Samsung Galaxy Camera Review

Whether you are a pro-photographer, an amateur or someone who just likes to take photos, you will always face many questions when you want to buy a camera, obviously pros will go for a DSLR, but if you are an average person, you will go something a bit simple, a point-and-shoot camera, or you will probably settle for a smartphone. Point-and-shoot cameras are pretty much the same, they’re simple, light and can snap pictures, that’s about it, and if you are a smartphone user you won’t see the point in carrying around 2 devices, specially if one of them is capable of doing what the other is meant to do, in addition to many other important features of course.

Point-and-shoot cameras need to offer more than nice photography capabilities to appeal to consumers, they have to become smarter, a bit more connected, a bit more functional. Last year I remember I reviewed the DV300 from Samsung, and that was just the tip of the iceberg, that camera was very basic but opened the doors to a whole new world where cameras evolved into more than just cameras, they evolved into smartphones!

The Galaxy Camera from Samsung is not your average point-and-shoot camera, it’s a 16-megapixel Android-powered 3G-connected camera that enjoys some of the capabilities found in DSLRs, a 4.8″ multitouch display, a range of pre-defined shooting settings and filters, image and video editors, and not to forget the ability to perform almost everything an Android smartphone can do, which is the highlight of this product.

You can say that the Samsung Galaxy Camera is a smartphone disguised as a camera!

SIZE DOES MATTER!
The Galaxy Camera weighs only 300 grams and fits in a pocket, which makes it perfect to carry around if you don’t want to carry your heavy DSLR, in the below picture I’m comparing it to the Samsung DV300 and the Canon 1100D, which is probably one of the smallest DSLRs, and as you can see the Galaxy Camera is probably half the size.

CONNECTIVITY
Smartphones are very handy because they allow you to create and share content on the go, much like the Galaxy Camera, which can be connected to the internet through a 3G micro-SIM, this is very handy if you don’t have WiFi around. With a connected camera you can share your stuff on your social network, as well as securing a back up of your files on the cloud, this is important if you are worried that you might lose your files, or you wanted to share your files with your co-workers, or if you’re worried that you will run out of memory.

SHARING is CARING
With this camera you can share your photos and videos to different social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram… as well as secure a back up of your files on the cloud and send files via email, but you can aslo share the files with other devices through the WiFi Direct and the Group Play. The WiFi Directe allows you to automatically share the photos once they are taken with other devices. The Group Play should allow you to share with multiple devices, for some reason it didn’t work while I was doing the review, but this is a really interesting feature offered by Samsung.

Filters and Pre-defined shooting settings
This is one of the big advantages of the Galaxy Camera, there is a range of pre-defined shooting settings that can help you shoot great pictures, some of these settings are the Night Mode, which is very helpful for shooting at night, the Light Trace, which helps you capture light is an awesome way, the Macro for close-ups, the Rich Tone, which is an HDR (High-Dynamic-Range) mode that helps in shooting clear pictures with different light exposure levels.

In addition to these setting, this camera offers a variety of filters like Sepia, Sunshine, Negative, Retro and more, you go through these filters and see how the image is going to look like when you snap it.

Manual Mode
The Galaxy Camera enjoys some of the capabilities of the DSLRs, of course it’s not a DSLR but it enables you to control the Shutter Speed, ISO and Aperture, this can help you manually define these values depending on the surroundings of the scene you are shooting, and it can be an exercise for you in case you wanted to upgrade to a DSLR.

This feature doesn’t make the Galaxy Camera a DSLR, but I think it might be an indication that Samsung is going into that direction, imagine smart DSLRs, that would be interesting!

Video
The Galaxy Camera can shoot full HD 1080p at 30 frames per second, with the ability to play around with some attributes to suit the surroundings of the scene you’re about to shoot. Another cool feature is the slow motion videos, this is really cool if you want to shoot dramatic videos or fun videos, such videos can be shot at 512p.

Video via Cnet

Editors
The images editor is really fun, you can add cool stuff to your images like filters and stickers, as well as combining couple of images in one picture. So with this camera you can snap a picture, enhance the exposure and colors, add stickers and filters and share it immediately to the web. The Video editor is a bit limited, you can change some attributes and combine different videos and stills in one video.

The Samsung Galaxy Camera is an excellent choice if you’re looking for a connected camera that enjoys a wide range of features, but I think it’s a bit expensive, it costs AED2000, almost the same price as the new Galaxy S4 smartphone, and entry-level DSLRs from, but I believe it’s a very cool gadget to have!