I received my Samsung NV24HD Camera on April 30th. I bought a 8gb SDHC Type6 Card with it. The camera meets every expectation I had. The picture quality and movie quality is truly great. I say "Wow Mom Wow" really it's that good. I took photos of some tulips and it was really windy out but the sun was shining through them. The camera had no problem with amazing results both with photos and video. All settings were the highest quality. The 10 sec HD video was a small 9.4 megabytes again it was true HD. I am adequately impressed with the various shooting modes. Controls on other cameras typically are buried in setups are found on the NV24HD on screen in each mode you shoot in. "M" manual mode has immediate control every setting possible F-Stop ISO Etc.

The playback and review of photos and videos is fast and easy. It is very fast to zoom in on/out on pictures and navigate Pan using the edge sliders. The AMOLED has to be seen to be appreciated. While there are larger displays on current point and shoots this screen is a serious display for resolution and color depth and saturation. Looking at it while moving outdoors to indoors is amazing as it adapts on the fly. The navigation of the camera operating system is brisk and fast. It will keep pace when you are in a hurry. I took a picture using DIS (dual image stabilization in a very dark area of my pet. The photo was amazing for the light it picked up considering it did not use a flash. The resolution was diminished naturally but as a snapshot it would be almost impossible to get a shot light that otherwise without flash.

Via USB there is a option to Connect to PC or PRINTER and transfer via VISTA is just like any SD drive transfers. On the PC the Samsung MASTER software is too slow and performs poorly compared to something like Picasa by Google.

IMO this is a Prosumer grade camera and there is nothing cheap about it.

The wait is well worth it.

See photos I took at:
http://rebelrazer360.spaces.live.com/default.aspx

I ordered and received this camera from Amazon after seeing the ad from Samsung that it had the equivalent of a 24mm lens (on a full frame 35mm camera). 95% of these compact cameras have the widest equivalent to a 35mm which is fine for snap shot of friends, but really bad for photos of a room, or a landscape. the camera has a great feel, made of matte black metal. I have a lot of cameras and so I had others to compare it to-- that is where it falls down. You can't control the automatic noise reduction and even with the sharpening turned all the way down, and the images stabilization turned off, the files look very processed and the detail is very poor.. My favorite "happy snappy" is the Canon SD800 IS. Even though the technical maga pixel count is lower on the canon, and using interpolation to upres the canon file to the same res, using a professional focus chart from Century optics, you can see that the files from the Canon are WAY cleaner, and more color neutral and over all more pleasing. Even though the SD800 IS doesn't have as wide a lens (equ to 28mm) I much prefer it. That said, it is really amazing to get HD video out of this little guy!

When I placed the order on Amazon, the estimated delivery was 1-2 months but to my surprise it showed up in a week on May 12. I ordered this particular ultra-compact because of size and features, ISO up to 3200, shutter, 2.8, focal lengths, etc. Plus, my wife doesn't like to lug around our Canon 40D and it's nice to have someone else take photos sometimes, especially at kids' birthday parties, showers, etc. (if you know what I mean). I haven't had much time to use it but here's what I experienced so far. Make sure you use a SDHC memory card. I tried a standard SD card that I had around the house and the video was very jerky (I know, duh!). I don't know if purchasing a SDHC Cat 6 vs. SDHC Cat 4 makes a huge difference but the price difference was not significant online so I bought a SDHC Cat 6. The video was much better. A couple of minor gripes. Us, 50+ types, too vain or reluctant to wear our reading glasses will struggle to read the icons on the dials. Secondly, where and when can I get the accessories? Nothing available on sale at the Samsung and Amazon websites. I would love to get the cradle to hook up via HDMI and an extra battery. Searching the sites, it seems that these accessories are currently available only outside the US. I starting buying Samsung products about a year ago, DLP, Blu-Ray, etc. moving away from Sony, Panasonic and so far, I am satisfied with their products and pricing.

I've had the camera for about a week. So far, I am quite happy with it. The zoom has worked well for me and is an improvement over my previous camera. Likewise, the HD video is great on my HD TV. I've been looking for a device to replace my camcorder and my digital camera. In many ways this is the device.

