Introduction

Ease of Use

The WB1100F’s DSLR-like form makes it a refreshingly comfortable camera to operate if you’re used to fiddling with tiny compacts. Buttons are kept to a minimum and hence those you do get are large and well-spaced around the sizable body. Build quality is impressive for the money too, and although black plastic is the order of the day, it’s a similar feel to that of an entry-level DSLR. At 464g ready to shoot, the camera is also a comfortable weight in the hand, yet light enough not to causing your shoulder grief when you’re on the go.

Some may see the WB1100F as a bridge camera, as it certainly looks like one. However, where a bridge camera is designed to bridge the gap between a point-and-shoot compact and a DSLR; the WB1100F’s bridge camera credentials are only skin deep. You don’t get aperture or shutter priority modes, let alone full manual control, and there aren’t any control wheels to help adjust shooting settings in Program auto mode either.

A proper mode dial is present though, containing the Program auto mode that’ll let you control ISO sensitivity and white balance, plus the default Smart Auto mode which automatically detects scene conditions and applies optimal shooting settings. Move to the ‘S’ symbol to reveal Smart mode presets designed to help capture tricky shooting scenarios. Options include a Beauty Face mode which enables touch-up options when shooting portraits, a Light Trace setting that’ll hold the shutter open to capture light trails from night-time traffic, and the Action Freeze feature for getting sharp shots of fast-moving subjects.

Front	Rear

An automated panorama mode is also available and this gets its own position on the mode dial for easy access. It’s also easy to use: just press and hold the shutter release, pan the camera left or right and release the shutter when you’re done.

You can also apply Movie Filter effects to video recording by selecting the star icon on the mode dial. Many of these mimic the Smart Filter still image effects, like the Miniature, Fish-eye and Retro looks. There are also an extra four colour styles to choose from, however not all these effects can be applied to HD-quality recordings.

The remaining three settings on the mode dial include the movie mode option, as well as a position dedicated to camera settings. And last but definitely not least, we find the Wi-Fi mode. Samsung has crammed the WB1100F with its latest wireless image sharing technology, including features like Photo Beam which allows you to transfer an image from the camera to your smart device by simply tapping the two together. It’s a neat trick made possible by NFC, so you’ll need an NFC-enabled smartphone or tablet to get in on the action. The camera also incorporates Samsung’s AutoShare feature that’ll wirelessly share images as soon as you snap them, as well as Remote Viewfinder technology to let you control the WB1100F wirelessly from your smartphone. Just download Samsung’s Smart Camera app to your smartphone or tablet to start using these features. If you find yourself using a particular wireless trick frequently, then the Direct Link button alongside the mode dial can be configured to access it instantly.

Front	Top

Apart from this control, it’s pretty much business as usual atop the WB1100F, with the zoom ring, shutter release and power button where you’d expect to find them. The lens barrel is home to a more unusual button though, entitled ‘Speed Control’. Sounds exciting, but it simply changes the zooming speed. Press it whilst adjusting the zoom ring when shooting stills and the camera will zoom faster, or do the same in video mode to slow things down instead.

It’s certainly a useful gadget when you need to zoom in fast on a fleeting subject, especially given the WB1100F’s extensive focal range. Sure, this is no match for the cutting-edge ultrazoom bridge cameras offering upwards of a 60x range, but it’s enough telephoto reach to get distant subjects filling your frame from a typical vantage point. Likewise, the 25mm maximum wide-angle setting should be enough for keeping large groups in the picture and shooting architecture at close range. Samsung’s optical image stabilisation system also works its magic, helping to iron out camera shake for sharp shots in low light and at longer focal lengths.

The 3.0”, 460k-dot screen is less impressive though. At this price point you can’t really expect it to sport touch-sensitivity, and it doesn’t. The outright resolution is nothing special either, but it’s acceptable for the money. However, viewing angles are sub-par, making it tricky to accurately judge contrast and colour during a shoot.

Side	Battery Compartment

The monitor quality is at least high enough to show off Samsung’s attractive menu system and on-screen display. Where many camera manufacturers still use dated and uninspiring interfaces, the WB1100F benefits from clear, modern menus and attractive icons which help make controlling the camera a pleasant and intuitive experience. It’s a system that’d benefit from touchscreen controls, but nonetheless works well with the camera’s standard directional buttons.

