Samsung ST200F Review

August 28, 2012 | Matt Grayson | Rating star Rating star Rating star Rating star Half rating star

Introduction

The Samsung ST200F is part of the Korean company's Performance range of digital compact cameras. Featuring a 16.1 megapixel CCD sensor, 10x optical zoom, Wi-Fi connectivity and Motion Photo which creates the new Cinemagraph craze, the ST200F also has a 3 inch Intelligent LCD screen, optical image stabilisation and HD video recording. Available in black, plum or red, the Samsung ST200F officially retails for £189.99 / $199.99.

Ease of Use

Designed for performance over looks, the Samsung ST200F has simple styling with sharp edges. The lens looks as though it's been superglued on to the front. The size isn't a problem, after all you have to house that 10x optical zoom somehow. The right side juts out slightly to provide a hand grip when shooting or holding it in between shots.

The top of the camera is nice and smooth and gives a hint of minimalism which is a little refreshing as a lot of compacts still have bits sticking out here and there. The zoom rocker is rarely redesigned so it's good to see one that suits the styling of the camera.

The class that the Samsung ST200F falls into is shown on the back because the rear plate of the camera is a textured plastic which looks and feels cheap. In fact its only saving grace is that it's colour coded to the rest of the body, which makes it look a little more attractive. On the back, the large 3 inch hVGA screen takes up most of the space. According to Samsung, the hVGA screen is better quality to the QVGA screen. The higher pixel rating of 460,000 dots will certainly help that. Samsung do make very good screens, anyway.

A simple layout of buttons is situated next to the screen. It follows the traditional pattern of a large navigation ring surrounded by four smaller control buttons. Each has a task and some have two. The bottom two buttons are allocated to playback functions; in particular delete and playback. The top right button serves as access to the main menu which is where you need to go if you want to make any adjustments to exposure, white-balance or ISO. 

The top left button that has a house icon opens up the mode menu. This allows you to choose the mode, feature or effect you'd like to use – and there are plenty. The menu is split into five sections: Basic, Wi-Fi, Scene, Magic and Album. These sections offer a number of modes within them. In Basic, there's the simple shooting modes such as Smart Auto, Program, Smart Movie, Movie, Scene, Live Panorama and Settings.

Samsung ST200F Samsung ST200F
Front Rear

Wi-Fi is for connectivity options such as Mobile Link for transferring images from the camera to a smart phone, Remote Viewfinder which will show you previews of images on your smart phone and allows you to capture pictures remotely, Social Sharing for uploading pictures to websites, Email, Cloud, Auto Backup for transferring images to a computer and TV Link for playing back images on a TV. The latter option requires the TV to be connected to the router you're using the Wi-Fi through.

Scenes are found in the Basic section but some are also separated into the dedicated Scene section. These are more specialist such as Picture in Picture, Beauty Shot and Intelligent Portrait. However, Night Shot and Close Up are also present which are much more commonplace. The most interesting tab is the Magic section. This houses the Magic Frame, Funny Face, Photo & Movie filters, Split Shot, Artistic Brush and Motion Photo modes. Magic Frame places an artistic frame around the subject putting them onto a magazine or as a face in the Moon.

Funny Face uses a warp tool to move a face around in the frame. The mode is intelligent enough to recognise a face in the picture and automatically adjust it depending on the warp option chosen. Split Shot does exactly what it says by taking a picture of the left half of the screen first and the right side after. Artistic Brush adds brush effects such as Sketch, Cartoon or Ink Painting effects to the picture. On the screen they look strong and garish so we'll have to test them and see how they look after the picture has been taken.

All these options pale into insignificance beside the Motion Photo mode. It's based on the growing Cinemagraph craze that recently came to light and is gathering pace as a new way of taking pictures. It even has its own iPhone app. With a DSLR, you take a photograph and some video of the same scene with some movement in it. With the ST200F, the camera takes a series of pictures at high speed. You select the area of motion you want by manoeuvring the box and making it bigger or smaller with the zoom ring. You then only have a portion of the picture moving while the rest is frozen. Done properly it looks great.

Samsung ST200F Samsung ST200F
Front Wi-fi

The downside is that they're in a very low resolution; 300,000 pixels (VGA) to be precise. Saying that, how big do you need them, really? They're only viewed on a screen online or TV and they're no bigger than 2 megapixel in resolution.