The only negative I have noticed so far is that when recording video if you zoom, the audio cuts out while zooming. This is not a deal breaker, but it should be fixed so that you can zoom while recording audio. Seems like a pretty common thing to do.

Things to remember: get a large memory card if you intend to record HD video. I got a 16GB (SanDisk) card and it is working well and gives well over an hour of video. As most people know, the internal memory is small so if you are doing any video you'll get about 10 seconds without a card.

I just got the new nv24hd and it is a bit of a disappointment. The zoom operates much faster than the autofocus, so images are always blurry while zooming. Movie images snap into focus about a second after I stop zooming. (This is zooming while taking a 720p HQ movie of still objects in a well-lit environment.) The Zoom is also fast--too fast, in fact. The camera zooms from minimum zoom to maximum zoom so quickly that it is hard to get the camera to zoom to a specific level between the extremes. The zoom rocker-switch does not allow fine control of the zoom, and there is no setting for slow zoom, nor is there a "don't zoom faster than the autofocus can handle" zoom.

Also, if you like to take an audio 'voice memo' with your pictures, this is not the camera for you. The camera can take up to 10 seconds of "voice memo" audio after taking a picture, which is short but bearable. (Grandparents & family *love* hearing a sound-bite audio memo with each picture.) However, unlike image size, focus area, and other settings, the 'voice memo' setting resets to the default (off) after every picture. That means there is no way to have this camera automatically take a voice memo after every picture; you have to press several buttons to turn the voice memo feature back on before each and every photo that gets a voice memo. (I spent 45 min, mostly on hold, with Samsung tech support to confirm that there is no workaround to get an audio voice memo after every photo.) Casio & Sony have great voice-memo-after-every-picture settings (Canon & panasonic cameras, and apparently Samsung's nv24hd, do not have passable voice-memo-after-every-picture options).

On the plus side:
The wide angle is noticeably wider than on my Canon SD850 (28mm).
The OLED display is very bright and crisp, easily visible from any angle.
The unusual user interface, with ipod-ish buttons along the side and bottom of the display, is very intuitive and easy to work with.
The camera build feels very solid and reliable, but small and light.

Conclusion:
I really like the specs of this camera on paper, and I paid top dollar to get it as soon as it came out.
Since I bought this camera for the wide-angle still photos + 720p movies, I expect I'll return it. The blurry images whenever the zoom is used means zoom is not really useful in the movie mode. So the 720p is nice but blurry images when zooming + inability to limit zoom to a pace the autofocus can handle make the movie mode a real disappointment. And the all-but-useless voice memo settings make me wonder what other badly configured options await as I learn more about this camera...

I like it - works well. Very small. Great screen and terrific wide angle lens. I'd prefer a touch-screen rather than the buttons. But all in all a good buy.

I bought this camera for two reasons: The 24mm lens, and the H.264 720p video. The lens is as advertised, the video is not.

Image quality is average, it seems to have trouble with deep blues (sky, water). Lens could be better and has huge flare in bright light as do most compact cameras. 24mm in a compact is excellent. The ISO 3200 is fun and could be useful in a bar situation or somewhere you absolutely cannot use a flash and otherwise would not be able to take a picture, but don't plan on framing it. 1600 is almost as bad.

The H.264 encoded MP4 video files the camera generates are malformed, and do not work properly in any video editing software I have tried (windows or mac). They will usually play, but any attempt to transcode or rescale the video either crashes the application or results in varying errors (other H.264 files from other cameras work fine). Also, the Quicktime player stumbles over the first few frames of the video (windows and mac) and you cannot scrub back and forth at the start of a video due to the bad file. This is worse than it sounds, as you cannot resize the video to a dvd or to an ipod (or anything else) and I can't do any editing of it whatsoever off of the camera. A shame, as without this major deal breaker it would otherwise be a good camera.

It should also be noted that while this camera technically records 720p video at about 6Mbps, a good standard definition camcorder will produce superior and in some cases sharper images. I had attempted to scale them down to DVD resolution, however this appears to be impossible until a workaround is discovered.

