Samsung MV800

For those who love to play with their camera and have fun with image

Digital cameras have come a long way. The early ones looked exactly like film cameras and did not have screens. You had to download the image on to a PC to see the results. It was faster than going to a photo lab, but still… Then came the Sony cameras with LCD screens and Samsungs with two LCDs: the screen on the front was to facilitate self-portraits. Other manufacturers also started playing with screens, introducing tilt screens and touchscreens. And now, Samsung has introduced another innovation with the MV800: a 3 inch LCD touchscreen that flips 180º. It can be adjusted to any angle, so you can take those brilliant low-angle shots even if you’re not a contortionist. And Samsung has thoughtfully put the shutter button on this screen, so you don’t have to hunt for it after the shot is composed.

Touchscreens are notorious for slowing down cameras, and they can become useless as preview screens because of all the fingerprints on them. While the MV800 is not completely free of these shortcomings, it’s as fast as a smartphone camera.

It has a 16.1 megapixel sensor and 5x, 26 mm wide-angle zoom lens. The camera can be connected to an HDTV to preview pictures in 3D.

Its picture-in-picture mode allows you to play with the pictures. You can, for example, inlay a picture of your pet with a picture of your parents. I believe this feature will soon become very popular. Other applications let you bend, stretch and manipulate pictures (a feature that has already become very popular), and add background to images.

Its best feature is that it shoots three images every time you press the shutter. The main picture, which stays as you had composed it, and two more with different zoom ratios. You can choose which ones to discard, or keep. The MV800 can also shoot HD videos, but only at 720 p. Sadly, the MV800 stores everything on a microSD card. So, it is advisable to keep a microSD convertor handy.

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Gagandeep Singh Sapra