Customer Rating:  
Summary: Don't recomend this product
Comment: For the price I expected more quality for the video. It's a Samsung should be good right?? I would not recomend this to anyone. This video quality is really bad...It's easy to use and compact, looks great.
Customer Rating:
Summary: 52x Optical Zoom head's up
Comment: I'm happy with the camera. I wanted a small, simple video camera not a high end professional quality camera. Daytime and night time quality are good. The wind cancel function helps when shooting outside. Once I figured out how turn off auto-zoom I got a great video of fireworks. With a little practice I'm now able to control the zooming speed with precision. The Time-Lapse recording looks cool but I don't think I'll need it.
One head's up: It's got a 52x Optical Zoom. It's impossible to hold the camera steady at full zoom. A tripod is a must when zooming more than 25x.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Really really great valued camcorder from samsung.
Comment: This camera is amazing for the low price tag. With it I wad able to finish filming and editing the final chapter in my trilogy. The camera comes with software that is compatible with most computers allowing you to edit your film with extreme ease. Down falls is that there is no built in light for night recording and there is no night vision for a special effect.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Caution: Does NOT have built-in memory, does NOT come with a memory card
Comment: Since I had never used a camcorder before, I was initially puzzled by this one. And then I discovered the first important fact regarding use of the F40: The lens cap has a manual mechanical release. Yes, I know that sounds dumb, but I was expecting the lens cap to open when the camera was turned on, and it didn't. (Interestingly, the quick start guide doesn't even mention the lens cap.)
Second observation: There is no built-in memory. None. Zero. Nada. Zilch. And Samsung does not include even the most basic of memory cards in the box. Gosh, thanks Samsung. How helpful. I had to boost my 2 gig class-4 SD card out of my digital camera just to try the Samsung out.
Third observation: The built-in software works only with Windows-based PCs. Samsung does not make this clear in the basic product description. They refer to PCs in general terms without making it clear that they do not consider Macs to be PCs. Last time I looked, the term PC meant "Personal Computer." And while the term PC is most generally used to refer to Windows-based machines, a bit more specificity would be helpful. (Interestingly, my iMac did not automatically recognize the F40 when I plugged in the USB cable, and it automatically opened iPhoto, not iMovie. I thought this was very odd until I realized that it might be doing that because I was using the memory card from my Panasonic Lumix.) (Will have to wait and see what happens when I get a memory card specifically for the camcorder.)
So, on to the quality of the video. If all one wants to do is take some videos of Uncle Harry's 99th birthday, then the camera is probably going to be just fine for interior shots. The quality of interior shots is generally very good, but don't expect it to be professional-level.
I was much more pleased with the quality of the exterior shots. For the first test, I took videos of my dogs running around. I have a rural property, and they are herding dogs, so they can pick up quite a bit of speed. The video quality was excellent going from shade to bright light, and the movement of the dogs was smoothly recorded. Be aware, however, that the camera does not seem to have any stabilizing features, so one has to take care not to get a shaky video. I was also very impressed with the zoom, as it took clear shots of my dogs even when they were over 250 feet away from me.
All-in-all, my four-star rating is based on it being a very good entry-level camera.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Very Good
Comment: Very decent Camcorder for the price.
Sound and images and reasonable but not exceptional.
I have not transferred files yet.
Easy to use controls. Watching video on TV is very user friendly.
NOTE: People have complained about the memory card not being detected.
To circumvent this problem insert the memory card while the power is OFF!
I too had a problem with the memory card until I inserted it in this manner.
|