Other minor gripes are the poor low light performance of the video, even compared with other (non-HD) still camera video modes, and the very gimmicky picture mode selector wheel. The included software is horrible, I would get the PDF manual off of the CD and download the free picasa from google.

If the video is fixed in the future, I would rate it a 4.

Straight out of the box, I set up the camera with the time and date, and to imprint the date on each photo, and found the interface absolutely amazing. Samsung has done a brilliant job on it, making the camera very user friendly. I have used it indoors and out, have printed 4x6 and 5x7 prints, and downloaded images to my Kodak M1020 digital frame, all with excellent results. Picture quality is great, wide angle zoom gives great flexibility, and there's no other stuff to lug around! A camera this small with this much zoom naturally involves some design trade offs, and Samsung engineers have really nailed it, It won't replace a digital SLR, but for convenience, ease of use, and picture quality, I haven't seen anything in it's size or price range that I thought compared to it!

I'm glad I did not read the poor reviews @ Amazon before I bought my NV24HD. Instead I relied on the Mfr SPECS and bought it. This is a GREAT camera. Anyone who says less does not understand modern technology. This camera fits a small niche... First it is a Point & Shoot with "Wide Angle" Optics. So if your expecting a Handycam with 30x Zoom this is NOT your camera. You should be doing limited zooming with this camera as it is limited to 24mm Wide to 85mm Portrait range. The camera is perfect for family environment. It takes amazing photos and the HD video is decent compared to any P&S considering it's size. Is the HD Video perfect? no but IMO it's pretty decent. While there are minor issues with the camera the key word is "minor". I don't agree the issues other reviewers cite are relevant I.e. its bad for landscape? Well Duh? The NV24HD delivers and is made really well. The AMOLED display is amazing, place this beside any other P&S with both on and see for your self how much more this offers with the Wide Angle Optics. If you have a need for a P&S and can accept Wide-Angle to Portrait range optics you owe it to your self to get this camera.
[...]

I ordered this camera for my sister who has HDTV. She wanted to film a wedding. I practiced with the camera so I could give her a quick intro.
Screen nice and clear and takes nice photos. It warned that battery can only be charged when directly inserted into a contact, i.e. no power strip.
It worked at my home. However, at the Palm Beach hotel in Miami (fancy hotel) when plugged directly into an outlet, it refused to charge the batteries (she had ordered two additional lithium batteries). In addition even when it is charging an arrow turns red, but it never turns green or stops glowing red, hence only way to check is to disconnect camera and then open camera to check status of battery. We ended up returning camera to the vendor. Plug into camera also leaves some leverage. Unable to watch video on laptop which has Vista.

Let me begin by saying I am not one of those camera heads that does a tremendous amount of research before buying a camera and then tests the new camera, out trying each setting so I can do my own detailed review. I am by no means any kind of expert. The main reason we bought this camera is that we wanted the HD video functionality it offers.

I think the camera delivers nicely on the videos BUT I am disappointed to see that we can't purchase the cradle that allows you to hook directly to your HD TV to watch your videos. Here I am ready to throw some money at Samsung and they don't even offer it, so I wait. But I do love the videos and the fact that they use the H.264 codec so the quality is great, & file sizes of videos are handled efficiently.

On to the rest of the functionality. Love the smart buttons, gives you the feel of a touch screen without touching the screen. Love the wide angle as well. However, the last 3 cameras we have purchased were Canon PowerShots and they have always had very good picture quality all the way around in my opinion. When taking pictures indoors during the day for instance we have had several pictures turn out blurry. With the flash on at night also some less than perfect shots. Comparing them to the only other type of camera that we've ever owned, the Samsung falls short a bit. The only other beef I have with it is the software that comes with (Samsung Master). When downloading pictures you are not given many options like deleting the files once they've been downloaded, etc. Again comparing to the software that comes with Canon which seems much more thought out (probably because Canon has been doing it longer).

Overall though, we are satisfied with our purchase and look forward to using it (and for that CRADLE to come out!).

