The S500 was a budget digicam launched in 2006. Whilst it core spec offered little over rivals, Samsung did pack in some quirky features. But whilst there’s a lot to like here for a 5MP budget digicam, there are some issues that may be a deal breaker.
Samsung and cameras
Today Samsung doesn’t really do stand alone cameras. That’s bar its specialist 360 and VR gear. But 10-20 years ago it was a serious player in the global digital camera market. In 2010 around one in ten new Cameras sported the Samsung logo globally. And the company was snapping on the heals of 3rd placed Nikon for market supremacy. It would gear to seize a major chuck of the evolving 2010’s mirrorless market with it’s well regarded NX series.
But that supremacy never materialised. It pulled out of stand alone camera production in 2015.
But back in 2006 it was a rising player.
The Samsung Digimax S500
This offers a 5.1MP (5MP effective) 1/2.5″ sensor with a X3 zoom (5.8-17.4mm equiv to 35-105mm). Coupled with SD card support, 20MB onboard memory and power by 2 AA
All this is not untypical but there are some quirky features especially the modes
Design
Fairly conventional for a budget camera of the mid noughties. Plastic Bodied with off centre lens. On the other side, there is a grip present in part due to the battery/SD card compartment. That’s accessible behind sliding door on the base.
Up on the top you’ve power, mode dial and shutter button.
Meanwhile, the rear has a 2.4″ 112K dot TFT. To the grip side of it you get a zoom toggle, 3 menu buttons and joypad
Detailed Spec
Sensor is a 1/2.5″ CCD sensor with a ~2,22 micron pixel pitch. The senor offers ISO sensitivity from 50-400 ISO (either sliding in auto orin stop steps if manually set). EV compensation of +/-2 is available in some modes
Auto white balance is default. But in some mode you can set between 5 present WB and one custom WB in some modes
Exposure is metered either multi-segment or in some modes optional spot. In most modes you the auto exposure will set shutter between 1sec and 1/500. But I got up to 1/1000 in use. In manual you can set down to 8 secs. There is no bulb option. The shutter is mechanical and electronic but there is no way to select between.
This does limit camera in low light
The lens as mentioned is a typical X3 zoom 5.8-17.4mm. This Samsung SHD lens can focus from 80cm in normal mode. But you to as close as 4cm in macro (at wide end). The aperture adjust and at wide you have a range of f/2.8 to 7.1 and on tele f/4.9-12.4
Flash is built in with a 0.2-3m (wide) and 0.4-2.5m (tele) range. It can be set to auto, auto red eye, fill in/force on, force off and slow sync. SD card support and power by 2 AA batteries.
5MP Images with ultrafine detail and normal sharpness take up 2.1-2.5MB which suggest little compression
Mode Dial
The camera offers 7 mode dial option. There is Auto for simplistic exposures using the AE program exposure. This offers little other control than 3 flash settings (auto, red eye and off).
Program mode expands that if you need to be more creative. This allows you to adjust EV comp, ISO, WB and RGB. It also lets you switch metering in the main menu as well as accesss to all flash settings. Manual mode lets you do all that but also adjust aperture and shutter speed. It also has limited flash options to just fill in or off. All other modes/scenes have limited flash option with many having it turned off.
There is a dedicated night, portrait and children (ie. moving target modes) on the dial. And then there’s the scene mode. This offers 7 modes (landscape, close up, sunset, dawn, backlight, fireworks and Snow/beach). Close up feels redundant. You can move the camera into macro mode by pressing down on the joy pad on rear. In auto mode an auto macro feature engages without you having to even bother.
This is no panorama feature however.
If you press up you get a voice recorded (look it was the noughties)
The 3 menu buttons
The 3 buttons have menu functions which vary by mode. The top button marked E for effect does what it says on the tin. You can change the colour of you images (yup B&W & Sepia make sense but why the others ?). This is available in all modes and the only E option for auto and movie
In program and other modes you can add a frame or do composite images. There is also an option to alter the focus box (called highlight on the camera)
The middle button toggles into EV compensation, AWB, ISO and RGB adjust
The bottom button is for playback
Joypad Menu & other buttons
The menu button lets you adjust resolution, sharpness (Normal, soft, vivid), quality (superfine, fine, normal), continuous v single shooting. You can also set OSD (Display – simple info, detailed & off) Time/date, format, metering and sounds. That’s as well as host of things you probably wont touch. Like splash logo, AF assist on/off and batteries (you can select the type alkaline v NiMH). All these setting can be found in the manual on Samsung’s UK site
One important thing is the ability to move stuff from the internal storage to your SD card.
In playback mode it lets you access all those odd PICTBridge settings
As mentioned the button up on joypad triggers sound recorder mode, down -macro (in some modes), left-flash and right-timer.
Display (full info)
Here’s an example of the display. When the shutter is half depressed triggering AF and metering shutter and aperture also appear in some modes.
In the centre we can see the standard focus box. This will turn Green when focused or red if the camera can’t lock on. If we move to it’s left (9 O’Clock) we can see the camera is has auto flash. Moving clockwise we can see battery life (good) then the mode (here program still with red camera and P). Next is bar showing zoom(we’re wide). Next the camera shows 2 shots remaining. Then we’re set to 5M resolution and that we have super fine image quality. Then at 5 O’clock we have time and date. Next is storage (here internal), Metering mode (multi)
Other setting may appear dependant on mode and menu settings.
