By Damian Koh
16/08/2005
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/digitalcameras/0,39005881,39094361p,00.htm

In a move to consolidate the distribution and marketing of its cameras, Samsung introduced a slew of nine cameras early this month, including its flagship model, the Digimax i5. This camera is targeted at lifestyle consumers who want an ultracompact as a shooting companion. With an aesthetic design, some interesting features and a nice bundled package at a very attractive price of S$599, the i5 looks set to be a hit among general photography users.

Design

	The Digimax i5 comes with a pouch that looks just as good as the camera itself.

The Digimax i5 looks and feels good in our hands with its rounded edges. At a weight of 133g and measuring 89.3 x 59.8 x 17.3mm, this ultracompact may not be most ideal to fit into breast pockets, but makes a good hand-carry companion with its dedicated pouch and a sleek camera strap that comes with the purchase of the retail unit.

As with all other ultracompacts that sport an internal zooming mechanism, our fingers tend to curl around the edge of the lens and occasionally cover up the speaker found just right above it. The 3x optical zoom SHD (Schneider-Kreuznach) lens hides behind a metallic sliding cover that also reveals the flash unit and autofocus lamp upon receiving power. The bottom edge includes the compartment for its Lithium-ion battery, SD/MMC card and cradle connector. The strap eyelet is the only protruding edge on the i5's side.

	The pouch and camera strap with a metallic cylinder embossed with the brand form part of the accessories that come with the package.

The shutter release, power button, Safety Flash (SF) control, microphone and speakers are lined side-by-side at the top of the camera. All other key functions are bunched to the right of the 2.5-inch TFT LCD on the back of the i5, including the zoom lever, mode, playback, delete and four-directional buttons. Selecting left on the directional control allows the user to choose between different flash modes, while right activates the self-timer function. You press up to find the voice memo/voice recording feature, and down to switch between macro and super-macro.

The various shooting modes of the camera accessed via the Mode button allow you to select between Auto, Manual and Movie functions. Scene options are also available with the same button. The aperture and shutter settings are found under the Night scene mode for the more creative photographers who want to tweak their pictures. While in manual mode, the Delete button doubles as a control to change the RGB, ISO (100 to 400), white balance and the exposure compensation (2EV in 0.5EV steps) settings.

All other menus and functions are accessed with the Menu key in the middle of the four-directional button.

Features

	The 3x optical zoom lens hides behind a metallic sliding cover with the flash unit and autofocus lamp.

The i5's feature set includes the Safety Flash for indoor shooting, 3x optical zoom for movie, a variety of fun effects and 1cm super macro capability. The SF technology, however, is similar to Nikon's D-lighting function which automatically compensates for insufficient exposure. Though it's supposed to enhance image clarity and color in places where there is insufficient light source or when the use of flash is prohibited, we found that it's still generally best to use a tripod for blur-free photos as the i5 does not come with any optical image stabilization.

With 11 scene modes (Portrait, Children, Landscape, Closeup, Text, Sunset, Dawn, Backlight, Fireworks, Beach and Snow) selectable by the user, it was disappointing that the i5 didn't come with a Sports mode to take advantage of its continuous shooting function.

	The speaker, microphone, Safety Flash button, power and shutter release line up side-by-side at the top of the camera.

For the more advanced snapshooters, there are also manual functions for selecting the aperture (F3.5 and F6.3) and shutter speed (1 sec, 1.5 sec, 2 sec, 3 sec, 4 sec, 6 sec, 8 sec, 12 sec and 16 sec). The flash ranges from 20cm to 2.4m in wide-angle mode and just 30cm to 1.9m in telephoto setting when ISO is set to auto.

The i5's movie recording function will please video buffs as they can record MPEG-4 clips at a resolution of 640 x 480 at 30fps. It also comes with movie-editing capabilities embedded within the ultracompact itself together with time trimming and pause functions.

If you have a knack for those photo-sticker machines, this camera offers a total of nine photo frames to go along with your pictures. It also allows you to compose your photos in two, three or four different frames to make one single picture.

Performance

	The i5 uses a Lithium-ion battery that performs average, but the retail package comes with an additional second battery.

At a time-to-first-picture of about 2.5 seconds, this means you won't have to wait long to take that impulse shot. You can continue shooting with forced flash at 3-second intervals and approximately 1.5 seconds without flash. Shutter lag was averaged at 1 second and autofocus was respectable at under 1.5 seconds under most conditions.

Burst mode was not fantastic. You can shoot full-resolution photos at 5 megapixels until your trigger finger tires. We managed to take 108 shots in 120 seconds at 0.9fps on our Imation 1GB SD memory card before our finger gave up and we halted our test. One thing we noticed was that the camera body had a tendency to heat up during continuous usage, which wasn't too much of a problem except we were worried we might fry the i5's internals.

	We used a high-capacity Imation 1GB Secure Digital card in our tests on the i5. The retail package comes with a 256MB SD card.

Battery life from the Lithium-ion battery performed average at approximately 150 shots from a single charge intermixed with flash, plenty of zooming, picture review and card formatting. The good news is the retail set comes with an additional battery that makes the whole package a steal at S$599, not forgetting the unit comes with a dedicated pouch with belt holder and a 256MB SD card.

The LCD worked well under dim lighting conditions though direct sunlight tends to wash out the display, making it slightly more difficult to frame shots. There is no viewfinder on the i5, so you will have to depend solely on the LCD panel to frame and review your pictures.

Image Quality
The Digimax i5 produced photos with a good range of color, though with the SF enabled, the images tend to be slightly blurry. We were generally pleased with the super macro capability allowing us to go as close as 1cm to our shooting subject.

Noise, not too much of a problem at ISO 50 or ISO 100, was quite evident beyond ISO 400. Chromatic aberration in the form of purple fringing was minimal around backlit subjects. Generally, our photos taken in the day turned out well, but without an optical image stabilizer, the pictures taken under dim lighting conditions were less than satisfactory.