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  • Introduction

  • Design & Appearance

  • Tour

  • Menu

  • Ease of Use

  • Size & Handling

  • Modes Overview

  • Auto Mode

  • Movie Mode

  • Drive/Burst Mode

  • Playback Mode

  • Picture Quality & Size Options

  • Focus

  • Exposure & Metering

  • ISO

  • White Balance

  • Image Stabilization

  • Picture Effects

  • Lens & Sensor

  • LCD

  • Flash

  • Jacks, Ports & Plugs

  • Battery

  • Memory

  • Other Hardware

  • Conclusion

  • Sample Photos

  • Specs

  • Introduction
  • Design & Appearance
  • Tour
  • Menu
  • Ease of Use
  • Size & Handling
  • Modes Overview
  • Auto Mode
  • Movie Mode
  • Drive/Burst Mode
  • Playback Mode
  • Picture Quality & Size Options
  • Focus
  • Exposure & Metering
  • ISO
  • White Balance
  • Image Stabilization
  • Picture Effects
  • Lens & Sensor
  • LCD
  • Flash
  • Jacks, Ports & Plugs
  • Battery
  • Memory
  • Other Hardware
  • Conclusion
  • Sample Photos
  • Specs

Introduction

Design & Appearance

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The ST200F is a compact camera that is a slick mix of plastic and metal, with a 10x optical zoom lens that telescopes out from the body. The result is a camera that can actually slot into most loose pockets (such as a jacket) with ease, but still offers a flexible zoom range. All that is brought together in a compact body that is stylish and should appeal to casual shooters with a full range of colors (We've heard it will just be black, silver and plum in the U.S., but red models may also be available).

On the back of the camera you can find the 3-inch LCD, along with a four-way control pad, as well as buttons to access playback, delete images, bring up the camera's full menu, or peruse the camera's many shooting and WiFi modes. The top plate of the camera has the power button, microphone, shutter release, and zoom toggle. The front of the camera features a speed bump of a protrusion, with a section of rubber inlaid along the edge for grip.

Tour

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Pressing the "home" key on the camera brings up. In there users can access the various shooting modes, "fun & new" modes such as funny face, WiFi connectivity options, and general setup. The layout is very similar to what you would see on a smartphone, with tooltips explaining each mode popping up when you leave a mode selected for a few seconds. Pressing the menu key on the ST200F while shooting brings up a more traditional digital camera menu that is presented on top of the live view. This mode gives you access to all the most crucial shooting settings, including exposure compensation, white balance, focus, ISO speed, etc. If you're in a more beginner-friendly mode, many of these options are not included.

Ease of Use

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The Samsung ST200F is a fairly easy to use camera, with a main menu system that is laid out with a grid of apps similar to a smart phone. Samsung has included a "Smart Auto" mode in order to aid novice users by deciding optimal exposure for a given scene. Smart auto goes beyond the typical automatic exposure metering by attempting to decipher what scene mode preset is best for a given shot, so you theoretically should end up with a better photo rather than simply one with balanced brightness.

Size & Handling

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The ST200F is not the slimmest point-and-shoot in the world, but it's certainly small enough to fit in your pocket and shoot with one hand. The grip protrusion on the right side is a nice touch, as it gives you something fairly concrete to hold onto. That becomes important, especially when trying to keep the camera steady while using the full 10x optical zoom range.

The control layout is fine, but the placement of buttons requires a second hand to stabilize the camera while navigating the menu. Shooting with one hand is still very easy, however, as the camera is well-balanced. The shutter release is fairly low profile on the ST200F, but finding a half-press to lock in focus is not difficult, and we didn't accidentally take any photos when we meant to merely focus.

Modes Overview

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Pressing the home key on the back of the ST200F brings up the main mode menu. In the basic mode section users can access the smart auto, program auto, smart movie, panorama, picture-in-picture, scene, and regular movie modes. In the engineering sample that we saw at CES, the camera's scene modes included magic frame, beauty shot, intelligent portrait, funny face, night, landscape, text, sunset, dawn, backlight, and beach & snow modes.

