Dpnow First-looks hands-on review - Samsung Digimax U-CA 3

Recent press release: Samsung Unveils Stylish, Tiny, Affordable Camera

Budget digicam checklist:

Typical UK Price:	£169.90 inc.VAT¹
Typical US Price:	US$229.95 ¹
Typical European price:	€ 249.00 ¹
Optical zoom range:	3x (38-114mm equiv)
Megapixels:	3.15 (actual)
Typical image size (high quality setting JPEG):	1MB
Memory card type:	Sony Memory Stick Duo (32MB supplied)
Internal memory:	None
Autofocus assist lamp:	Yes
Battery type:	Duracell CP1 Lithium disposable ²
Movie mode:	MPEG4, up to 320x240, 20fps
Sound recorded in movies?	Yes
Notable features:	Customisable animated 3D avatar power-on welcome screen, supports new CP1 disposable battery type, MPEG4 movie mode, close focus mode.
Weight:	145g (with batteries and card)

Notes:
¹ Prices quoted are for version supplied with Li-ion rechargeable battery and charging adapter
² Review camera not supplied with Li-ion rechargeable battery and charging adapter.

Rival models worth comparison: Sony Cyber-shot DSC-U50, Fujifilm FinePix A310 Zoom, Konica Minolta Dimage G400, Toshiba PDR-T20

Something a little different
Samsung is trying something slightly different with the Digimax U-CA 3. Basic specifications of three megapixels and a 3X (38-114mm equiv.) zoom lens are boosted by a couple of notable innovations. The first is a customisable 3D animated welcome screen that is clearly aimed at a young market.


If you like, you can have a dancing avatar welcome you to a groovy beat each time you switch your camera on. Separate software lets you customise the appearance and style of the avatar as well as the sound track.
This is complemented by a psychedelic flashing light on the front of the unit. The second is the adoption of Duracell's new CP1 compact disposable lithium battery standard. Indeed, our review camera, supplied by Samsung in the US, came without a rechargeable battery, which is available as an optional extra. Finally, although not as exclusive as it once was, the U-CA 3 uses MPEG4 for recording movie clips, which promises smoother playback quality.

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Construction and Design

High quality construction
Although the Samsung U-CA 3 is a plastic-bodied camera, the mouldings are of a very high quality and appear to be more resistant to wear and tear than many other cameras in this class. Complementing its cool and trendy ambience, the body is finished in a sparkling metallic paint job. A really cool pouch case is supplied to protect your U-CA 3 anyway.

The top and bottom surfaces of the case are slightly curved, accentuating its already compact, if not really tiny, dimensions. Both the battery and memory card are loaded through a side door, so the plastic tripod socket on the base-plate won't force you to unscrew the camera from a tripod if a battery or card needs changing.
(Front of camera, above) A: Flash unit, B: Shutter release, C: Mode selector (stills, voice record, movie), D: Power on/off, E: eye-level viewfinder, F: Speaker, G: AF assist lamp, H: Microphone, I: Function lamp.

(Rear of camera above) A: 1.5 inch LCD monitor, B: Navigation pad, plus selector for voice record, flash, close focus and self timer modes, C: Menu and selection confirmation button, D: Zoom rocker, E: Exposure compensation, ISO select, AWB select and image delete button, F, Flap protecting power-in and combo AV-out and USB-out port, G: LCD Monitor mode switch, H: Image review on/off button.
The baseplate of the U-CA 3 has a centrally located tripod socket. There is a small, undocumented, covered port that suggests a docking station had been part of the picture at one stage.

A large spring-loaded door on the side of the u-CA 3 flips up to reveal the battery bay and Memory Stick Duo card slot.

A 32MB Memory Stick Duo and adapter for standard Memory Stick slots is supplied.

Duracell's new CP1 disposable lithium battery performs well but is far too expensive to rely on as a primary power source for the U-CA 3.

Once extended at power-on, there is very little extra extension of the lens barrel throughout the zoom range.

A plastic flap swivels to one side to reveal the external power port, USB 1.1 port and AV-out port.

Setting up



In general, the colour coded menu system of the Samsung U-CA 3 is intuitive and easy to follow. However, with a limited set of external buttons, some features and settings are fairly hidden. To change white balance or ISO settings, you need to press the button marked +/-, for example. A 'Manual' mode menu setting doesn't provide manual control of aperture and shutter speed, but serves to store other settings you have chosen.

Very confusing indeed was the date setting option. Although you are given a choice of which date format (DD/MM/YY, etc.) you prefer, the actual date must always be entered in YY/MM/DD format.


While the date format indicated is DD/MM/YY, the actual date must be entered, regardless, in the format YY/MM/DD – very confusing!
In use
First of all, if you choose to use the funky animated welcome screen, you add at least five seconds to the already leisurely five second power-up time. Ten seconds is a long time to wait for your camera to be ready to take a picture.

The 1.5 inch LCD monitor is adequately clear for framing scenes and checking on status settings and copes adequately in bright conditions.

The shutter release action is rather on the stiff side and once pressed there is a little more lag than we have come to expect from cameras in this class, but it's by no means bad.