Another cool feature is the Wireless Remote feature. You can download a free app onto your smartphone (works with Galaxy models best) and you can shoot remotely from your phone. The phone and camera link up so that the screen is shown on your phone. You can zoom, set the flash, add a self-timer and adjust the resolution. There's a second or so delay and the zoom feature isn't very responsive. Pictures are saved to the camera memory card, not the phone so if you want them on the latter, you'll have to transfer them later.

If the price is to be believed then the Samsung ST200F is at the lower end of the spectrum but it feels really well made. The screen is flush with the body which almost never happens at this price tag. The battery door is sturdy with metal backing to increase its rigidity. It barely moves when manipulated. Even the USB port has a snazzy flip type door to protect it. The camera takes MicroSD which is a lesser used format but means the camera and Samsung phones are interchangeable with their cards. Keeping in line with this interchangeability, the USB connection is also the same as the Samsung phones so if you have a phone and camera, you can use the same charger.

From the turned off position, the ST200F can start, focus and take a picture in just under 2.5 seconds. In burst mode, we managed to capture seven pictures in the 10 second period. There was no sudden pulse of pictures before a slow down, the camera simply plodded along. There's an option called Stop Motion which is a term given to a certain type of animation that uses real props to create an animation such as Tony Hart's Morph or the AT-AT machines in Empire Strikes Back.

Samsung ST200F Samsung ST200F
Memory Card Slot Battery Compartment

In playback, the pictures can be scrolled through in the usual fashions; ie, full screen or zooming out to create a thumbnail gallery (this can be done twice to show 12 thumbnails or 24 thumbnails per page). Pressing the Disp. Button will bring up a small box with the shooting information in it such as ISO, aperture, shutter speed, flash status, resolution and date. This is useful if you're thinking of taking up photography as a hobby. As you upgrade your camera and get more options open to you, this information will help you understand how a digital camera responds to light and scenarios.

Diving into the Samsung ST200F's menu, there are a few options that aren't normally seen. The usual options are there such as delete, protect and DPOF but the ST200F also has options to share via Wi-Fi, set the picture as a wallpaper and some basic editing options such as rotate and resize. There's also an intelligent portrait option which starts automatically and edits the picture to make it more pleasing to the eye. This includes cropping and rotating if necessary.

In the box, the Samsung ST200F comes presented the same way a smart phone does; in a small plastic tray sat over the accessories in the box below. In the box is a wrist strap, USB cable that connects to the charging plug. This means the camera will charge from computers which is useful for travellers. There's also a paper based quick start guide and a CD which holds the full manual, Adobe Reader, PC Auto Backup and Intelli-Studio which is Samsung's picture viewer/editor.

Image Quality

All of the sample images in this Review were taken using the 16 megapixel SuperFine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 5Mb.

Image quality is good on the Samsung ST200F. There's a degree of noise reduction throughout the everyday test sample shots, but they're sharp enough. Exposure seems good and colours are lifelike. Primary colours are nice and punchy without being too saturated. Softer mute colours are treated sympathetically while skin tones are realistic. The white-balance has snazzy pictures to show what they cope with which makes it a lot easier to get the right colour temperature. We also found that the custom white-balance setting doesn't need a white object to measure on and will still get realistic results.

Noise

The noise test taken in controlled light shows very good results at ISO 80. There's not a spot of noise in the dark areas of the frame and edge definition is great. This trend continues throughout the lower stages. In fact noise isn't even seen until ISO 400 – a mid-range setting – where amounts of colour start to invade the darker parts of the pictures. There's a slight adjustment to edges as well showing that noise reduction is working at this stage.

At ISO 1600, the Samsung ST200F starts to remove colour noise but that also means the removal of colour. Pictures look a little more drained than they should while the noise that is present appears more salt and pepper than the previous stages.

The final ISO 3200 setting is too much for the camera to handle. The whole scene takes a blue cast as colour noise attacks the image. Edge definition is all but extinct on the lettering and fine detail areas. Colours are muted but there's a hint of colour bleeding in some areas too.

ISO 80 (100% Crop)

ISO 100 (100% Crop)

   

ISO 200 (100% Crop)

ISO 400 (100% Crop)

   

ISO 800 (100% Crop)

ISO 1600 (100% Crop)

   

ISO 3200 (100% Crop)

 
 

File Quality

The Samsung ST200F has 3 different image quality settings available, with Superfine being the highest quality option. Here are some 100% crops which show the quality of the various options.