Auto Mode

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The ST200F has a program auto and smart auto mode, with the main difference being the level of control available in each mode. In smart auto mode, the camera will attempt to apply a scene mode preset rather than simply expose evenly across the scene. In program auto mode the camera will exposure according to whatever metering mode has been selected (spot, multi-segmented, or center-weighted average), with the full range of shooting options (ISO, exposure compensation, etc.).

Movie Mode

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The ST200F records 720p video, with its 10x optical zoom available while recording. The engineering samples we were able to see did offer an option for applying noise reduction (actual audio noise reduction) in order to minimize the impact of the zoom motor's noise on the resultant video. The camera offers plenty of control options when taking video, including: exposure compensation (+/- 2 stops), white balance, focus type (normal or macro), size, frame rate (30 or 15fps), metering, timer, stabilization, and sound recording.

Drive/Burst Mode

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The ST200F offers a few different drive settings for users to take advantage of, including single shot, continuous burst, motion capture (claimed to be 6fps burst speed), and auto exposure bracketing. The timer settings are located under a different menu setting, but include delays of 10 seconds, two seconds, and a ten second delay with two shots taken at the end of it.

Playback Mode

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Once you've recorded your shots, you can review them on the rear LCD, with a number of options for applying digital filters or adjusting photos with in-camera editing. Shots can be reviewed by zooming in to check focus accuracy and small details, or in a thumbnail setup that lets you view multiple images at once. The playback menu allows you to delete, share, or filter by date, file type, and faces. The sample we reviewed offered the ability to send a file by e-mail, or to Facebook, Picasa, Youtube, Photobucket, to a phone by WiFi Direct, or to their cloud service Allshare Play. The menus clearly weren't finalized with the sample we saw, so we imagine they'll also add the option use Microsoft's SkyDrive through this menu.

Picture Quality & Size Options

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The ST200F has a maximum image size of 16 megapixels, with options for recording smaller sizes. These options are located in the shooting menu and the sample we used allowed for shots of 14, 12, 10, 5, 3, 2, or 1 megapixels. The camera records exclusively in JPEG, with the ability to select normal, fine, or super fine compression quality.

Focus

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You can achieve focus on the ST200F in a few ways, but you're primarily left using either normal or macro autofocus in still and video shooting. We didn't see any option for manual focus on the sample we tested, though it may be added in future iterations. The camera can focus on the center, on a matrix of multiple zones, or by tracking a particular subject.

Exposure & Metering

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The camera allowed you to meter automatically, with multi-, spot-, and center-weighted average metering modes. There was no manual exposure mode available on the camera, with the only other exposure control an exposure compensation option of +/- 2 stops.

ISO

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The ST200F includes ISO speeds that range from 80-3200, with the option to let the camera automatically designate an appropriate ISO speed. All these options are located in the shooting menu, and there wasn't any option that we saw that allowed you to cap the ISO below a certain speed to keep noise down.

White Balance

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The ST200F includes automatic white balance, custom white balance, and five presets for accounting for various different lighting conditions. The presets include options for dealing with daylight, shade, cloudy light, as well as fluorescent and tungsten lighting indoors. The white balance options are found in the shooting menu.

Image Stabilization

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The ST200F feature optical image stabilization, which is a big help given the camera's father long 10x optical zoom range. With that kind of telephoto reach, any slight shake in the camera is magnified. We found it to be somewhat effective, but it's really impossible to make any sort of value judgement on the stabilization system until we get the camera into our labs.

Picture Effects

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Samsung has pulled out all the stops with their in-camera editing and picture effects options with their new cameras, including options for image adjustment (sharpness, brightness, and contrast) along with the always enjoyable magic frame, and an number of creative photo filters. The photo filters include zoom, miniature, vignetting, ink painting, oil painting, cartoon, retro, fish-eye, old film, half-tone dot, classic, cross filter, sketch, and soft focus effects.

