Samsung Digimax i5

Reviewed September 2005

Test Photos

STILL LIFE PHOTO

This subject is photographed in a room that has a mix of fluorescent and incandescent light, but which is not brightly lit. The camera's flash is used to add fill light. The backdrop is 1.95 m (6.5 ft) from the camera.

This photo is captured with the Digimax i5's flash set to the Auto mode. Set to its defaults, the image the camera produces is a bit too dark, and to capture a brighter image an exposure compensation of +0.5 EV was used.

With these settings, the i5 yielded a bright image that shows little light fall-off in the corners of the frame, an indication that although small, the flash is able to produce a sufficient amount of light to cover the field of the wide angle.

ZOOM PHOTO

Now we zoom in on the on the centre of the image above to gauge the sharpness of the image at the zoom's maximum setting. The camera remains at the same distance as in the preceding photo.

Set to the maximum telephoto setting, the i5 captures a very clear image, but one which also required +0.5 EV of exposure compensation to make the image brighter.

The detail the tiny lens was able to capture with this subject is quite reasonable, and the slight softness that can be seen in the image below — for example in the texture of the background cloth — is likely due to a combination of the compression, and the relatively short depth of field produced by an f4.5 aperture.

The Auto shooting mode of the i5 provides an Auto Macro mode that allows the camera to focus on a subject from as close as 5 cm (1.95 inches) from the lens, capturing a field of view of approximately 4.6 cm (1.8 inches). The Manual mode offers a Super Macro mode that allows the camera to focus — with the lens set at the wide angle end — on a subject from 1 to 5 cm (0.4 to 1.8 inches).

At the closest distance, the i5 is able to capture a field of view of 1.4 cm (0.5 inch).

Using either the standard Macro mode, or the Super Macro mode, some barrel distortion can become noticeable in the images. However, if a subject that has no vertical or horizontal lines is used, even with the very shallow depth of field a wide aperture produces, the i5 is able to yield excellent macro shots.

BUILDING PHOTO

This image is our "outdoor" test. The architecture of the building, in particular its angled girders, immediately show the presence of jaggies. The shadowed entrance can also often reveal the quality of the exposure.

Our standard outdoor shot revealed not only a good exposure but that the image is sharp from corner to corner and as sharp on the right side of the frame as it is on the left.

Also notable, the images of this subject do not show any trace of a chromatic aberration. Moreover, the auto white balance is quite accurate, and this wide angle shot of the building has colours that are consistent with those of the zoom shot shown further below.

ZOOM PHOTO

Zooming in on the entrance of the building, the shadowed entrance takes on a greater importance for the metering and can cause an overexposure of sections that are directly lit.

At the maximum telephoto of its focal length range the i5's zoom has no noticeable pincushion distortion, and vertical image elements that get imaged close to the edges of the frame appear perfectly straight.

With this test photo, the metering produced a well-exposed image. Moreover, the auto white balance yielded colours that are faithful to those captured when the lens was set to the wide angle, although the frame content is quite different.

NIGHT PHOTO

Since this camera is capable of long exposures, a photo taken at night is included here.

With the Digimax i5, night time shots are only possible using the Night scene mode, as only this mode provides control over the shutter speed — from 1 to 16 seconds — and over the aperture.

Regrettably the Night scene mode offers no control over the white balance, and with a subject such as this one that contains light originating from sodium vapour lamps, the image takes on an overly yellow/orange colour cast.

Nevertheless, the i5 can produce some excellent long exposures, and quite surprisingly, although it does not seem to be equipped with a dark frame noise reduction system — none is mentioned in the literature — the noise content of long exposures is quite reasonable.