Samsung SMX-F34 Flash Memory Camcorder w/16GB Memory & 42x Intelli-Zoom
- Record SD video to SD/SDHC cards and 16 GB of internal flash memory
- Enhance 34x optical zoom up to 42x with Samsung’s new Intelli-zoom
- Web & Mobile shooting mode for easy online video sharing
- Capture 800×600 digital still photos
- Swivel hand grip for comfortable low-angle shooting
Product Description
The new SMX-F34 is Samsung’s next generation YouTube-compatible compact digital camcorder. Building on the SC-MX20 camcorder, the SMX-F34 offers additional features and functionality, including built-in memory, digital still photo capability, and Samsung’s 42x Intelli-Zoom. Significantly more reliable than a standard digital zoom which negatively affects the quality of the image, Intelli-Zoom allows you to go beyond the camcorder’s 34x optical zoom without sacrifici… More >>
Samsung SMX-F34 Flash Memory Camcorder w/16GB Memory & 42x Intelli-Zoom
Product Pros; Easy to use, Compact,excellent focus
Cons: No carrying case, Inadequate Memory Card, in some cases no memory card! screen difficult to see subject in bright sunlight …
All in all , it’s to soon to rate the quality of this product, I will be using it for the first time 5/23/2009
Rating: 3 / 5
I want to love this camcorder, I really do. It is small, lightweight and easy to operate…features I searched for to take a camcorder on a motorcycle trip. But I have recieved 2 now that the lens cap does not function. Samsung tech support could find no solution. Now I guess I have to send the 2nd one back and hope I get my proper credit. And as my trip is coming up shortly, I cannot take the chance of ordering a third one and hoping it works prior to the trip. I will have to go to a department store where I can test it out BEFORE I take it home. Is no one else having this issue? Is it maybe just the red one? Should I try another color??
Rating: 3 / 5
GREAT CAMERA…BUT I DONT LIKE THE INTELIGENT ZOOM…WHEN IT FOCUS BLUR FOR A WHILE THE CAPTION ON VIDEO MODE…
Rating: 3 / 5
I ordered this camera for a vacation to visit my family. When I received it, the LCD screen didn’t work the first time I tried it. Dealing with Samsung customer service has been a nightmare. I know others have had better results, but now I’ve “owned” this camera for 2 weeks, had it in my possession for 36 hours, and have never been able to use it. For me, this is unacceptable for a brand new camera. Not only would I not recommend this camera, I wouldn’t recommend Samsung.
Rating: 1 / 5
This Samsung camcorder is delightfully fun to use, and takes pretty good quality video considering its low cost. There is only one problem, and unfortunately, it is a fatal flaw. Because of this flaw, I cannot recommend this camcorder.
Before I discuss the flaw, let me talk about some of the good things. The first thing I noticed upon using this camcorder is its wide field of vision. I frequently like to take videos of myself — you know, fun little videos in which I’m holding the camera in front of me, pointing it at myself and narrating the scene. This usually works very well with most digicams, which have small lenses that have a very wide angle. However, most camcorders are nowhere near as wide angled, and so if you point the camera at yourself, you end up with a very close up shot of your face.
I was very pleasantly surprised to see that this camcorder exhibited the useful wide-angle lens of your standard digicam. I could comfortably hold the camera at arms length, pointed at me, and the shot would be well composed and not too close. It was doubly useful because the flip-out LCD screen is able to rotate 180 degrees to face the same direction as the lens, so I could see what I was recording.
However, the reason digicams are able to offer that useful wide angle is because they use fairly small lenses. Small lenses may give a wide field of view, but they are nowhere near as competent as the larger lenses found in many high-end camcorders. For casual video recording, this is not a big deal, but you should know if you buy this camcorder that its small lens will cause you to deal with trade-offs. The optical image stabilization is not very good, and at full telephoto you will be shaking a lot regardless of how steadily you are holding the camera. Also, at full telephoto the picture is not as sharp as it could be. Further, the contrast between the bright and dark colors is so great that you will often miss the lot of detail in the midrange.
That said, for casual purposes, this camcorder is fine. Unlike many low-end camcorders, the color here is not too oversaturated. And the ability to choose between a 4:3 ratio and a 16:9 ratio is useful. Or at least it would be useful if it worked. And this brings me to the fatal flaw.
The video will look beautiful when you play it on the built-in screen. But when you go to move the files to your computer, you will see that the camcorder fails to properly set the resolution on the final saved video. The end result is that widescreen videos shot in 16:9 look squished when played on the computer. And standard resolution videos shot in 4:3 looks stretched when played on the computer.
I don’t know if this is a Mac problem or a general problem. I only use a Mac computer, not a Windows computer, so I am not sure if this problem is reproducible on Windows. But I am fairly well versed in computers, and I spent a long time trying to fix this problem, to no avail. I ran the videos through iMovie, Final Cut Pro, QuickTime, and yet no matter what I tried, I was unable to fix the proportions of the videos. As it stands, I cannot use any of the video I took, for any purposes.
Now, it is possible that if you simply upload the video from your camcorder directly into YouTube, it might look fine. I don’t know, as I have not tried this, because I like to edit my videos before I upload them. But, as I said, any editing program I tried to use open up the video in a deformed manner. This is not a problem with my editing software. I have edited countless videos from countless different camcorders and digicams, and I have never had this problem. I searched the Internet to see if anyone else had this problem, and indeed, this problem was very common with Samsung’s low-end camcorders. Some people had figured out how to work around this problem, but the instructions for that seemed fairly involved and confusing, and frankly no one should have to jury rig the videos before they are usable!
For this reason, I am unable to recommend that any Mac users purchase this camcorder. If, however, Samsung’s engineers fix this problem, then I would give it 4 stars and recommend it for someone who wanted to take informal videos. As cheap cameras go, this would be a good one if not for the fatal resolution flaw.
Rating: 2 / 5