The main modes for the
i85 can be accessed by pressing the M key located on the beveled area
above the LCD. Transparent animated blue menus appear on the LCD giving
you access to three modes.
· Shooting. This menu has items for auto,
where the camera chooses all the settings for a shot, save picture size
and quality; program, where settings can be customized for picture size
and quality, sequential shooting, metering, light sensitivity (ISO), white
balance and exposure compensation; ASR, or anti-shake mode, where your setting
choices are limited to picture size and quality, and the only sequential
selections available are single image and "wise shot," where two
pictures are taken one after the other--one with the flash, one without;
and movie, where you chose size, frame rate, metering, image stabilization,
white balance and exposure compensation.
· Multimedia. From this menu you can reach the text viewer, MP3 player,
PMP player and Tour Guide. The Tour Guide--a travel guide with information
about the world--needs to be downloaded from the Samsung Web site and transferred
to the camera via a computer.
Scene. This lets you pick from a number of pre-sets--groups of settings
optimized for common shooting situations. They are night, portrait, children
(settings optimized for moving objects), landscape, text, close up, sunset,
dawn, backlight, fireworks, beach and snow, self portrait, food and cafe
(for shots inside restaurants).
Settings can be customized for
shooting modes by pressing the Fn key located above the arrow pad. When
you press that key, a menu appears along the right side of the LCD so you
can still see the shot you're composing as you make a menu choice. Choices
available in shooting mode are image size and quality, sequential shooting
mode, metering mode, ISO, white balance and exposure compensation. In playback
mode, the Fn key is used to delete images from the camera. You can depart
from the Fn menu by selecting an option and poking the OK button or simply
by pressing the Fn key again.
A number of effects can be applied to a photo
by pressing the E button, which is located beside the Fn key.
In shooting mode, these effects are available with the E key.
Color. Not only can you shoot in black-and-white and sepia, but you can
tint a shot in red, green or blue, experiment with its RGB settings or shoot
in negative. As you select a setting, you get a live preview of what your
shot will look like on the camera's LCD.
· Special Color.
With this feature activated, a circle appears in the center of the unit's
LCD. When the image is captured, everything inside the circle will be
in color; everything outside the circle in black and white. Pressing the
Fn button in this mode allows you to alter the size and location of the
circle.
Image Adjust. This lets you increase or decrease the amount of color,
or saturation, in a shot.
Fun. If goofiness is part of your photographic
repertoire, you'll find this mode charming. With the cartoon effect, you
can create a composite shot with your images in comic book style frames
complete with blank voice or thought bubbles. A frame mode lets you add
frames to a shot or superimpose graphics on a subject like a cartoon tux
or wedding dress. In camera vignetting can be done in this mode, too, as
well as composite photos, where you can make several shots into a single
picture.
In playback mode, pressing the E button will
give you these functions.
· Resize. The size of an image can be
reduced, but it can't be increased. When you resize an image, the resized
image is given a new name so the original image will be preserved. You
can also assign an image to be the start-up photo for the camera or to
act as a "skin" in MP3 mode.
· Rotate. Allows you to rotate images in the camera.
· Color. You can add the same color effects to captured images
as can be added in shooting mode.
· Special Color. As in shooting mode, this lets you select an area
in a photograph to retain its color while turning everything around it
into black and white. You can also turn the entire image into a black
and white photo.
· Image Editing. This lets you make
the kind of adjustments to an image that you'd make in a software program
like Photoshop--remove red-eye, change the brightness, contrast and saturation,
and add noise to a snapshot. · Fun. These are the same effects
as in shooting mode.
The main menu system is accessed by pressing
the Menu/OK button at the center of the arrow pad.
In shooting mode, main menu items are record--where
you can control sharpness, contrast and focus area, as well as add voice
memos and record sound; sound--where you can set the sound volume for the
camera and choose a variety of audio alerts for tasks such as start up and
shutter release; setup1--where you can customize file naming, language for
menus, date and time, a world time clock, imprinting images with time and
calendar data, LCD brightness, auto focusing lamp assistance and use of
a start-up image; and setup2--where you're able to set the time an image
appears on the LCD after it's captured, set the time period before the camera
and LCD are automatically shut off or choose a video out type (NTSC or PAL),
format the unit's internal memory and reset the device to its default settings.
In playback mode, the main menu items are
slide show--where you can display the images in the camera on its LCD as
a slideshow, choose which images you want in the slideshow, pick transitional
effects between slides, select the time each photo will be displayed and
watch the show with or without music; playback--where you can turn the voice
memo function on or off, protect an image from deletion, delete all or selected
photos, choose images for printing and copy files from internal memory to
a storage card; and sound, setup1 and setup2--which are the same as in shooting
mode.
Two primary Windows software applications
are packaged with the camera--a converter and Samsung Master 1.0.
When you launch the Samsung converter software, you are advised that
the application creates files that can be viewed in PMP mode on the i85.
Samsung cautions that before converting a video file with the software
you should make sure that it can be played in Windows media player. If
it can't, then you'll need to install a codec that will allow the file
to be played in that player.
The conversion software is simple to use.
You choose a file to be converted. Then you select where you want the converted
file to be stored and the name you want it to have. You can also customize
settings for the file such as frame size, frame rate, screen size and split
size. Split size allows you to chop up the video file automatically into
fixed sized chunks determined by you. After you've given the program the
information it needs to convert the file, you click convert and the application
will store the converted file where you told it to with the "sdc"
file extension.
The conversion program is moderately fast.
It converted a 1.4GB 6.5-minute media file into a 320-x-240-pixel 30-frames-per-second
sdc file, which was 27MB in size, in about four minutes.
Before multimedia files can be played from a storage card, three root
directories must be created--MP3, PMP and Text. If you want to organize
your media files beyond those folders, you can have one level of subfolder
within each root directory. So you could have a path like MP3/Jazz and
the files in the Jazz subfolder would be displayed in the camera's music
application. But in a path like MP3/Jazz/Coltrane, files in the Coltrane
subfolder would be invisible to the music player.
Once you've set up your directories, you
can drag media and text files into their appropriate folders and you'll
be able to listen or view them on the camera's LCD.
Along with the conversion application, Samsung includes its Master 1.0
software. It allows you to browse your hard disk for media files, edit
photos and edit video.
In browser mode, you can explore the files
and directories on your hard drive or any other storage device connected
to your computer with a directory tree located in a pane on the left side
of the application's main window. As you select the folder, its media files
appear on a palette that abuts the directory pane. Below that pane are icons
for moving among the application's components--browser, photo editor and
video editor. Under those icons is a properties box that lets you preview
media that is selected on the palette, as well as see information about
that media. Above the directory pane is a toolbar with tools for opening,
printing and e-mailing files; rotating images; deleting files; viewing images
in a folder as a slideshow; playing audio; splitting the directory pane;
changing the view mode from thumbnails to list to details; and jumping into
the Samsung home page on the Web.
In image editing mode, you have access to
a number of editing and drawing tools, as well as retouching tools. Editing
tools include resize, crop, rotate and adjusting brightness, saturation
and sharpness. Drawing tools include add text, color fill, erase, select
and clone. With the retouching tools, you can form images, apply artistic
effects to them and superimpose textures on them.
The video editor is a gawky program. Only
one view is available--storyboards--and the trimming tools are strictly
from hunger. A library of titles, music, sound effects and transitions is
included with the package, but if you want to do simple video editing in
Windows, you're better off using Microsoft Movie Maker, a free program that's
part of the Windows XP package.
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