However, it’s a pity the WB1100F isn’t as enjoyable to shoot. Press the power button and the screen and lens spring into life almost instantly, but the camera refuses to snap a shot for 2-3 seconds. This doesn’t sound like much, but it’s an annoying delay that’s easily long enough to miss a fast-moving subject, especially as the zoom controls are also frozen during this period so you can’t even compose your shot whilst you wait.

This frustrating flaw also affects the WB1100F’s bigger brother, the WB2200F, and can hopefully be fixed with a future firmware update. But where that camera picks up speed with nippy autofocussing, the WB1100F has to make do with a slower system that’s quick enough in good light, but makes a meal of locking on to subjects in dimmer conditions. Focus accuracy also leaves something to be desired, with some of our test shots appearing slightly out of focus despite the camera having apparently focussed correctly in the field.

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 6Mb.

The WB1100F’s 1/2.3” CCD sensor is a common size found in most compact and super-zoom cameras, and with 16.2 megapixels on tap it should be capable of decent results. Sadly this particular device is average at best and only resolves good detail at very close range. Pull back to around a metre from your subject and fine detail is already being blurred by image noise reduction. The problem is further exacerbated when shooting distant landscapes, where the extent of this smoothing effect can make fine detail appear rather painterly.

At least the camera’s vibrant colour reproduction gives images some instant appeal, though the auto white balance can occasionally scupper colour accuracy when shooting in mixed lighting conditions. The camera’s exposure metering is also good but not perfect. It usually produces the best balance of highlight and shadow detail from the sensor’s underwhelming dynamic range, but has a tendency to slightly underexposure in overcast conditions, leading to shots that look darker than they should.

Noise is also a problem for the WB1100F. Grain is visible even at the ISO100 sensitivity setting in shadow areas, along with minor colour speckling. By ISO400 noise levels are largely unchanged, but noise reduction processing has smeared noticeably more detail. It’s losing the battle at ISO800 where grain becomes more obvious, and by ISO1600 both grain and detail smearing are noticeable even when viewing at 50% image size. Colour speckling is well controlled though, however at the maximum ISO3200 setting it too is clearly visible. This setting is best avoided due to the atrocious levels of image noise, as well the miserable 3MP capture resolution enforced at this sensitivity.

The camera performs a bit better optically, with minimal lens distortion and reasonable corner sharpness. Unfortunately chromatic aberration is an issue, resulting in areas of purple fringing being relatively prominent on boundaries between high-contrast tones. Though rarely distracting, you don’t have to be the pickiest of pixel peepers to spot it.

Noise

The WB1100F has seven sensitivity settings available at full resolution, ranging between ISO80 and ISO3200. However at ISO3200 images are only captured at 3 megapixels, and despite this downsizing, they still look very noisy.

ISO 100 (100% Crop)	ISO 200 (100% Crop)
ISO 400 (100% Crop)	ISO 800 (100% Crop)
ISO 1600 (100% Crop)	ISO 3200 (100% Crop)

Sharpening

Here are two 100% crops which have been Saved as Web - Quality 50 in Photoshop. The right-hand image has had some sharpening applied in Photoshop. The out-of-the camera images are a little soft at the default sharpening setting. You can change the in-camera sharpening level if you don't like the default look.

Original (100% Crop)	Sharpened (100% Crop)

Focal Range

The camera’s 35x optical zoom lens gives you a focal range of 25-875mm (in 35mm-camera terms) and an aperture of f/3.0 at wide angle, to f/5.9 when zoomed in.

25mm	875mm

File Quality

Three JPEG compression options can be selected: Super Fine, Fine and Normal. These result in file sizes around 5.5MB, 4MB and 2.5MB respectively.

16M Super Fine (5.09Mb) (100% Crop)	16M Fine (3.07Mb) (100% Crop)
16M Normal (2.60Mb) (100% Crop)

Chromatic Aberrations

The Samsung WB1100F handled chromatic aberrations only fairly well during the review, with some obvious purple fringing mainly present around the edges of objects in high-contrast situations, as shown in the examples below.

