As mentioned earlier, last night I attended Samsung’s Spring Fever Showcase, and checked out a bunch of their upcoming goods and services. What I neglected to mention was that I was there because the lovely and talented Stephanie Auteri couldn’t make it. See? Bloggaz be lookin’ out for each otha.
Anywho, one of the highlights for me was checking out Samsung’s line of consumer camcorders. It’s not a large line, and admittedly so; you can see all of them up top. Basically, there’s one Mini-DV cam, one DVD cam, and the rest save to SD cards. Which makes a lot of sense. Physical media isn’t very long for this world, and SD cards are pretty much the way to go. They don’t take up as much battery as a hard drive, and are more easily translatable to other places of input.
So how were the cameras? Well, if you’re looking for something super professional to shoot your movie on, this is probably not your answer. However, the top of the line shoots 1080p, which is pretty nice for a relatively cheap camera. And, it saves up to 90 minutes of footage on the included flash card. Again, pretty nice.
There’s also a feature which Samsung says is their most popular, which allows you to spin the camera using just the hand grip. It’s cute, but I can’t imagine using it for anything but filming Cloverfield 2. A lot of people don’t agree with me, though, as the feature has been expanded to the whole line of products.
There is included software, which natch, I’d suggest you skip. And it was unclear what file format the video can be saved to, though it was implied that you could open everything in Quicktime. Again, you’re probably going to want to do that.
Oh, and there’s a pop-up flash, used for still pictures, which clearly shows that Samsung’s focus is on the consumer, not the prosumer or professional. Not being snarky (yes I am), it’s just REAL camera-men don’t use a flash.
So how do these cameras stack up against similar ones? Ummm… I don’t know. I think to properly appreciate how a camcorder works, you really need to test it out in a number of different lighting situations, rather than one moodily lit reception area. And, you don’t know how well or annoying the controls are until, again, you’re called on to use them at a moments notice.
That being said, based on the time I spent with them, this seems to be a solid camera with a good resolution. The price for the high-end is $899, which is mainly you paying for the 1080p, I think. Though if you’re going to use an HD Samsung TV to broadcast your footage? It may be worth it.
Oh yeah, and they're YouTube branded or something.
Check out more about it here.
