As a photo, it’s not great admittedly. The composition is all to pot, for a start. Despite this, I’ve posted it up because this was one of the first shots I took with the Samsung D-600 phone.
Yes, phone.
Normally I dislike cameraphones; I like my technology to follow the UNIX philosophy and “do one thing, well” rather than trying to do everything, badly. I want my phone to be a phone, that’s all. I’ve got the iPod for music, so don’t need a built-in MP3 player, and if I want to take photos, I’d rather use a camera thank you very much.
But this is the first time I’ve used a cameraphone that’s actually a pretty good camera in it’s own right. It’s got matrix, spot and centre-weighted metering, ISO 100-400, exposure compensation and (woohoo!) monochrome mode. It’s resolution is 2Mp (1600×1200) which is perfect for web and 6×4 prints, so no problems their too.
The main annoyance I have with the phone is that it forgets settings, all over the place. It resets the wallpaper, resets the USB connection to “modem” when I ALWAYS want it as mass storage, forgets my camera settings, everything. “Save” just doesn’t, period. I’m hoping there’s a firmware fix out there somewhere.
And I can’t map the centre button. It’s set to connect via WAP. I don’t want that, ever. I’d rather it be another “take photo” button, or something. Anything but WAP!
My other complaint is that the menu structure needs streamlining. To take few photos I have to:
- Press the top left button then the top right button to unlock the phone
- Press the “shutter” button on the side
- Select Take a photo
- Adjust the Shooting Mode and Effects settings again because it’s forgotten then
- Compose and shoot using the middle button or side shutter
- Select Options
- Select Take another, etc.
There is an option to Automatically save the image and set the camera up for another shot immediately. This is perfect – it only the fricking camera would save the setting! No point having an “Auto-save and shoot again” setting if you have to select it every single time. Kinda defeats the objective.
In short; it’s a great phone, probably the best I’ve owned. It’s a terrific camera too – it’s become my always-in-my-pocket camera. I just wish the bug with settings being saved could be fixed.
I’m googling now………