Chromatic Aberrations 1 (100% Crop)	Chromatic Aberrations 2 (100% Crop)

Macro

The WB1100F boasts a Super Macro mode that lets it focus down to 1cm from your subject. You’ll need to keep the zoom set to maximum wide angle to achieve this and expect plenty of barrel distortion when shooting subjects this close. You’ll also need plenty of light to compensate for the inevitable shadow cast by the camera.

Macro	Macro (100% Crop)

Flash

The camera’s built-in flash includes six modes: Off, Auto, Red-eye, Fill in, Slow Sync and Red-eye fix. This last setting fires two flash bursts as in standard Red-eye mode, but also uses internal processing to remove red-eye.

Flash Off - Wide Angle (25mm)	Flash On - Wide Angle (25mm)
Flash Off - Telephoto (875mm)	Flash On - Telephoto (875mm)

In our testing with the WB1100F successfully avoided red-eye and the flash produced only minor wide-angle vignetting from a distance of 1.5m.

Flash On	Flash On (100% Crop)
Red Eye Fix	Red Eye Fix (100% Crop)

Night

The camera’s Smart mode includes a Night setting that’s designed to capture low-light scenes with reduced image noise.  This shot required a 2.5-second exposure time at ISO80, hence a tripod is essential to avoid blur from camera shake.

Night	Night (100% Crop)

Image Stabilisation

Samsung’s optical image stabilisation (OIS) system does a great job at ironing out the effects of camera shake. It’s vital for maintaining sharp shots in low light and at the telephoto end of the WB1100F’s focal length range.

Shutter Speed / Focal Length	Image Stabilisation Off (100% Crop)	Image Stabilisation On (100% Crop)
1/23 sec / 25mm

Smart Filters

Samsung equips the WB1100F with just six Smart Filter effects: Miniature, Vignetting, Fish Eye, Classic, Retro and Cross Filter.

Miniature	Vignetting
Fisheye	Classic
Retro	Cross Filter

Panoramas

The WB1100F will automatically capture panoramic shots by pressing and holding the shutter release whilst sweeping right, left, up or down. Unlike many cameras which force you to keep panning for at least 120 degrees, the WB1100F will let you stop the pan wherever you like. But whatever the width, the end result will be under 700 vertical pixels in size, and that’s low even by the class standards.

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Samsung WB1100F 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

Product Images

Front of the Samsung WB1100F

Front of the Samsung WB1100F / Pop-up Flash

Side of the Samsung WB1100F

Side of the Samsung WB1100F

Rear of the Samsung WB1100F

Rear of the Samsung WB1100F / Image Displayed

Rear of the Samsung WB1100F / Main Menu

Top of the Samsung WB2200

Bottom of the Samsung WB1100F

Side of the Samsung WB1100F

Side of the Samsung WB1100F

Front of the Samsung WB1100F

Front of the Samsung WB1100F

Memory Card Slot / Battery Compartment

Conclusion

Entry-level superzoom bridge cameras don’t tend to set the world on fire with stunning performance or funky features, and the Samsung WB1100F is no exception. Sure, its wireless connectivity is a step above the competition in this sector and the camera has a slick interface, but there’s little else to set the WB1100F apart from rivals like the Canon PowerShot SX510 HS, Nikon Coolpix L830 and Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ30.

Underwhelming image quality with noticeable detail loss at ISO400 and above doesn’t do the WB1100F any favours either. Shots taken at ISO1600 are only just passable due to extensive detail smearing and grain noise, whilst the maximum ISO3200 sensitivity is practically useless.

A sluggish start-up time and an autofocus system which is similarly slow in low light further blunt the camera’s appeal, as does its average screen quality, limited special effects and severely-downsized panoramic images.

Good ergonomics and build quality are plus points for the WB1100F though, and the camera does have a final trump card: price. The initial RRP of £249.99/$249.99 seems steep for such a mediocre offering, but you can already pick one up for much less.

Consequently the WB1100F now offers a lot of camera and zoom range for the money and hence it’s likely to appeal to photographers wanting decent versatility on a budget. However, if you’re at all concerned with image quality and low-light performance, even a cut-price WB1100F could still disappoint.

Ratings (out of 5)
Design	4
Features	3.5
Ease-of-use	4
Image quality	3
Value for money	4

Main Rivals

Listed below are some of the rivals of the Samsung WB1100F.

Review Roundup

Reviews of the Samsung WB1100F from around the web.

Specifications

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