Samsung Digimax Pro 815

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The Digimax Pro 815 joins in the prosumer league for enthusiasts' pockets a couple of months after the camera was announced. While we can count off our fingers several competing models including Fujifilm's FinePix S9500, Panasonic's Lumix DMC-FZ30 and Canon's PowerShot S80, the Digimax Pro 815 tops them all with its retail price of S$1,399. If you think that's a lot, Sony has a S$1,699 model up its sleeve to be available some time this month.

What's impressive about this 8-megapixel dSLR lookalike model lies not in its price but a host of features it contains within its black body: A 15x optical zoom lens; 3.5-inch LCD; top color viewfinder display and a 1,900mAh Lithium-ion battery. Read on to find out if the performance and image quality match the price of this megazoom shooter.

Design

	The Pro 815 stares blankly at you in the face, and yet screams like a dSLR.

No other camera in its class comes as close as Samsung's Digimax Pro 815 to posing as a digital SLR. This black beauty weighs a hefty 870.5g (nearly twice as heavy as the Canon EOS 350D and Nikon D50) and measures 135.5 x 87 x 78.6mm. We like the form factor of the Pro 815 though the overall build would have been better had it a deeper chassis for the fingers to wrap around the handgrip. Another glaring design flaw lies with the built-in flash trajectory which is obstructed by the lens when it is fully extended--adding another 66mm protrusion.

You cannot escape the 3.5-inch LCD taking up a sizeable area on the camera's rear estate. What accompanies the screen are a four-directional control and several buttons to various functions: For switching between the LCD; viewfinder or top display; display options; scene modes/delete; picture review; exposure compensation/lock and digital zoom.

	Nearly all commonly used settings have a dedicated button--no need to surf through pages of menu.

There are dedicated buttons for almost all the commonly used functions. You press up on the directional control for white balance and left to cycle between flash options. Down activates macro mode and right allows you to choose from RAW, TIFF and JPEG quality. What we couldn't comprehend was the oddly positioned electronic viewfinder (EVF) on the left (from the back). To complicate matters, the huge LCD retains nose and face prints whenever we use the EVF.

The top edge of the Pro 815 is a lot more simplified. There are individual buttons for ISO, metering, continuous shooting and timer functions. The mode dial, which is easily reachable by the thumb, rotates between the various shooting options and is a joy to use. That's not all. Four circular keys (high-speed shutter; autofocus lock; pop-up flash and focus area selection) and a three-way selector switch for different focus modes dot the left of the Pro 815.

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