We could coax no more than seven optical zoom steps out of the rather noisy zoom mechanism, while autofocus performance was not particularly snappy. The AF system failed to lock on targets that it should have rather too often for our liking, but when it did lock, accuracy was good.

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Picture quality

Starting with white balance performance, the U-CA 3 turned in a very good result. Here are some test results, with the Samsing results on the left compared with a Ricoh Caplio GX (right):


AWB on, tungsten illumination
Compared to the Ricoh Caplio GX, the Samsung Digimax U-CA 3 produced a more neutral result in tungsten (ordinary light bulb) light with its auto white balance setting.


AWB on, fluorescent illumination
Both cameras did a commendable job of neutralising fluorescent light in auto white balance mode, with only a touch of green in the grey patches on the colour chart marking the Samsung down.


Menu preset for fluorescent illumination
Neither camera did a good job when using a preset for fluorescent light.


Menu preset for tungsten illumination
Using a preset for tungsten light, the Samsung gets it right while the Ricoh remains a tad too warm.
Flash performance was adequate. In the picture below the actual skin tone of the girl has been bleached slightly, though the red-eye reduction mode has done its work well.


Skin tones have been slightly flattened by the U-CA 3 flash
Outdoors, it's clear that the U-CA 3 exposure system can be easily tricked. Below, the subject is badly over-exposed because of the dark surrounding background.


The foliage (above) is also too cold, suggesting that the auto white balance has also been fooled.

Below is a more convincing performance from the U-CA 3. Below it is the same scene taken with a Panasonic Lumix LC50B for comparison.


Samsung Digimax U-CA 3


Panasonic Lumix LC50B
Which version of the scene do you prefer? Tell us and we'll publish the results in our final full test of the Samsung U-CA 3.

One area that the U-CA 3 appears to produce the goods is sharpness. There is no obvious over-sharpening either.


Above is the section from the original frame reproduced below:


This section is an unsharpened 100% (1:1 pixels) section of the original image above.
And sharpness does not noticeably deteriorate towards the corners.

Purple fringing, however, is not an affliction that the U-CA 3 is immune from. It's certainly not of plague proportions, but at best, resistance to fringing from the U-CA 3 is only average:


You can't see it at this low magnification (above), but reproduced at 100% (1:1 pixels) below:

..the tell-tale signs of fringing are clear and this is under diffused lighting too. It's even more noticeable in higher contrast conditions.
Close focus performance is a strong area for the U-CA 3. We managed to get as little as 5cm coverage across the frame, though best performance is achieved at wide end of the zoom, so there is some noticeable barrel distortion:




The U-CA 3 is a decent tool for close focus photography
To sum up the picture quality we got from our review sample, it's not bad, but there are better cameras in this class out there if you need the very best quality. Where the U-CA 3 goes well is in sharpness and close focus performance. Colour is rather on the cool side and there is a tendency to underexpose shadows and over-expose mid-tones. Noise grain is there, but at the standard ISO 100 setting ('auto' ISO appears simply to mean ISO100 as it didn't once vary in auto mode) it's not obtrusive. Manual ISO 200 and 400 settings should only be used in emergencies.

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Preliminary conclusions

First-looks conclusion

The Samsung U-CA 3 is a lifestyle accessory for young people first and a camera second.
To be honest, we didn't expect the Samsung U-CA 3 to be a top-end image quality contender – Samsung's R&D dollars for this particular camera have been spent elsewhere. Picture quality isn't terrible in any department, but it’s mostly pretty average. These days, that means you should be able to live with it. What the U-CA 3 aims to be is a cool and trendy digicam for youngsters to carry around as an accessory that happens to have a serious use. In this sense, it does well enough. Its fun features may not be to everyone's tastes, but you can't deny they are novel.

Good quality construction and materials impressed us. The U-CA 3 should prove to be a product that resists the rough and tumble of its existence well.

One area that made us raise an eyebrow was the stated availability of the camera without a rechargeable battery as standard. While most online outlets we checked were advertising the camera with a rechargeable battery, our version was supplied without.

Duracell's CP1 disposable lithium battery packs an impressive performance for a thing so small, but at $10-14 each, the attractions of the rechargeable alternative soon add up. Incidentally, we tried a rechargeable battery from another camera that is Duracell CP1 compatible, the HP Photosmart R707 and it worked fine in the U-CA 3.

If you are looking for a fun camera for a young person and all you need is enough quality for decent 6x4", 5x7" or even acceptable A4 prints, the U-CA 3 could well make you a popular person. But for optimum photo quality and control over creative options you can do better elsewhere.

Based on what we have learned about the camera so far, we have decided to rate the Samsung U-CA 3 Above Average:


Based on image quality and general features alone, the camera would only have earned an Average rating, but the avatar feature was a hit with our kids and the overall design and build quality of the camera, plus keen pricing, is just enough to push the rating up a notch.

