Samsung Digimax S500

If you are a just a beginning photographer or only need a decent point and shoot for family and vacation pictures, this is the cam for you. Camera pros/intermediates beware! Though the price is very low, you get what you pay for.

The best part about this low priced camera is the manual exposure controls and the RGB controls. For a camera priced at just over 100 dollars, being able to control more while photographing than the average point and shoot is a definite plus! The display screen is large and does fairly well in sunlight which is surprising as well. The camera is very compact and light weight, easy to handle, and comes with a decent pixel range of 5.1 mega pixels.

The menu's are a bit confusing especially if the new owner of the camera happens to be a novice. The user manual helps to some degree but shuffling around in it can leave you with a headache. There is no aperture or shutter priority and the exposure adjustments are a little strange as well. Instead of the normal 1/3 stop increments, the Samsung s500 has 1/2 stops. I have found the focus of the camera to be pretty soft and find myself sharpening most of my images during post processing. The lag time for pictures is pretty bad, especially if you are trying to take a photograph of a moving toddler or small child. The shutter doesn't do well in cold temperatures and after about 3 months of ownership, it no longer closes when the camera is off, and when the camera is turned on, I find that getting it to fully open is a challenge.

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