Samsung ST1000 Digital Camera - Red/Black (12MP, 5x Inner Zoom) 3.5 inch LCD

This camera has to be the camera of 2009! Its loaded with features and has a firm, solid build - but does it live upto its features.

This camera has as many good points as it has bad points, unfortunately. One of the few bluetooth cameras currently on the market, it will have instant appeal to the gadget seekers everywhere. However, its here that the problems begin. Firstly this camera will not pair with your computer. Strange but true. It will pair with your mobile phone and some other devices but it sort of defeats the purpose of claiming its bluetooth status, since most computers/laptop have some sort of bluetooth capacity.

Ever onward, we find that the camera can get photos to the internet without the need to connect wires and exchange memory cards. This sounds too good to be true also - and indeed it is. The camera does indeed use your wireless network (broadband router/hub) to connect to the internet and automatically upload to facebook and picasa etc etc. This etcetera does not include Flickr unfortunately. It can also send the photos by email attachment through the same wireless network but it encounters problems if you do not have a googlemail account. But theres a catch. It will only upload 2Mb per picture. Strange but true. I'm not sure why Samsung came to this decision of imposing such a limitation. Certainly to have a 12Mp camera and compress the image (usually 3+mb) down to something more manageable, defeats the purpose again of putting the pictures even in an email.

Despite all these restrictions, it looks like we're going to have to extract the memory card (which is a microSD by-the-way) and load it into out card readers after all. Strange but true. You'll be needing a microSD adapter too of course.

So what about the nice points of the camera. The GPS is very good ; not instant mind you - but thankfully a better effort than the big boys Nikon can make on GPS. You'll be disabling the auto-power-off feature to cope with the computation time of determining the location from the satellites. Another nice feature of the camera is the way that it can imprint the date/time onto each image - remember as they did years ago. This is a nice touch and this feature can be disabled for the anoraks out there! The picture quality is very good too but you are sending images wirelessly, you should be aware of the 2Mb restriction. The flash is very powerful and scene recognition and camera-shake eliminators are pretty good too. The touchscreen is pretty easy to navigate - much like the Sony T500 - but sometimes there is a 'lag' between different modes.

The W-T zoom function is at the top of the camera and is very fiddly to use, dare I say impossible to use? Camera charge is about average and if you're using GPS or wireless, the camera will eat-up alot more power.

Not a bad camera at all and reasonably priced. The GPS could be better, as could the zoom. But the bluetooth and upload limitations mean that the ST-1000 just about makes it to four stars.

Overall I like this camera, as I do a lot of Geotagging of my photos. But I charge it up, and leave it for a week, and the battery is completely flat. I have 2 batteries, and it happens to both of them.

This camera has to be the camera of 2009! Its loaded with features and has a firm, solid build - but does it live upto its claims?

This camera has as many good points as it has bad points, unfortunately. One of the few bluetooth cameras currently on the market, it will have instant appeal to the gadget seekers everywhere. However, its here that the problems begin. Firstly this camera will not pair with your computer. Strange but true. It will pair with your mobile phone and some other devices but not with your computer. This defeats the purpose of claiming its bluetooth status, since most computers/laptops have some sort of bluetooth capability.

Ever onward, we find that the camera can get photos to the internet without the need to connect wires and exchange memory cards. This sounds too good to be true also - and indeed it is. The camera does indeed use your wireless network (broadband router/hub) to connect to the internet and automatically upload to facebook and picasa etc etc. This etcetera does not include Flickr unfortunately. It can also send the photos by email attachment through the same wireless network but it encounters problems if you do not have a googlemail account. But theres a catch. It will only upload 2Mb per picture. Strange but true. I'm not sure why Samsung came to this decision of imposing such a limitation. Certainly to have a 12Mp camera and compress the image (usually 3+mb) down to something more manageable, defeats the purpose again of uploading the images, even in an email.

Despite all these restrictions, it looks like we're going to have to extract the memory card (which is a microSD by-the-way) and load it into our card readers after all. Strange but true. (You'll be needing a microSD adapter too of course.)

So what about the nice points of the camera. The GPS is very good ; not instant mind you - but thankfully a better effort than the big boys Nikon can make on GPS. You'll be disabling the auto-power-off feature to cope with the computation time of determining the location from the satellites. Another nice feature of the camera is the way that it can imprint the date/time onto each image - remember as they did years ago. This is a nice touch and this feature can be disabled for the anoraks out there! The picture quality is very good too but you are sending images wirelessly, you should be aware of the 2Mb restriction. The flash is very powerful and scene recognition and camera-shake eliminators are pretty good too. The touchscreen is pretty easy to navigate - much like the Sony T500 - but sometimes there is a 'lag' between different modes.

The W-T zoom function is at the top of the camera and is very fiddly to use, dare I say impossible to use? Camera charge is about average and if you're using GPS or wireless, the camera will eat-up alot more power.

Not a bad camera at all and reasonably priced. The GPS could be better, as could the zoom. But the bluetooth and upload limitations mean that the ST-1000 just about makes it to four stars.