Samsung IT100 Digital Compact Camera

I’ve had this digital compact camera from Samsung since June but forgot to publish a review. It was just good timing since today I got to use the HD recording capabilities of the Samsung IT100 and posted it on YouTube.

The Samsung IT100 is mostly made up of stainless steel with a metal plating for a solid look that’s both functional yet sturdy. It has a 28mm wide-angle lens and a 5x optical zoom to cover the needed distance when shooting.

The camera has a large 3-inch LCD screen so you can get a better preview of photos and it can also be hooked up to an external display (like an HDTV) via an HDMI port. Despite its compact size, the device is a little heavy due to the stainless steel casing.

Samsung IT100
12.2 megapixel
28mm wide angle
5x Optical Zoom Lens
Dual Image Stabilization (Optical IS + Digital IS)
3″ LCD display
lens: f = 5 ~ 25mm (35mm film equivalent : 18~140 mm)
1/2.33″ (~ 1.09cm) CCD

This camera also features an optical and digital image stabilization so shots are more stable and images are sharper. This functionality reduced blurred images resulting from shaky hands. The use of both the digital and the optical image stabilization will work great under low light conditions if the built-in flash is not used.

(Sample shots: click on thumbnail to see larger version. Photo quality is not very impressive but the HD video is really good.)

The Samsung IT100 comes with an array of automatic controls, including Smart Auto, which assesses environmental conditions and select the most appropriate mode from any one of 11 scene modes of the camera. Samsung include their own proprietary Smart Album program that organizes photos and videos. Other automatic features include Beauty Shot, Face Detection, Blink Detection, and Smile Shot.

On top of still images, the Samsung IT100 can also take high definition videos at a resolution of 720p at 30 frames per second. Storage is available via an SD card (built-in storage is just 70MB).

The 5x optical zoom and 720p high-definition video recording was put to the test this afternoon when I was shooting the flood in my area (the video here was shot in 480p only though but click on the HD control button).

It also has a nice new feature called the Recycle Bin where you can retrieve images or videos that have accidentally been deleted. The camera comes in black, blue, red and silver colors and retails for about Php18,000USD 307INR 26,003EUR 292CNY 2,234+ in stores.