Lens & Sensor

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The ST200F includes a 16-megapixel 1/2.3-inch CCD image sensor. The sensor is capable of capturing light such that an ISO range of 80-3200 is available, though we won't know how well it performs until we get the camera into our labs.

LCD

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The ST200F utilizes a 3-inch LCD with a 460k-dot resolution. The screen is bright and clear, with vibrant menus and good color rendition. We did notice a bit of a gamma shift, with images in live view appearing slightly underexposed and oversaturated compared to how the shot actually came out. Given that only engineering samples were available at CES (rather than full production models), that may be fixed in the final product.

Flash

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The flash on the ST200F is built directly into the body, though specs on its power were not available to use at CES. The menu on the camera allows the flash to be used as a fill flash, shut off, activated with red-eye reduction, or used in slow sync mode. The flash was fairly harsh when we used it, washing out colors, but that is par for the course with most point-and-shoot cameras.

Jacks, Ports & Plugs

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The ST200F includes a standard mini-USB output, with the ability to transfer content to and from the camera. There was not an HDMI port included on the ST200F. The port is located behind a small plastic cover that is tethered to the right side of the body. The lack of HDMI out is a bit of a bummer at this price point, but the switch to standard ports over proprietary ones is a positive for Samsung.

Battery

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The Samsung ST200F uses the BP85A battery, which has a rating of 3.7v and a capacity of 880mAh. The BP85A has been used on several Samsung models in the past, so replacements are relatively cheaper compared to a more exclusive battery. The battery is located in the typical location for a point and shoot, behind a plastic door on the bottom of the camera.

Memory

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The ST200F utilizes micro-SDHC memory, but Samsung will only guarantee functionality for cards as large as 8GB. The move away from full-size SDHC memory is a bit of a pain for those who own many cards already, but it seems micro-SDHC is here to stay on Samsung products.

Other Hardware

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WiFi

The ST200F includes WiFi functionality, with a number of creative modes for putting that connectivity to work. Samsung has included options for connecting directly to a smartphone through WiFi, using a smartphone as a remote viewfinder/shutter release/controller, and pushing content directly to social media and online through e-mail.

Conclusion

The ST200F is an interesting little compact from Samsung, especially for those who are looking for a camera that is good at a little bit of everything. While it doesn't have the front-facing LCD of the higher end DV300F, Samsung has packed a lot of quality into the ST200F's (reportedly) $199 body. We only were able to see of engineering samples at CES, so it's possible the price and feature set will change, but we were impressed with what the small compact had to offer.

The camera features a combination of a 10x optical zoom along with a 16-megapixel CCD image sensor. The amount of control is in line with similar sub-$200 compact cameras, as there's no manual exposure modes or the option to set a specific aperture or shutter speed. We like the bright f/3.1 lens on the camera, but we'll have to get the camera through a full set of tests to know how good the images actually are.

The real headline feature on the camera is obviously WiFi, and the functionality is identical to the DV300F, which impressed us. Samsung has included some neat features, including the ability to get around WiFi authentication pages with an in-camera browser and password entry.

The use of WiFi is clever, and it should definitely appeal to those looking for much better optical quality and image capture than what their smartphone is capable of. For those who don't mind carrying around a second device, the integration of the ST200F and smartphone technology could drastically improve those Facebook photos.

Price and availability aren't yet finalized, but for all it packs, the ST200F has a pretty potent spec sheet for a $199 camera. We're eager to get final word on specs and get the camera in for a full test, but until then you can consider us intrigued by the potential of this mid-range WiFi compact.

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Sample Photos

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Specs

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Meet the tester

TJ Donegan

TJ Donegan

Former Director, Content Development

@TJDonegan

TJ is the former Director of Content Development at Reviewed. He is a Massachusetts native and has covered electronics, cameras, TVs, smartphones, parenting, and more for Reviewed. He is from the self-styled "Cranberry Capitol of the World," which is, in fact, a real thing.

See all of TJ Donegan's reviews

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