Samsung MV800 camera

Controls: Very clean and simple. You can see from the pictures that there aren't many buttons. That is because most of the features are accessed from the touch screen. The touch screen is very responsive to touches and swipes. The main menu has no less than five screens of options, including various photo and video shooting modes, scene selections, novelty modes, etc, but Samsung thoughtfully made this customizable so that you can put the options you use most on the first screen. While you're in shooting/viewfinder/review mode, icons for any available options will pop up with a simple touch of the screen, but are otherwise hidden for a clean, uncluttered screen.

Flip Screen: LOVE it. Although the screen only flips upward 180 degrees , the camera itself is small and handy enough to rotate the body of it to achieve any viewing angle you want. By holding the camera upside down and angling the screen down towards me, I have an excellent high view and can still easily press the shutter button with my left thumb. Even better, the camera has an internal accelerometer that senses its position, and automatically rotates pictures taken from an upside-down position. And the fact that the flip screen is also a touch screen means that the menu is handy even when the camera is pointed toward you, making it easy to set your options for your self-portrait.

Picture/Video Quality:  The light balance and color are great, and the focus is sharp. I have read on professional reviews that indoor pictures without flash tend to be a bit "noisy", but I never noticed this until I read about it. I think the light balance is just fine indoors, but you will want to use the fill-in flash for best color and quality. The camera focuses well and is nicely stabilized even when zoomed out fully, and with the 16.1 MP resolution, you can capture great detail even far away. The video quality is terrific and outputs nicely even to our 50-inch HDTV. And with a recording resolution of 1280 x 720, you can even get display-quality still photos (1MP) from individual video frames.

Panoramic Photos: Easily the best panoramic mode I've had on a camera. Rather than stitching together overlapping still photos, it allows you to pan from one side to another for a seamless panoramic photo, capturing up to 180 degrees of vista, although you will get a bit of a "bubble" effect when capturing such a large panorama. It can also take vertical panoramas.

3D picture capability: The fact is, in order to see your 3D photo, you need to output to a 3D TV. 

Battery life: I haven't really gotten a feel yet for how well the battery holds up. One review I read said it only takes 100 to 120 shots on a charge, but it seems like I've been able to take more than this on a full charge, depending on how often I use the flash, and importantly, how much time I spend fiddling with the menus in between shots (the LCD uses battery power too). When I've been disappointed with the battery, it's usually because I didn't charge it fully before using it, or I've been taking a lot of flash photographs. I will say that the battery life indicator, which has three bars, seems to go from full to nothing very quickly. I've heard from other owners of Samsung cameras that this is a common problem. My guess is that each bar represents approximately 33.3% charge, so three bars could indicate as little as a 67% charge. My advice is not to rely on the indicator as to whether your battery is fully charged or not. The best way to know if it is fully charged is to charge it fully right before using. It's also not a bad idea to have a charged backup battery on hand for those long events. You can get compatible batteries for as little as $15, they are well worth the investment.

In summary, I believe this is a sweet, intelligent little camera that is just crammed features. It's almost as if Samsung had consulted me personally in designing this thing, they have paid such close attention to the details that are most important to me. I think it would be hard to find a camera with a better balance of size, picture quality, and features.

Related Product:

Canon EOS Rebel T3 12.2 MP CMOS Digital SLR

Canon EOS Rebel T3 12.2 MP CMOS Digital SLR

This is what most of people said about Canon EOS Rebel T3 12.2 MP CMOS Digital SLR

The camera has a glossy plastic finish which doesn't exactly exude quality or make it feel like a high-end camera. But construction on this camera is very tight. The plastic is light-weight but its not flimsy like you would expect. There is no rubberised hand grip

, which I think was a mistake to omit this on this camera. Especially since its predecessor (and its competitors) have them. Outside of that, the hand grip is a very nice size. The one upshot to the lightweight plastic is that the camera feel very light with the kit lens attached.

One thing you have to watch out for is that the camera feels very out of balance when attaching a heavier lens. The Canon EF-S 18-200, while a good performer optically when paired with the T3, feels way too front heavy. And this will be true with a lot of the pro-grade Canon lenses that you attach to the T3.

The buttons and menu system have the typical degree of straight-forwardness found in most Canons. Canon's menu system is easy to learn and navigate through. That makes the T3 a good candidate for a student or someone that wants to learn photography in general and wants a camera they can grow with. Of course it offers full Auto mode but when you're ready to try and manipulate the more advanced manual controls, the Canon Rebel T3 is about as unintimidating as they come. It's also a great entry into the DSLR realm for hobbyists currently using an advanced point and shoot (and can be found for almost the same price as some advanced point and shoots).

With the exception of burst shooting, this camera's performance is excellent. Excellent start-up, shot-to-shot, and autofocus performance. It has 9 autofocus points compared to its predecessor's 7 points. I do not reccommend this camera as a budget action shooter. It has a slow continuous burst rate (2.7fps) and a very limited buffer. If you need a budget action shooting DSLR, your best bet is the Pentax K-r.

The camera comes with a nice, chunky battery which delivers excellent battery life. The viewfinder is 95% coverage and I found it to be satisfactory, some people say its really cramped but personally I think it's alright. The screen resolution is rather low at 230k, but in real-world use it's not as bad as you would think, and somewhat viewable in direct sunlight. I think both the viewfinder and the LCD are of better quality than the ones found on the Nikon D3100. And overall, the T3 is faster and more fluid than the D3100. After having shot with both cameras, I personally think the T3 is more enjoyable to shoot with... despite the D3100's better plastic and more advanced spec sheet.

The camera ships with the standard 18-55 kit lens but I suggest buying the kit which includes the additional 55-250 lens. While I do not like the kit lens performance when paired with the Rebel T2i & Rebel T3i, I think when it's paired with the T3 it's a bit of a different story. The lower end kit lenses have an easier time resolving detail on the T3's 12 megapixel sensor vs. the 18 megapixel sensor on the T2i/T3i. So, do not let a salesperson or anybody else say that the image quality on this camera is inferior solely on the basis that it has a lower megapixel count than its linemates. However, when you put a higher-end lens on the T2i/T3i, they do trounce the T3 when it comes to resoliving detail (not in noise performance though).

That said, overall, the image quality is excellent. Detail capture is good, metering is excellent, exposure is excellent, dynamic range is pretty good, color reproduction is punchy without being cartoonish and oversaturated. The ISO performance is excellent. Excellent performance up to and including ISO1600. One minor quibble is that the JPEGS come out just a tad soft. But they respond well to a little bit of in-camera sharpening or of course you can shoot in RAW as well. But overall, a very impressive performance from the T3.

The movie mode, while delivering solid video quality, is rather limited. It's 1280x720 HD and there are very limited manual controls. It's more like something you would use for quick clips rather than longer videos or movies. I think the Rebel T2i/T3i or EOS 60d are better choices if you're equal parts into videos and photos as they have far better video modes than the T3 does. But if you're main interest is stills photography, this probably won't matter much to you.

The Rebel T3 may not be the sexiest camera around but it is a simple, enjoyable camera to shoot with that delivers nice results with minimum effort and it appeals to a broad range of folks from DSLR newbies, to hobbyist, to even professionals looking for a light-weight backup to their higher end gear. At its current price, it is a great value and I highly reccomend it