Superfine (100% Crop) Fine (100% Crop)
   
Normal (100% Crop)  
 

Focal Range

The Samsung ST200F's 10x zoom lens provides a focal length of 27-270mm in 35mm terms, as demonstrated below.

27mm

270mm

Sharpening

Throughout the test we were perfectly happy with the Samsung ST200F and its performance in focusing. The pictures are lovely and sharp. They do benefit from a little extra sharpening but they look good without it as well.

Original (100% Crop)

Sharpened (100% Crop)

Chromatic Aberrations

For a camera at this placement in the market, chroma produced by the Samsung ST200F's lens isn't too bad. We only found it on very high contrast areas, such as tree branches silhouetted against the sky. We also found that it only appears in the far edges of the frame.

Chromatic 1 (100% Crop)

Chromatic 2 (100% Crop)

Macro

For the type of everyday photography that the camera will be used for, the macro facility on the ST200F is pretty good. The camera can get close enough for most macro subjects and the image stabiliser works nicely to combat any camera shake that will show on the finer detail of a photograph.

Macro

100% Crop

Flash

Shooting a solid white wall, we got vignetting at the far edges of the frame and the ambient light was out of control. Using flash doesn't eradicate any vignettes, in fact it tidies them up along with the higgledy piggledy natural light.

Forced Off - Wide Angle (23mm)

Forced On - Wide Angle (23mm)

ISO 64 ISO 64
   

Forced Off - Telephoto (483mm)

Forced On - Telephoto (483mm)

ISO 64 ISO 64

Using flash in portraits we never got any red-eye so there was no point in using the two red-eye modes that the flash has. The first is a reduction method which fires a pre-flash to retract the pupil. The second method is a red-eye fix which uses software to remove any rogue red-eye that the first option couldn't cope with.

Auto

Auto (100% Crop)
   

Red eye fix

Red eye fix (100% Crop)

Night

The night shot test was an odd bag of mashings. In program mode, the Samsung ST200F can't sustain a long enough exposure to get a decent shot but the weird thing was that the camera simply wouldn't focus. It focused fine in the night scene mode and it's more favourable to use this mode anyway.

Aside from the higher ISO setting which is a bit rubbish, albeit expected, the mode allows you to select the shutter speed manually up to 16 seconds. The faster the shutter speed, the better because noise from neighbouring pixels heating up affects the pictures at the longer shutter speeds.

Night Program

Night Program (100% Crop)

   

Night Scene - 2 Seconds

Night Scene - 2 Seconds (100% Crop)

   

Night Scene - 3 Seconds

Night Scene - 3 Seconds (100% Crop)

   

Night Scene - 16 Seconds

Night Scene - 16 Seconds (100% Crop)

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Samsung ST200F camera, which were all taken using the 16 megapixel Superfine JPEG setting. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.

Sample Movie & Video

This is a sample video from the Samsung ST200F camera at the highest quality setting of 1280x720 pixels at 30 frames per second. Please note that this 25 second movie is 25.3Mb in size.

Product Images

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Front of the Camera

 
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Front of the Camera / Lens Extended

 
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Isometric View

 
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Isometric View

 
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Rear of the Camera

 
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Rear of the Camera / Image Displayed

 
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Rear of the Camera / Turned On

 
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Rear of the Camera / Basic Menu

 
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Rear of the Camera / Wi-fi Menu

 
Samsung WB850F

Rear of the Camera / Wi-fi

 
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Rear of the Camera / Wi-fi

 
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Rear of the Camera / Scene Menu

 

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Rear of the Camera / Magic Effects Menu

 
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Rear of the Camera / Album Menu

 
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Rear of the Camera / Home Menu

 
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Rear of the Camera / Playback Menu

 
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Rear of the Camera / Special Effects Menu

 
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Top of the Camera

 
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Side of the Camera

 
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Side of the Camera

 
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Front of the Camera

 
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Wi-fi Connectivity

 
Samsung WB850F

Wi-fi Connectivity

 
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Memory Card Slot

 
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Battery Compartment

Conclusion

Shooting with the Samsung ST200F is a pleasure. It's easy to use, has a decent specification and is full of interesting features. We like the updated menu system such as the good quality icons for the white-balance system.

