Samsung NV11

Reviewed August 2007

Image Quality

The Samsung NV11 offers a solid construction, and a system of control that remains, so far, exclusive to Samsung's NV (New Vision) camera line. There is no 4-direction controller, or joystick, or touch-screen. All there is to control the NV11 are two rows of buttons, one on the right of the screen, the other below. More often than not, an icon that represents a function is attached to a button, and pressing the button provides alternative options for that particular function.

Operating the camera requires the investment of a few minutes to figure out how selections are made — each selection echoed by a "ding!" that indicates the setting was successfully changed — and an exploration of what options are offered with each mode. Once this is accomplished, however, operating the NV11 is quite easy, but only as long as there is no direct sunlight on the monitor, as when there is, seeing the image, and the icons, can be become quite difficult.

Yet, images captured under bright sunlight are the strong suit of the NV11. With ample natural lighting the multi metering performs perfectly, as does the auto white balance. The images the camera generates are very good, including under conditions such as those shown at left, when there is a strong and harsh side light. Details can be seen in the shadows, and although bright, the highlights are well exposed and also retain detail.

There is so much in common between the NV10 and the NV11 that comparisons are unavoidable. Aside from the optical zoom and the addition of some modes, the cameras are nearly identical, and for instance, the NV11 is no faster than the NV10. The user should expect the camera to take at least 2 to 3 seconds to store a shot after it is captured.

Still, changes from one model to the next can have an important impact on image quality, and in particular, a change of optics.

In this case, the 5X Schneider-Kreuznach zoom is as good as the 3X zoom of the NV 10 is. This is a lens that has no serious distortion. Only the macro and super macro modes can show some barrelling, and even then it is usually not pronounced enough to have a serious impact on the image. Similarly, images show very little purple fringing — even with subjects that contain very strong contrasts.

We also noted that the lens yields images that show an even sharpness from corner to corner.

Although the NV11 provides a 1600 ISO setting, as it is with all the compact cameras we have reviewed to date, with photos captured indoors, the image quality at this level is marginal at best. Images contain little detail and are generally blotchy. Switching to 800 ISO, the images are less botchy but still very noisy. In fact, only the 400 ISO can be used without noise being overwhelming.

Outdoors and with sunshine, the 800 ISO can be used, although noise is clearly detectable when the images are inspected at 100% scale on a monitor. Nevertheless, the setting can be useful when a high a shutter is absolutely necessary. Under similar conditions, however, the 1600 ISO level still produces very noisy images, and even with sunlight, their usefulness is limited.

The NV11 offers three levels of JPEG compression for all image sizes, a feature that, inexplicably, is no longer popular with some manufacturers.

The best image quality setting on the NV11 is "Super Fine" that seems to use a compression that has a ratio in the 6:1 to 7:1 range most of the time. The next compression setting, Fine, seems to double that compression, a ratio of approximately 12:1 to 13:1. The most compressed JPEG image quality, Normal, triples the compression of the Super Fine mode, producing images that are compressed with a ratio of 18:1 and more.

At the highest image quality setting, generally the images are free of artifacts and retain a very reasonable level of sharpness. The other levels, however, retain less detail and parts of images captured with the Normal image quality can look slightly blurry from the compression.

The NV11 has a small flash that pops open automatically unless it has been set to Forced Off. With some ambient light, the flash is able to light up 3 m (10 ft) quite well, even when the camera is set to its lowest sensitivity of 80 ISO, a setting that the camera's program seems to prefer even when the sensitivity is set to Auto ISO. Forcing the sensitivity to 200 ISO, the NV11 yields bright images that contain little noise and allow the flash to easily light up to 5m (16ft).

This second New Vision Samsung camera is much like the first in some respects, but adds a very good 5X optical zoom, making it more versatile than the NV10. The image quality it offers, when set to the highest (Super Fine) setting, is generally very good. Photographs captured under natural light turn out very well, and it is only under mixed lighting and when the flash is used that the auto white balance can have difficulty. The NV11 is, overall, a good camera that excels in certain areas, and offers an imaginative interface. It would, however, benefit from a less reflective monitor surface.