This camera is absolutely wonderful. After shopping around and looking at cameras for what seemed like forever, I finally found this little wonder. Now people may be hesitant, as to the Samsung brand, I was too, but I am in love with this camera. The price tag of only $250 was great as it is probably one of the cheapest HD cameras you can buy (from a reputable brand), and its image quality simply rocks. I must say that I am a more advanced user who was looking around for manual controls to make my images pop, and this camera's manual mode does just that. You can control virtually everything (minus some very complex things like manual focus, but you really don't need control over those in a little point and shoot.

The camera takes excellent quality videos in the HD mode (be forewarned that you may need a beast of a computer though to play back the movies smoothly). Also people have been complaining about average image quality from this camera and I see nothing of the sort. Colors are vivid and can be mad more or less so by changing effects either before or after taking the picture. One smart feature that Samsung included was the fact that the camera is so speedy with its smart touch interface that it gives a quick update of filters and effects when you roll your fingers over the button. This is great when you want to take pictures in oddly lit situations and you need to quickly find out what looks the best for your photo.

One thing I was really worried about was the pop-up flash on the top of the camera. Moving parts scare me as they tend to break easily and when I looked at the little brother to the camera, the NV15, I saw that the flash didn't really close all of the way after being played with. This flash however feels solid and like it will always close all of the way and will always open promptly with the half push of the shutter button. Not to mention this flash is POWERFUL, it can light up a whole room, not like it's a Canon Speedlite, or anything, but this is by far the best flash in a Point and Shoot I have ever seen.

The smile mode is a hilarious feature, people get so surprised when you just hold the camera and when they smile, it just snaps away. Also, the red-eye reduction is a great feature and just edits away red-eye, unfortunately it can't do pet-eye.

Now of course there must be some downsides to the camera. The first camera received from amazon was defective, a whirring noise always came from the lens when it was at the widest zoom. Samsung confirmed this problem and promptly offered to fix it, I was satisfied with their prompt response (although I was unhappy to speak with Raj in India about how removing the battery might fix my problem, do they not think that I would have tried that???) Anyways I returned it and a new one was at my house the next day (way to go Amazon!) This one being without the whirr. I have a complaint about the whole zoom and loose sound thing, I think I could live with motor noise in my video, and even if I didn't like it, you can edit out the video. Another thing to mention is that the software that comes with the NV24HD is flat out weak. It is a photo sorter and basic editor. Basically iPhoto or whatever the windows version of iPhoto is. The last complaint I have is that the camera has no dock. Honestly a little plastic dock would not cost that much and would make me feel better about charging my camera so I wouldn't have to rest it on its brilliant screen or the nice Schnider lens.

Even with my little quips about the camera, I have to say that for the price I would rather have this camera any day over a Nikon Coolpix or a Canon Powershot.

I'm a professional videographer and I think this is a really special item. I bought it for the HD video features. I was able to edit the video on Premiere Pro CS3. I've only had it for a day, but I put it through a few tests. I was surprised by how good the video quality is, and the colors looked great. The sound was surprisingly good (nothing special, but much better than expected). I think the wide angle lens on it is also very good. It's obviously not a professional video camera, but I can imagine using it for very low profile shooting and to capture video when I'm out and don't want to carry a camera with me. I can also imagine using it in situations where a very small light weight camera would be essential. I haven't put it through enough test to decide if I would ever use any of the footage on one of my projects, but it might fit a niche in a project that my larger video cameras can't fill. I really like that it has a wide angle lens, and anyone buying this should realize that you are not going to get much of a zoom out of this thing. My only wish is that it shot in 24p.

