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After spending a lot of quality time with their point-and-shoot digital cameras, some people come away wanting more…more control, more speed, more accuracy. Those things can come only with a true digital SLR camera, which until fairly recently would have cost more than a thousand dollars. This new Samsung GX 1S will let you get into high-end photography without dropping a grand at the photo shop.
The GX 1S, the company’s first D-SLR, is mostly a Pentax *ist with a Samsung logo on it. Samsung and Pentax co-developed the camera with Samsung contributing its digital electronics know-how and Pentax contributing its camera expertise. The result is a well-built, easy-to-use camera that’s a good entry point for new SLR users and offers the flexibility of being compatible with a wide range of Pentax lenses.
The 23.4mm x 15.7mm CCD gives you a six megapixel image with more than enough detail for printing 8 x 10 prints, cropping and re-sizing. It’s got a sharp and bright 2.5-inch LCD screen for image viewing, but being an SLR, all composing is done through the optical Pentaprism viewfinder. It offers an 11-point autofocus with nine of those points located in the center of the image area. ISO equivalent control goes from 200 to 3200.
Users unfamiliar with SLR cameras will find the Samsung has a pretty light learning curve. Turning the mode dial to auto will leave all the thinking to the camera, and for the most part, it does a pretty good job of that. The mode dial on top easily gets you to the most commonly used features, and the function button on the back gets you into more detailed controls within each mode selected. In auto mode, the camera’s built-in flash will pop up when needed. If you don’t want to use the flash, you can turn the mode dial to no flash and go with just the available light. When in auto, the function button will let you select the ISO, drive mode, white balance and flash option. I like being able to quickly access the ISO and would frequently jack it up to 800 to let me take in more ambient light without the flash. At the highest setting, 3200, the camera introduced a good deal of image noise in dark parts of the picture, but at 800 or less the picture was very clean.
The drive mode allows you to select the shooting rate, either single shot (which focuses for each shot), continuous (2.8 fps for 8 frames) or auto bracket (which shoots three shots in a row at different exposures. I particularly liked using the fast continuous shooting mode for getting action shots of my kids (or any fast moving object).
The camera’s 16-split photometry system takes readings of 16 different areas of the subject to get the best exposure. You can select from four different split modes for this feature.
The pictures I took with this camera looked excellent. The autofocus and metering system produced sharp, nicely exposed images and the manual controls allowed me flexibility when I needed it. It’s also pretty light, which makes it easy to tote around.
What makes this a perfect camera for the novice SLR users is how easy it is to operate. If you have some experience with point-and-shoot, you’ll be able to take good pictures with the GX 1S. A little time spent learning the camera will change you from someone who takes pictures to a photographer. yy
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