Samsung NV20 review

A cool looking compact with some fab features under the hood

Imagine going back to the Seventies and showing the world the future of photography. Samsung obviously has, because in the shape of the NV20, they have created the kind of digital camera that Starsky and Hutch would have been proud to slip into the pockets of their oversized cardies. With its ‘royal black’ veneered shell (Which shines ‘chocolate’ or ‘violet’ depending on the light, according to Samsung) and array of tiny buttons limning the LCD, its heavy, Rangefinder-styled jog dial and habit of making noises like an extra from KnightRider, the NV20 sums up the past’s anachronistic vision of the future. And guess what – it doesn’t use film!

The thing about this kind of post-modern, retro-futuristic design though, is that irony never made a camera work any better. Take those 13 little buttons around the edge of the LCD, for example. They look great, and after all, the future is full of tiny machines with blank, unlabelled buttons, right? But just like platform shoes and Bacofoil spacesuits, they really don’t have a place in the 21 Century. They don’t streamline or improve the classic digital camera interface in any discernable way. It takes a while to get the hang of using them, and you’ll find that just because you know how to, doesn’t mean you’ll succeed, thanks to their diminutive size. You can stroke your fingers back and forth over them to scroll through menu options, or if you’re particularly tiny-fingered, press certain arbitrary ones to access image editing options. Imagine a touch-screen, but in Braille.

This is a bit of a shame, and there’s nothing that can really be done about it – making these buttons any bigger would overwhelm the camera and probably result in you pressing them accidentally whilst shooting. Sadly, whilst they look good, they’re hard to use, and photographers picking this camera up for the first time would think it only offered seriously cut down imaging options, because of the way the menu interface works around them. But in fact, the NV20 packs enough photographic settings to satisfy serious hobbyists and point-and-shooters alike. You’ve just got to work out which is the right little button to nudge.

With 15 scene modes this camera covers all of the basics. The Landscape mode leaves a little to be desired, and at full zoom, a 15x optical-digital hybrid, it loses a significant amount of detail in the middle and far distance too. Using the digital zoom makes images suffer from far too much software interpolation; they appear smudged and pixelated. Sunset mode, meanwhile, washes everything with a suitably Seventies orange. When not using flash, the NV20 struggles in shady conditions, but can produce some wonderfully sombre deeply toned shots. It deals with sharp contrasts very well though thanks to its Auto Contrast Balance function, and a little manual tweakery can give you some excellent chiaroscuro effects under these conditions with very little effort. There’s a decent range of flash options on board, including fill-in, and fittingly, the flash itself pops up from a little mechanised flip-up compartment in exactly the way Seventies sci-fi movies dictate that gadgets are supposed to. Flash photos in general are of pretty good quality, natural and colourful, thanks to the NV20’s Advanced Shake Reduction. Automatic red eye reduction is spot-on even in quickly snapped, casual shots – and there’s little in the way of ghosting or lens flare thanks to the multiple coatings on the lens. This is a Schneider-KREUZNACH equivalent to 34 – 102mm, which is just a smidgen wider than some similar standard compacts. In wide angle shots it produces stunningly crisp results, as seen in our test shot. The huge maximum resolution of 4000x3000 at 12.1 megapixels means that these shots can come out in incredible detail – zooming our test shot in Photoshop allowed us to see the bricks on the building in clear detail. Macro shots come out beautifully sharp too, although it’s worth taking a little longer than usual to focus them if you want to ensure the right depth of field.

Despite some small issues with shade and the casts across some scene modes, overall colour balance is good; it’s bright and realistic with highlights and strong tones picked out particularly well. You’ll need to go easy on the ISO settings though, as it’s easy to try to over-compensate in dull lighting conditions and end up bleaching your shots.

There are some nifty little features on board the NV20. The ‘Biz’ scene mode allows you to take a teeny-tiny snapshot that’s already correctly sized for a business card, meaning you can print one easily or add the image to outgoing emails automatically. Now how cool would that have been in 1978? The onboard editing and picture frame options are cute little novelties too, and all suitably retro-looking. The design itself is weirdly attractive, although the difficulty of switching manual settings using the pint-sized controls perhaps makes it better for point-and-shoot photographers. Thanks to this interface, it’s not an immediate first choice for anyone who takes fast shots in varied lighting, despite its excellent performance at capturing balanced and dramatic contrasts.