The biggest problem with the NV7's photos is that--at best--up close they've got that crunchy, blotchy look that screams "digital" (right inset). On the plus side, there's little to no chromatic aberration (edge colorations); the inset on the left shows the worst it ever gets. (Note that these were shot in blindingly direct sunlight, so the blown out highlights are no surprise.)
Even shots that don't show the NV7's noise much still suffer from noise-suppression artifacts--smeary middles that eradicate most detail. The NV7 does one thing right, though: it preserves the edges a bit better than similar blurring algorithms.
As you can tell from these crops, even at its lowest sensitivity setting the NV7 never provides crisp details. However, the little detail it does deliver at ISO 100 becomes severely degraded by ISO 200 and complete mush by ISO 400.
Since it never gets very wide or too close up, I'm not surprised that the NV7's lens shows very little barrel distortion at the wide end--just a bit on the far left (shown)--or pincushioning at the telephoto end.
Samsung's Optical Picture Stabilization isn't "optical" at all, but rather mechanical CCD shifting. Nevertheless, it works pretty well, though the photos are generally so soft that it's hard to spot subtle camera shake.
