Samsung NV7 OPS

When Samsung first announced its NV-series of cameras, we thought the Korean chaebol finally did something right, at least in terms of design. In pictures, the NV-series looked alluring with a matte black exterior. Three units were launched under the NV umbrella, which comprised the NV3, NV10 and NV7 OPS. The NV3 is a stylish remake of the Digimax i50 and i6, while the NV10 is Samsung's contender in the megapixel race with a resolution of 10 megapixels. With the NV7 OPS, the company rounds up the series with the optically stabilized shooter in its consumer digicam lineup.Design

	A seven-by-six array of buttons allow you to navigate the menus.

The NV7 looks very much like the stylish 10-megapixel NV10, but once you slap a cylindrical tube on, it just doesn't quite cut it anymore. Even then, you can almost never go wrong with a matte black camera. We like the overall "smooth" feel to the shooter. However, the uneven weight distribution with the protruding lens takes a few brownie points off. Another quibble we have is with the removable lens cap, which can be a hassle, especially if you just want to turn on the unit and snap, instead of having to deal with the cover.

For most digicams, you'd almost inevitably be greeted with accompanying text labels for each button on the unit, but there is almost none of that on the NV7. For the record, the NV7 uses a new touch-sensitive menu navigation system. The 2.5-inch LCD panel is not a touchscreen, though. What you get is a row and a column of buttons, which will take you through the menus when you slide your fingers over them. Pressing the buttons will then confirm your selection.

	Flimsy pop-up flash requires delicate usage.

We got a shock during our initial hands-on with the NV7 when the pop-up flash, er, popped up on us. Though it feels a little flimsy, the way it is built is actually quite thoughtful. We can hold down the flash with our hand so that the light would point diagonally 45 degrees upwards, creating a pseudo bounced flash effect. Likewise, you can force the light to point diagonally downwards, but you won't be using that often since the protruding lens will cause your pictures to have a semi-circle shadow on the bottom edge of your shots.

The battery and SD memory card go into a compartment at the bottom of the unit, accompanied by a proprietary connector for the charger and a metal tripod receptacle.

Features
Like its name suggests, the NV7 OPS has 7.2 effective megapixels, which should be sufficient for the casual photographer. Higher resolutions don't necessarily translate to better image quality and we'd rather trade a megapixel or two for optical image stabilization or better sensitivity control.

Samsung's Optical Picture Stabilization uses the CCD-shift mechanism guided by internal sensors which move the CCD in the opposite direction of camera shake. There are two modes to choose from. In OPS1, the image stabilizer activates when the shutter opens to capture the image, whereas in OPS2, the stabilizer turns on when the shutter button is pressed down halfway. When we primed the shutter for a shot in OPS2 mode, the camera emitted a noise which resembled a motor running continuously.

The Korean chaebol also has a second system in place known as the Advanced Shake Reduction (ASR) which it claims will reduce camera shake in low-light scenarios for better exposed and sharper pictures without flash. Unlike the OPS which involves mechanical parts, the ASR uses the camera's engine to post-process your shots. That means you'll have to wait longer than usual between shots if you intend to use this mode.

There are several touchscreen cameras in the market but these usually result in nasty fingerprint-stained LCDs. Samsung's Smart Touch user interface gives a similar experience sans the ugly marks on the screen. Surfing the menus on the NV7 is a whole new game but, fortunately, the learning curve is gentle and we actually like the whole intuitiveness of it. Our only gripe is that it takes effort to scroll through our pictures frame by frame. There's a tendency for us to skip several shots at one go.

For the record, Sony had a rather similar user interface in one of its portable audio player back in 2004. The Vaio Pocket used Sony's G-sense pad with 25 buttons in a five-by-five row array that roughly corresponded to the screen display.

The camera records MPEG-4 VGA 30fps movie recording (with audio) and there's also a successive recording feature which allows you to pause/resume during recording. There's no way to adjust the volume when you are playing back your video clips and we couldn't find the onboard speakers even after tearing apart the user manual. The closest we came to the sound "leakage" was on the top edge, far left (opposite side of the mode dial) of the camera.

	The power button lights up in a cool blue ring.

The NV7, however, is not just a point-and-shoot but offers manual settings for photographers who want to have more control over how their pictures turn out. In aperture-priority, the lens begins at F2.8 on the wide end and F4.0 at maximum telephoto. Shutter speed can be set from 15 seconds to 1/1,5000 second in shutter-priority mode. There's also a full manual mode on the camera where you adjust both aperture and shutter speed settings concurrently.

The 7x optical zoom begins from a tight 38mm to 270mm (35mm equivalent) which, frankly, we'd have preferred a wider 28mm on the NV7. Metering choices include multi-segment, center and spot and you can compensate for exposure in 1/3EV steps. The NV7 is also capable of taking pictures up to ISO 1,000 according to the specifications. With the wealth of features on the shooter, including the ability to adjust sharpness, we've to admit we were rather surprised to find controls for contrast and saturation missing.

On a lighter note, the NV7 does come with little treats in the form of photo frames (nine of them), composite shooting functions, voice recording, various color effects, and it records animated GIF clips which should appeal to the user on the street. To go with the whole sophisticated look, the power button lights up in a cool blue ring--just think Xbox style, but in blue.

Performance
The NV7 took 2 seconds to power up and another 1.8 seconds to shut down. It captured its first shot at a disappointing 3.2 seconds, which means you could have already missed an impromptu shot if your camera was in the off position.

We could shoot thereafter every 1.5 seconds without flash, and even with forced flash, the camera reported fast recharge cycles every 2 seconds. Shutter lag was measured at 0.15 second. Continuous shooting was a bundle of joy snapping 46 frames in a minute on our 1GB Imation SD card, which worked out to be 1.3 frames per second.

Samsung rates the 860mAh Lithium-ion battery for a total of 150 shots.

Image Quality

	Click for test image at ISO 800 and ISO 1,000.

There are five selectable sensitivity settings on the NV7. At ISO 100 our shots were rather clean, but noise began to creep in at ISO 200 and became visibly noticeable at ISO 400. The discerning difference came at ISO 800 where there was a sharp drop in image quality and color and our test shots looked like they were covered with a layer of sand. Even in our real-world shots at the lowest ISO setting, we could still see noise at 100-percent magnification.

Our pictured also exhibited clipped highlights and we had to drop the exposure a notch in order to retain more details in the whites. Auto white balance did well overall, though it did falter a little under incandescent lighting. Selecting the appropriate preset white balance or custom solved the issue. For more precise adjustments, there's also temperature between 3,000K and 10,000K.