Samsung Digimax V4 Review



Record Screens & Menus
The desired recording mode is selected from the Mode Dial on the back of the camera.
The EASY shooting mode turns the Digimax V4 into an automatic point-n-shoot camera.
There's only two flash options; red-eye reduction or disabled and the menu (shown in next
frame) has simplified image size choices and drive modes.
EASY mode options:
Shooting - Single, Continuous, AE Bracketing
Program AE mode, the camera selects both shutter speed and aperture automatically.
There's a battery level icon, zoom lens gauge, the "99" indicates the number of pictures
remaining. The "L" means Large image size, the icon below that indicates the quality
level (Fine), and below that is the sharpness icon indicating Normal.
The Flash mode is "A"uto, the green brackets in the center is the auto focus area and we
have half-pressed the shutter to get an AF lock. Bottom left is the Single frame drive
mode icon and on the bottom right is the time and date.
P/A/M/S mode options:
Quality - TIFF, SuperFine, Fine or Normal Metering - Multi or Spot Shooting - Single, Continuous, AE Bracketing ISO Speed - Auto or fixed at 100, 200, 400 equivalents White Balance - Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Fluorescent or Tungsten Effect - Normal, B&W, sRGB, Sunset Sharpness - Soft, Normal, Vivid
Manual mode, you set both the shutter speed and the aperture manually. The camera
will display the shutter speed and aperture in green or red to indicate proper or over- or
under-exposure with the current settings.
Shutter-priority AE, you select the desired shutter speed and the camera will
select the best aperture setting automatically. Slower shutter speeds can give moving
objects a motion-blur effect, faster speeds will "freeze" a moving object.
Aperture-priority AE, you select the desired aperture value and the camera will
select the best shutter speed automatically. Small aperture numbers yield less depth
of field (range of focus), large aperture numbers yield greater depth of field.
Press and hold the "+/-" exposure compensation button and use the 4-way controller to
adjust the desired compensation factor from +2 to -2 in 0.5EV steps.
Press and hold the "MF" manual focus button and use the 4-way controls to adjust the focus
distance. There is an onscreen distance gauge but the display does not enlarge so the
ability to accurately focus is somewhat limited in this mode.
Movie mode records 288 x 208 motion video at 15fps with audio. Movie clips are saved
as Windows AVI format video files. The optical zoom cannot be used during movie recording,
you can preset it before recording starts. The length of these movies is limited only
by the amount of available memory.
Movie mode options:
Effect - Normal, B&W, sRGB, Sunset Sharpness - Soft, Normal, Vivid
And finally, you can Record Audio. The length is limited to a maximum of two hours. The display here says we can record a total of 7 hours, 55 minutes and 24 seconds of audio - there is a 256MB SD card in this camera. Audio recordings are saved as Windows WAVE format files. |
Go to
Page Four
Return To Steve's
Reviews Menu
Visitors of Steves can visit the stores below for real-time pricing and availability. You can also find hot, soon to expire online offers on a variety of cameras and accessories at our very own Camera Deals page.