The technology packed inside is great. We love the WiFi optionality on a camera at this price point. Before reviewing the Samsung ST200F we'd been looking at cinemagraphs. The motion photo allows you to create your own – albeit at 300,000 pixels. As we mentioned before, does it need to be bigger? This isn't a picture you can print out. You're not in Hogwarts now.

The feel of the Samsung ST200F is good, it's nice to hold and the buttons fall at the fingertips comfortably. Being in a rush all the time, we found that the buttons aren't as responsive as we'd like and had to wait a while for it to work for us. The flash is also notoriously long to recycle and you can be sat waiting with your finger on the button for a long time while the flash icons shrieks at you by flashing red and white.

Overall image quality is good, though. In everyday shooting, we're pleased with the results. Noise is a problem. However, noise is a problem for every camera with a small sensor and high resolution. The problem that the ST200F has is that the noise reduction technology isn't as good as other manufacturers. Because of that, the pictures are a bit of a let down compared to the rest of the camera.

The Samsung ST200F is a camera that will cope with pretty much anything you need to take pictures of in day to day life. It's not the best looking camera around but for the price, it must be the most fully loaded. The features will give you hours of fun messing around while the actual image quality is good enough to record your favourite moments. If you're on a budget but want a camera with some new features then take a look at the Samsung ST200F.

4.5 stars

Ratings (out of 5)
Design 3.5
Features 5
Ease-of-use 4.5
Image quality 3.5
Value for money 4.5

Review Roundup

Reviews of the Samsung ST200F from around the web.

reviews.cnet.co.uk »

The Samsung ST200F is extraordinary value for money. It reliably produces vibrant, accurate results that are a true reflection of the original subject matter. The inclusion of built-in Wi-Fi makes it even more tempting and will help all but the most picky of buyers to overlook its very few minor flaws.
Read the full review »

ephotozine.com »

The ST200F was announced in January 2012 as part of Samsung's latest Wi-Fi enabled smart cameras. This means you can shoot with the 16 megapixel sensor and 10x optical zoom, then share your images straight from the camera. It is available in black, plum and red from around £140.
Read the full review »

Specifications

Image Sensor

Sensor Type 1/2.3″ (Approx. 7.76mm) CCD
Effective Pixel Approx. 16.1 Mega pixel
Total Pixel Approx. 16.4 Mega pixel

Lens

Focal Length Samsung 10x Zoom Lens f= 4.85 ~ 48.5mm (35mm film equivalent : 27 ~ 270mm)
F No. F3.1 (W) ~ F5.6 (T)
Optical Zoom • Still Image mode: 1x ~ 5x
• Play mode: 1x ~ 14.4x (depends on image size)(1)

Image Stabilization

Mode OIS(2)

Display

Type TFT LCD
Feature 3" (7.62cm), 460K dots

Focusing

Type TTL auto focus (Multi AF, Centre AF, Tracking AF, Face Detection AF, Smart Face Recognition AF)
Range • Normal: 80cm ~ infinity (Wide), 200cm ~ infinity (Tele)
• Macro: 5cm ~ 80cm (Wide), 150cm ~ 200cm (Tele)
• Auto Macro: 5cm ~ Infinity (Wide), 150cm ~ Infinity (Tele)

Shutter Speed

• Smart Auto: 1/8 ~ 1/2000sec.
• Program: 1 ~ 1/2000sec.
• Night: 16 ~ 1/2000sec.

Exposure

Control Program AE
Metering System Multi, Spot, Centre Weighted, Face Detection AE
Compensation ±2EV (1/3EV steps)
ISO Equivalent Auto, 80, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200

Flash

Mode Auto, Auto & Red-eye reduction, Fill-in flash, Slow sync, Flash Off, Red-eye fix
Range • Wide: 0.3m ~ 3.6m
• Tele: 0.5m ~ 2m (ISO AUTO) TBD
Recharging Time Approx. 4sec.