Things we liked about the Samsung U-CA 3:
* Competitive price
* Image sharpness
* Good close focus range
* Good auto white balance performance under artificial light
* MPEG4 video clips
* Cool matching pouch case included
* 3D animated avatars a hit with the kids

Things we didn't like:
* Noisy lens zoom motor
* Inconsistent exposure
* Autofocus lock could be better
* Cool colours
* No continuous shooting mode
* Review package forces use of expensive CP1 disposable batteries
* Very slow power-up delay, even with avatar switched off
* Illogical date configuration procedure

Full review to follow
This is a preliminary first-looks review based on our experience of using the camera under everyday conditions plus limited benchmark testing. A full review with additional benchmarking will follow.

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Specifications

IMAGE SENSOR	Type	1/2.7¡ÈCCD
	Effective Pixels	Approx. 3.2 Mega-pixel
	Total Pixels	Approx. 3.3 Mega-pixel
LENS	Focal Length	SHD Lens f = 5.8 ~ 17.4mm (35mm film equivalent : 38 ~ 114mm)
	F No.	F2.8 ~ F4.8
	Digital Zoom	Still Image mode : 1.0X ~ 3.0X Play mode : 1.0X ~ 5.0X (depends on image size)
VIEWFINDER	Optical Viewfinder	Real image optical viewfinder
	LCD Monitor	1.5" color TFT LCD
FOCUSING	Type	TTL auto focus
	Range	Normal : 80cm ~ infinity Macro : 5 ~ 80cm (Wide), 50 ~ 80cm (Tele)
SHUTTER	Type	Mechanical and Electronic shutter
SHUTTER	Speed	2 ~ 1/2,000 sec. (16 ~ 1/2,000 sec. in Night Mode)
EXPOSURE	Control	Program AE Metering : Multi, Spot Manual Long Time Shutter Function only in Night Mode- Shutter Speed : 16 ~ 1/8 sec.- Aperture : F2.8 / F4.8 selectable
	Compensation	¡¾2EV (0.5EV steps)
	ISO Equivalent	Auto, 100, 200, 400
FLASH	Modes	Auto, Auto & Red-eye reduction, Fill-in flash, Slow sync, Flash off
	Range	Wide : 0.2 ~ 3.0m, Tele : 0.5 ~ 2.0m
	Recharging Time	Approx. 6 sec.
SHARPNESS		Soft, Normal, Vivid
Effect		Normal, B&W, Sunset, Sepia, RGB
WHITE BALANCE		Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Fluorescent, Tungsten, Custom
VOICE MEMO		Voice Recording (max. 1 hour) Voice Memo on Still Image (max. 10 sec.)
SHOOTING	Still image/Macro shot	Modes : Auto, Manual, Night
	Movie Clip	With audio (recording time : memory capacity dependent)Size : 320x240, 160x120 Frame rate : 20 fps, 15 fps
SELF-TIMER		2 sec., 10 sec.
STORAGE	Media	Memory Stick Duo (up to 256MB guaranteed, Memory Stick PRO Duo supported)
	File Format	Still Image : JPEG (DCF), EXIF 2.2, DPOF 1.1, PictBridge 1.0 Movie Clip : MOV (MPEG-4) Audio : WAV (G.711)
	Image Size	2048x1536 pixels / 2048x1360 pixels 1600x1200 pixels / 1024x768 pixels 640 x 480 pixels
	Capacity(16/32MB)	2048 : Super fine 17, Fine 33, Normal 50 2048P : Super fine 19, Fine 38, Normal 56 1600 : Super fine 27, Fine 54, Normal 82 1024 : Super fine 66, Fine 132, Normal 198 640 : Super fine 169, Fine 336, Normal 501 * These figures are measured under Samsung¡¯s standard conditions and may vary depending on shooting conditions and camera settings.
IMAGE PLAY		Type : Single image, Thumbnails, Slide show, Movie Clip Editing : Trimming, Rotating, Resizing
INTERFACE		Digital output connector : USB 1.1 Audio : Mono Video output : NTSC, PAL (user selectable) DC power input connector : 3.3V
POWER SOURCE		Rechargeable 3.7V Li-ion battery (SLB-1037) or 3V Lithium battery (CP1) * Included battery may vary depending on sales region.AC Adapter (optional) : SAC-32 (DC 3.3V, 2A)
DIMENSIONS(WxHxD)		102 x 53.8x 31.6 mm
WEIGHT		Approx. 119g (without batteries and card)
SOFTWARE	Camera Driver	Storage Driver (Windows98/98SE/2000/ME/XP, Mac OS 9.x or later)
	Application	QuickTime Player 6.3 / MGI PhotoSuite III SE Digimax Viewer 2.1 / DigiStudio
For Windows		PC with processor better than MMX Pentium 233MHz (XP : Pentium II 300MHz) Windows 98/98SE/2000/ME/XP Minimum 32MB RAM (XP : 128MB) 140MB of available hard-disk space USB port CD-ROM drive 800¡¿600 pixels, 16-bit color display compatible monitor (24-bit color display recommended)

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The EU flag links to Amazon Germany, currently the only European Amazon outlet that supplies electronic goods like cameras priced in Euros.
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