Samsung WB800F Smart Camera review

If you want to take pictures and share them easily then you are probably going to use a smartphone but if you want a camera which a bit more control and a large optical zoom then you could checkout the Samsung WB800F.

This little camera has some features that that set it apart from other point and shoot cameras. It has WiFi for sharing your photos, it has a hybrid touch screen users interface and a 21x optical zoom. In this video review I take a look at some of the features including the WiFi features and the special features that ship with the camera.

The camera has the traditional compact camera form factor with a large touch screen on the back. The touch screen is used in combination with a traditional 5 way controller, so you use it just with just the touch screen, just the buttons or a combination of both which makes it very easy to navigate around its function. Having spent some time with it I used a combination of both and found it really easy to navigate around. There is no view finder so you are reliant on the screen which is a 3 inch TFT display which anybody used to taking pictures on a phone will be happy with.

One of the best features of this camera is the 21x optical zoom, it makes a massive difference to the photos over digital zoom. It’s great for taking photos from a distance, if you are sat at the back of the school hall wanting to take pictures of your kids on stage then 21x zoom will do the job and take way better pictures than anyone with a smartphone using digital zoom. It’s also good for wide angle shots with its 23mm wide-angle lens. The sensor is 16 mega pixel which has good low light sensitivity with out to much noise. There is an automatic flash that pops up on the top of the camera when you press the flash button, you push it down to put the flash away.
These two photos are taken stood from the same spot using the 21x zoom:

As you would expect from Samsung they pack the camera with features, there is no WiFi direct (despite the Direct Link label on the camera) with this camera you need to join a network and then you can share photos via Samsung’s AllShare app, so you can share photos to UPnP/DLNA renderer. It works as a DLNA server so from another device you can browse and view photos stored on the camera, using an app on my Android phone I could push photos to my Xbox 360. There is a Smart Camera app on Samsung Android device that uses WiFi to transfer and view photos as well as a remote view finder app. You can share photos directly with Facebook, Picasa, Youtube and email from the camera over WiFi without the need for a PC or phone, it’s a shame there is no twitter or Flickr link. AutoShare sends every picture you take to your phone via Wi-Fi so you then have then have the option of sharing photos from the phone and keeping them on the phone as a backup. There is also a PC backup feature where you install a Samsung app on your Windows PC (no Windows Store app) or Mac and it will backup the camera to the PC.

When it comes to taking photos there are all the usual automatic features and then there are a lots of manual settings. There are many settings that you can adjust including aperture, ISO, white balance and exposure settings all of which can be adjusted via the touch screen. As well as the manual adjustments there are a lot of modes you can play with, many of them are shared by Samsung Android camera apps. There are some gimmicky modes like beauty face and My Magic frames, loads of Instagram type filters and fun features like split shots and miniature mode.

Some of the more useful modes are things like low light mode, panorama modes and action freezes. Some of them I found very handy, continues shot mode which shoots at 5 frames per second are very useful for capturing the moment. It also have a video recording mode, you can shoot video at 1080p and it uses h.264 to encode the video. You can use the optical zoom while recording video and is a mono microphone for capturing the audio. It actually produces reasonable video, if you start using the optical zoom in high magnification you end up with a lot of camera shake which is partly due to its light weight and it can be avoided by using a tripod.

Connectivity is provided by a micoUSB port and MicoHDMI port, I tried a micoHDMI adapter that I use to connect my Surface 2 to my monitor and it worked fine. As well as charging the camera via the USB 2 port you can also use it to connect to a PC to share the photos. The camera takes a standard SD card up to 64GB with a SDXC card.

Over all it’s a nice point and shoot camera which some of smartphone type features included. It not as smart as something like Samsung’s S4 Zoom camera which an Android powered device so it simple to use and cheaper (£169.90) around so if you want a camera with an optical zoom and easy ways to share photos this is well worth looking at. What the video for a look at some of its features.