In the box
Mines came boxed with an unused original strap, manuals, software CD and the proprietary USB cable (slot on the base. You won’t need the latter as you just take the SD card out.
Using the S500
It was actually pretty quick to go from off to taking a shot (around 2 seconds). It’s simplistic stuff compose your image in LCD with focal point central half depress shutter to lock exposure and AF. As already stated the AF box will turn green if locked. But be aware it doesn’t adjust beyond that point (so no tracking AF) . It isn’t always great at locking on – but no worse than other budget numbers.
If shutter is too slow a shake warning appears but there is no image stabilisation. The camera will not default stray into the 200 let alone 400 ISO however even when light levels drop sacrificing shutter speed to keep ISO low. That often meant the shake warning appeared in the finder.
I found the joypad hard to use. I’d often try to access the menu to find I’d turned on the timer or changed flash mode.
it sits comfy in one hand although there is a risk of a finger straying over AF lamp or flash.
I shot the camera mainly in program mode with superfine quality, 5MP and normal sharpness
The LCD was bit washed out, everything looked like it was over expose. The camera I had was pretty mint. And whist you might suspect I’m use to better more modern screen, the budget Vivitar ViviCam 3745 had a more rich coloured LCD. Although the Samsung is easier to see in bright light.
Results
There’s good and bad news here
Exposure
Broadly this exposed okay. It would struggle to keep exposure in check with heavily back lit scenes but so would any compact and it has a mode for that. As we’ll see Dynamic range was sub par but typical
What’s more of a concern is the camera continually sacrifices aperture & shutter speed to keep ISO low. The aperture I can live with (most shots you can see here are taken with respective apertures wide open) but shooting at 1/20 with an ISO of 50 seems nuts. But there may be some logic. as we’ll discuss this is a noisy camera but 200 ISO plus that noise becomes more of an issue
That said would it hurt to use 100 ISO a bit more in a camera with no image stabilisation ?
Noise
Given the file sizes were reasonable and I shot at Ultrafine I had hopes for little noise. But even at 50 ISO it is evident. Take this shot
At 50 ISo it’s not awful but if you zoom in you can see ghosting and artefacts
The quality degrades as you move up ISO. Take these close crops of a plastic broom bristles
50 ISO shows noise but that worsen up each ISO setting 200 startas to lose a lot of detail and you can’t delineate the bristle clumps. 400 is that bit worse
Colour accuracy and Dynamic range
Actually quite good and AWB broadly did a good job compared to Google pixel 7 smartphone there is little difference in these shots taken in subdued natural light
It’s less of a good story on dynamic range. This is decidedly lower end of average for mid noughties as in not great but what you’d expect form a budget small sensor compact of the era.
Lens
The wide end has notable barrel distortion but has reasonable accuracy across the focal plane.
The tele end has a very little pincushion radial distortion but softens to the edges
AF & Focus
Hmmm…. The AF can be an issue most of the time it’s okay especially in the close to median range. It can be fooled and worst of all it’ll respond that it’s in focus but actually isn’t
Long shots can appear soft at wide. It’s a little hard to know what drives that due ton the focus lock issue. But more likely it’s that AF issue which is not uncommon on both film and digital compacts where they struggle to lock on with active AF at a distance . The camera does have a landscape mode that forces infinity.
Overall the focus when on target is okay. You couldn’t call shots that sharp in part due to the noise but median to close shots are broadly good enough for web use like here or small prints 6×4
Macro shots were generally on the ball however and reasonably sharp
Video
Okay I’m no video expert but on many levels this does alright the VGA resolution if not great by modern 4K standards but fine for lo-fi video effect. It records sound and you get little wind or camera noise from the weedy mic. Focus and exposure do adjust but with lag and you can zoom
Sound shuts off during zoom
But I did get issues with vertical colour banding. But Beyond that I was reasonable impressed within the confines of this being budget material from almost 2 decades ago.
Final Thoughts on the Digimax S500
To be fair Samsung did pack a good range of nice to haves in a budget camera. But you wish they spent more time dealing with the core quality
The fact the last camera I reviewed in this series the Vivitar Vivicam 3745 can keep up with this in still photography tells you wall you need. That was no sleeper classic. The S500 images are at best okay bar macro where things are good. And although exposure is good and video is one of the best VGA quality cams I’ve reviewed, It falls down. Although you get some helpful modes the fickle AF doesn’t help. It’s not awful but better era cameras exist for still work for the same money.
What’s good with the S500
- Uses 2 standard AA
- Reasonably logical ergonomically
- VGA Video good bar banding
- Good mode options for a budget
- Some manual overrides (but not many)
What’s not so great
- AF buggy
- Images so so
- Noise
- Shutter sacrifice for ISO
- Insensitive joypad
Alternatives
If you want quality from a mid noughties small compact try and track down the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ2. It’s weaker indoor without flash on modern lights but the image quality in daylight is that bit better. And with Image stabilisation you can get away with some low light shooting. The Nikon Coolpix 5600 is another option worth looking at. It isn’t as good as the LZ2 but does have VGA video and perhaps better control options. It is a tad tubby though.
Other sources of info
CNET reviewed this camera back in the day. Samsung still provide the manual and other info on their UK site.