Product Reviews

When we first heard about the S850, we liked the sound of its 8-megapixel sensor, 5x optical zoom and manual exposure control, all for £150. As it arrived for review, its price fell to £100 from www.argos.co.uk (the Argos website calls it a Digimax 850). Can a camera this inexpensive really live up to its high specifications?

Samsung hasn't skimped on the other features, with a 2in, 230,000-pixel screen, MPEG4 video capture at an impressive 800x592-pixel resolution and an SDHC slot for cards up to 4GB - it takes SD and MMC cards too. The one cost-saving measure is its AA battery compartment and disposable batteries supplied in the box. The plastic and metal body is larger than those of most compact cameras but feels tough and is comfortable to hold, although the door for the battery and card compartment seems a little flimsy.

As with previous Samsung cameras, the menus are arranged into three groups, which you access with different buttons. We used to find this confusing but we must admit that we're slowly getting used to it. They're logically grouped, with one button for general settings, another for frequently used camera controls such as ISO speed and white balance, and the third for effects such as Sepia or novelty picture borders. The mode dial includes Program, Aperture priority, Shutter Priority and Manual exposure modes, plus something called Advanced Shake Reduction (ASR). This is a purely digital process rather than the optical image stabilisation used in other (admittedly more expensive) cameras. It requires quite a few seconds' processing time per picture, and we can't say definitively that it reduces blur from camera

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shake. Manual focus is available but there's no temporary digital zoom to help with fine adjustments. Manual exposure is better, as an Exposure Value (EV) display shows whether pictures are over- or underexposed, and half-pressing the shutter button gives an accurate preview of the brightness of the resulting image. Auto-bracketing is available, along with automatic shooting at one-minute or longer intervals and a Motion Capture option that shoots 30 1-megapixel images in a second.

The camera takes around three seconds to power up and shoot, which is slow, but otherwise performance is excellent. It captured a picture every two seconds in standard mode and every 1.5 seconds with manual focus. The 0.9fps continuous mode is less impressive, but it's perfectly adequate considering the price.

The S850's images looked every bit as good as we would expect from a camera costing twice as much. Detail was exceptionally sharp: pixel for pixel, images were crisper than those from the other cameras on test this month, and along with its 8-megapixel resolution, they were streets ahead. The 1cm macro focus produced stunning close-ups and the 5x zoom made a big difference for distant subjects. We did notice some chromatic aberration towards the corners, where the red, green and blue elements of images didn't line up, but it was imperceptible in most shots. Colours were vibrant and accurate, with flattering skin tones in direct sunlight, low artificial light and flash photography. Noise was impressively low, with sharp, reasonably clean pictures at ISO 400 and an ISO 1600 setting that was OK for emergencies. Sadly, low-light photography was spoiled by poorly chosen automatic settings. Auto ISO mode used ISO speeds as low as 50 in conjunction with shutter speeds up to 0.5s, which inevitably resulted in blur. With no high-sensitivity scene preset, the only solution was to set the ISO speed manually. This serious oversight rules out the S850 for casual snappers.

For those who take a keen interest in their camera's settings, the S850 is a fantastic bargain. Its image quality and photographic controls rival those of Canon's PowerShot A630, while its 5x zoom and lower price make it all the more attractive. However, its automatic mode needs improvement before we can award it five stars.