Pros: compact, excellent price, great pictures, easy-use, 16 Mb built-in memory and produces video with sound
Cons: no optical zoom (not a big deal)
After a long search and try-outs of 3.0 MP digital cameras from reputable brand names, I found DIGIMAX 301 from SAMSUNG an excellent acquisition. I bought it from WalMart (near $ 118 bucks), a great price for a really nice camera. I have seen some notes from previous non-satisfied reviewers on the Internet, but I found later their complains are unreasonable and incoherent. Then I decided to write this review.
USABILITY: The manual is very well written, full of figures and diagrams. You can get the basics right away. You can download the manual written in several other languages (which was very helpful for my in-laws). Once you set the camera according to your desired settings, it is just a matter of "point and shoot". My in-laws (old guys and obsolete regarding modern technology) went out on the second day after I purchased this camera, and they took nice shots and movie clips. If they can do it, you will do it as a master. The camera has a macro function that takes very close shots. This function is enabled/disabled by a lateral switch. Indeed, once I forgot to disable it, and I got blurry pictures of long-range shots. But this was my fault, and I could realize it right away. Some previous reviewers said they got unfocussed photos, and this is the probable cause of their frustration.
PICTURE QUALITY: So far I got excellent pictures considering it is a 3.2 MP camera. Day light, close shots, night shots with and without flash, all them are just perfect. The best way to prove this is to show some of my photos, http://members.cox.net/mrpinto/DIGIMAX301.htm (note that some of them are really large files, i.e. up to 1 Mb size). The flash works fine, it does not produce overexposed close shots, neither underexposed long-range (up to 10 feet) shots. With a tripod you can get nice night shots without the flash, and best of all they come out clear, no grains and with nice resolution.
SHUTTER LAG: The camera initially shoots with less than 2 seconds, then it takes 6-7 seconds to be ready for the next shoot if you are using flash, the maximum resolution, and if you set the camera to preview the shot image. If you remove this last feature and set the camera to take normal resolution pictures without flash you can drop the shutter lag down to a fewer seconds. Note that if you use low quality batteries the shutter lag dramatically increase, since the batteries will not be able to deliver power to the flash right away (an usual problem of all digital cameras). Consider using rechargeable batteries with capacities above 2000 mAh, and you will have fewer problems with shutter lag.
BATTERY LIFE: I have not found any digital camera that does not efficiently consume battery. If you frequently use flash and the LCD screen, then you probably will wear out your batteries very fast. Once again, this is a common problem of all kinds of digital cameras. I bought an inexpensive charger along with four Ni-MH batteries (about $ 10 bucks), and they do their job nicely.
EXTRA FEATURES: There is the option to downgrade the resolution of your photographs, which is nice in case you want to send pictures to you friends over the Internet, who uses dial-up connections (small files). You do not need to buy an expensive memory card if you are able to print the pictures at home. With 16 Mb built-in memory you can take about 36 photographs with right-resolution and normal pixel definition. Using such settings, I could print perfect 8x10 (letter size) photographs, no grains and no low pixel definition. If you want improve the pixel definition (to ultrafine), you can store up to 12 photos, but the gain is just a little. To download the pictures to my PC is easy as drag-and-drop. If you are not able to do this, just buy a SD card and develop your pictures at a local department store (you can get a generic 128 Mb for $ 25.00 on WEB stores). The camera software has a PRINT function that will help a lot the not-friendly PC users. Finally, I forgot to mention, you might use your camera as a simple recorder.
