24x club gets new member: Samsung HZ25W
Sammy's latest megazoom has a wide-angle 24x lens, similar if not identical to the one used by Pentax, Nikon, and Kodak.
If there weren't already three cameras available using the same wide-angle 26mm-equivalent lens with a 24x zoom, the announcement of the Samsung HZ25W would be a little more interesting. It doesn't seem to bring anything terribly new to the category either, making it an also-ran in a race of fairly mediocre cameras.
I'm not saying Samsung's entry isn't worth considering, just that it's more than fashionably late and brought the same bag of pretzels to the party that Nikon, Kodak, and Pentax did. Hell, Samsung even brought the same brand as Kodak by using a Schneider-Kreuznach lens.
Specifications include:
- 12 megapixels
- 24x, f2.8-5.0, 26-624mm-equivalent lens
- 3-inch LCD and an electronic viewfinder
- 720p HD movie capture (H.264)
- Dual image stabilization
- Raw support
- Full manual, shutter-speed priority, aperture priority modes