White Balance

Mode Auto, DayLight, Cloudy, Fluorescent_H , Fluorescent_L, Tungsten, Custom Set

Still Image

Mode • Mode: Smart Auto, Program, Scene, Live Panorama, Picture-in-Picture, Beauty Shot, Intelligent Portrait, Night Shot, Close up Shot, Magic Frame, Funny Face, Photo Filter, Split Shot, Art Brush, Motion Photo
•Smart Auto: Macro, Macro text, Portrait, White, Landscape, Action, Tripod, Night, Night Portrait, Backlight, Backlight Portrait, Blue Sky, Sunset, Macro Colour, Natural Green, Fireworks
• Scene: Landscape, Text, Sunset, Dawn, Backlight, Beach & Snow Self-timer: Off, 2sec., 10sec., Double
• Photo Filter: Miniature, Vignetting, Ink Painting, Oil Painting, Cartoon, Cross Filter, Sketch, Soft Focus, Fish-eye, Old Film, Half tone Dot, Classic, Retro, Zooming shot
• Image Adjust: Sharpness, Contrast, Saturation (5 steps)
• Image Edit: Resize, Rotate, Trimming
• Photo Filter: Miniature, Vignetting, Ink Painting, Oil Painting, Cartoon, Cross Filter, Sketch, Soft Focus, Fish-eye, Old Film, Half tone Dot, Classic, Retro, Zooming shot
• Image Adjust: Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, ACB, Face Retouch, Red Eye Fix

Image Play

Mode: Smart Album, Slide show, Motion Photo Type: Single image, Thumbnails, Slide show, Movie Clip
Slide show: Slide show with Effect & Music
Smart Album Category: All, Type, Date, Face

Date Imprinting

Off, Date, Date & Time (user selectable)

Movie Clip

Recording 10x Optical Zoom enable (Max Recording time: 20min) Mode: Smart Movie, Movie
Smart Movie: Landscape, Blue Sky, Natural Green, Sunset
Size: 1280 x 720 (30fps / 15fps), 640 x 480 (30fps / 15pfs), 320 x 240 (30fps / 15fps) For Sharing (30fps / 15fps)
Due to the noise while optical zooming, user can select to record sound or not. (Voice recording selectable: Sound Alive On / Sound Alive Off / Mute) Setting: OIS On / Off
Effect Movie Filter: Palette Effect 1, Palette Effect 2, Palette Effect 3, Palette Effect 4, Miniature, Vignetting, Half Tone Dot, Sketch, Fish Eye, Classic, Retro
Edit Pause during Recording and Playing, Still Image Capture, Time Trimming

Storage

Media • Internal memory: 16 MB
• External memory: microSD Card (up to 2GB guaranteed) microSDHC (up to 32GB guaranteed) microSDXC (up to 64GB guaranteed)(3)
File Format DCF, EXIF 2.21, DPOF 1.1, PictBridge 1.0 • Still Image: JPEG • Movie Clip: MP4 (Video: MPEG4.AVC / H.264, Audio: AAC)
Image Size 16M: 4608 x 3456, 14MP: 4608 x 3072 12MW: 4608 x 2592, 10M: 3648 x 2736 5M: 2592 x 1944, 3M: 1984 x 1488, 2MW: 1920 x 1080, 1M: 1024 x 768, 2D Panorama: 5000 x 720, Magic Frame: 2MW

Interface

Digital Output Connector USB 2.0 (Micro USB)
Audio • Microphone: Mono
• Internal Speaker: Mono
Video Output NTSC, PAL (user selectable)
DC Power Input 5V

Power

Power Source Type • Rechargeable battery: BP85A (850mAh)
• Connector Type: Micro USB (5Pin)(4)

Physical Specification

Dimension Dimension (WxHxD) 99.6 x 58.3 x 18.9 (25.7)mm (including protrusions)
Weight 142.3g (without battery and memory card)
Operating Temperature 0 ~ 40°C
Operating Humidity 5 ~ 85%

S/W and PC OS

Bundle PC S/W Intelli-studio
Compatible OS Windows XP SP2 / Vista / 7

System Requirement in General

For Macintosh Power Mac G3 or later Mac OS 10.4 or higher Minimum 256MB RAM 110MB of available hard-disk space USB port CD-ROM drive
For Windows PC with processor better than PentiumIV 3.2GHz / AMD Athlon FX 2.6GHz or higher Minimum 512MB RAM (Over 1GB recommended) Windows XP SP2 / Vista / 7250MB of available hard-disk space (Over 1GB recommend) USB port CD-ROM drive nVIDIA Geforce 7600GT or later / Ati X1600 series or later 1024 x 768 pixels, 16-bit colour display compatible monitor (1280 x 1024, 32-bit colour display recommended) Microsoft DirectX 9.0c or later

Usage note

  • (1) Intelli Zoom
  • (2) OIS (Optical Image Stabilisation)
  • (3) Internal memory capacity may not match these specifications.
  • (4) Included items may vary depending on sales region.

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