you could want, and a few things you probably didn’t think of. Some are innovative and useful, others are fun, and some are some perhaps a little silly.

Seven shooting modes are accessed via a control dial that is echoed by an animated version appearing on the LCD. This means you won’t need to take your eyes off your composition to adjust it; it also means there will be no squinting and fumbling when taking shots in the dark.

A raised shutter release and a recessed power button complete the top-mounted controls, accompanied by a small pop-up flash.

To the rear of the camera, things get a little less conventional. There’s no menu button to be found, instead there’s a total of 15 buttons. Of these, 13 are of the capacitive, touch-sensitive type and are arranged along two sides of the LCD.

Touching a button reveals additional information about its function, while depressing it fully pops out a highlighted bar containing a row or column of icons. Touching one of the buttons along the other edge of the display highlights a similar bar perpendicular to the first, and where the bars intersect, the icon is selected.

Although this sounds complicated, it’s actually quite intuitive and can give you very quick access to a large number of features without having to page through wordy menus.

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Unfortunately, it’s a good idea imperfectly executed. The control interface is extremely quick and responsive, but perhaps a little too much so. The buttons are small and fiddly, and because they’re touch-sensitive it’s easy for big fingers to find themselves inadvertently activating adjacent buttons.

This sometimes leaves the camera feeling a little out of control and there are so many features that finding them all can become a little frustrating.

In playback mode, buttons don’t always line up with their respective on-screen icons. The Special effects menu houses most of the more esoteric capabilities of the NV10; these include the ability to create animated Gif images, panoramas and composite images.

You can also add pre-designed frame effects to your shots and, if you’re a fan of gurning through seaside cut-out pictures, you’ll love the selection of comedy overlays.

With all these bells and whistles it’s easy to lose track of the camera’s core features.

If you stick to the more conventional modes you’ll find a highly capable camera with anti-blur technology, high-sensitivity ISO modes and VGA-resolution movie capture in Mpeg4 format.

All the main settings are available at your fingertips for quick selection without having to take your eyes off your composition. The high-speed capture modes give you up to 2.5fps (frames per second) at full resolution or up to 7fps if you step down to 1,024x768.

Overall colour balance is good although images do have a tendency to suffer from chromatic noise, even at the lower ISO settings. At the top ISO 1000 setting it becomes very noticeable, although it stops short of rendering the images unusable.

If you’re prepared to make use of the manual controls, this camera is capable of some very creative results, although it’s debateable whether it really needs all 10megapixels to achieve this.

It’s telling that Samsung’s flagship model, the NV7 has fewer pixels, but is fitted with a higher-quality lens.

Our review kit included a smart carrying pouch with magnetised clasp, a docking/charging cradle and a wireless remote control. These should be optional extras and they add about £55 to the price, making the NV10 a little expensive.

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