Samsung DV150F Dual-View Smart Camera sample pictures

These are 100 percent crops of photos of our test scene at each of the Samsung DV150F's available ISO settings. Photo quality is good up to ISO 200. It's not a camera you'd want to use in low-light conditions or indoors without a flash. At ISO 400, a common sensitivity for well-lit indoor photos, subjects look soft, but are passable at small sizes. The photos get much worse above ISO 400, picking up a lot of noise and artifacts and losing detail to the point where subjects look smeared. (You can view this slide a little larger to get a better idea.)

Actually, noise and artifacts are a bit of a problem even at its lowest ISO sensitivities when photos are viewed at full size; if you need to enlarge and heavily crop your photos, I wouldn't choose the DV150F. However, if you're considering this camera for its online-sharing capabilities and don't typically make large prints above 8x10s, the DV150F's shots are OK.

Colors are natural and pleasing from the DV150F, at least up through ISO 400; with ISO sensitivities above that the colors desaturate and look muddy. White balance tends to be a little cool and exposure is generally good, but highlights can and will blow out, though that's common with small-sensor compacts.

You may notice some vertical smear when shooting video with bright light sources, such as the purple streak on the left side of this screen grab. This is common with consumer CCD sensors.

The DV150F's got a decent 5x zoom lens on it, going from 25mm to 125mm. You'll have to be careful when shooting in Auto, though, because it will slip right into Samsung's digital Smart Zoom, which lowers resolution, and the results don't look good.

There is some barrel distortion at the wide end of the DV150F's lens (top) and pincushioning in telephoto (bottom). On more its more expensive cameras, Samsung probably would have corrected these things with image processing, but you'll have to do it on your own with the DV150F.

If you like to take close-ups, the DV150F can focus as close as 2 inches from a subject. Unfortunately, because shots don't look great at full size, you're limited in how much you can enlarge and crop.

In addition to taking self-portraits, the camera has a kid mode that launches an animation on the front screen and can be set to play a variety of sound effects to get the attention of kids and pets. Unfortunately, you may end up with a lot of photos like this that you'll have to fix with some creative cropping. The screen will also display a countdown if you're using the self-timer.

If you like photo filters, this camera has a lot to experiment with, and they're available for movies, too (though resolution and frame rates may be lower). You can take a closer look to get a better idea of the results.

The DV150F has an easy panorama mode that lets you just point, shoot, and pan the camera to create wide shots. It doesn't do well with moving subjects and the results don't look good at full size, but for online sharing they're fine.