Samsung SMX-F70 - Camcorder - High Definition - widescreen - 5.0 Mpix - optic

This was a Christmas gift for my son. It is small/compact, fitting neatly into the palm. Very easy to use. Not at all complicated. Feels sturdy, especially for the money.

My wife and I cover a lot of music festivals for the local paper (She works for them, I got press ganged!) after running about with a pair of panasonics for the last 2 years we decided to upgrade. Saw this camcorder and the specs looked great and not massively expensive. So after a weekend with it at Cockrock here is my take on it, the camera is a good size, light and easy to carry, it has all the bells and whistles that you'd expect (high def, image stabilisation etc) and has easy to understand controls. All in all a good package, with a good battery life. There is one snag though it seems to have an exposure problem, in that everything is a little bright, especially in bright sunlight, you can alter this in the menu we foun running at -1.3 EV worked well, but this re-sets every time that you switch the camera off and when you are looking to capture a moment of someone dancing or that little snippet that catches a feel of the festival its a nuiscance so 1 star off for that, there may be a different way to set this but I haven't found it yet. Good camera for the price. Update - After a bit more use I am thinking that the video camera is actually better than I gave it credit for, it has now been used to cover a few more outdoor events, like uppies and downies, where it has behaved excetionally well and its auto-exposure seems to work fine, I wonder if it was confused by stage lighting or something, anyway it was obviously a hiccup and it seems to work under normal use.