Bought a Samsung NV24HD digital camera from Amazon on May 24, 2008. When I tried to register it online, I'd get a message that it wasn't a valid serial number. I didn't give that much thought, thinking perhaps they hadn't caught up with their production. Today is July 17, 2008 and they still haven't caught up.
I have found the camera difficult to set, difficult to use, and I've been unable to download pictures from the SD card unless I put the card in my Canon camera which works fine. I loaded the Samsung Master software into two PCs running Windows Vista. Neither computer recognized the camera. After an hour on the Samsung tech line it was agreed the camera is defective. When I asked for an address where to send it, I was asked for the serial number. I read it off and they told me it is not a valid serial number. Upon speaking to a higher up it was finally admitted the camera was manufactured in April of this year, "but we probably haven't caught up.
Amazon refused to give me a full refund. They did tell me I could return the camera and I'd receive a partial refund. How much? I asked. That's up to the return department after they inspect the camera. Under those terms they could return me $25 bucks on a $300+ camera.
If I send it to Samsung for repair I will not actually be sending it to Samsung. While SONY maintains its own repair facilities, Samsung hires it out to someone on 6th Avenue in NYC. Would I buy another Samsung product? I don't think so.

THIS PRODUCT IS OVERRATED!
WHY?
THE HD VIDEO OPTION (WHICH WAS THE MAIN REASON FOR ME TO BUY THIS CAMERA) IS A JOKE! NOT WORTH THE INVESTMENT; I AM NOT HAPPY WITH THIS PRODUCT AT ALL. I WISH AMAZON WOULD HAVE DONE THEIR DUE DILIGENCE WORK ON THIS PRODUCT BEFORE CONVINCING ME THAT IT'S WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR.

I DO NOT INTEND TO DO ANY MORE BUSINESS WITH AMAZON DUE TO THIS REASON.

AS A MATTER OF FACT, AMAZON SHOULD STEP UP TO WHAT THEY CALL "100% CUSTOMER SATISFACTION" PROGRAM AND COMPENSATE ME FOR MY DISSATISFACTION.

THANK YOU.

THABITJUBRAN@YAHOO.COM

This is an amazing camera! I absolutely love it! So compact and sleek plus HD! I went to Disney world and used this camera through out the whole trip! What better way to capture the magic then with this camera!

Does this have a hole in the bottom to attach the camera to a tripod? I've seen no pictures of the bottom or specifications saying it does, and I want to use the camera to take pictures of rooms in houses I have for sale, rotating the camera on my tripod and stiching the pictures together afterwards.

When I saw this camera while a visiting friend from Germany was using it here, I was mightily impressed. He had taken pictures from the plane, showing the glaciers on Iceland, and these were stunning in sharpness and detail. So I ordered the camera for myself that same day. I found that getting used to the cross-reference button system on the back is very awkward, because the documentation coming with the camera is more than poor. The dials on the top left and right will display their functions on the rear view screen, but it is so fast and short, one has no time to actually read what it is. So that makes it a guessing game of frustration. The camera is best used with a tripod for pictures, since 10.2 meg pixels are nice, but!! if you shake it even the slightest bit, say goodbye to sharpness.
It gets worse when taking video clips: One of the reasons why I bought this camera is that it claims you can zoom while taping, well, you can, but!!! no sound during zooming! And the zoom is so fast, it makes for a race car type take-off, no subtle zooming back and forth. Before you know it, you're all the way in or out. Not good at all. When I played back the first set of clips, I noticed that the sound track was finished playing back way before the images were, about 20 % faster. I called Samsung and they said my camera was defective. So, they suggested I have it repaired. When I told them I had not envisioned to buy a "new and already repaired" camera, they said that is the way it is, we do not replace flawed cameras, basically that I was unlucky to have gotten a bad apple. I could probably have waited and bought a refurbished one for less. Also, they expected me to pay for shipping in order to get it repaired. Not much of a customer friendly attitude, by my book.
Now, I am returning the little cam to Beach Camera, and they haggled with me over the situation: at first, they did not want to take it back, because I only called them after 5 weeks of the purchase. They let you return it up to 4 weeks only. When I told them that the product was flawed and malfunctioning according to Samsung, they finally agreed to take it back, but I had to haggle over the reduced reimbursement amount. They wanted to deduct 15%, I finally, after 3 conversations, got them to deduct 5 % of my purchasing price. I guess I'll return it for that and cut my losses. My conclusion is to stick with camera brands like Nikon, Canon, even Kodak, but no more Samsungs!