Samsung DV300F Camera with Wi-Fi and SkyDrive integration
I picked this camera up from Amazon earlier this week, and in the first few hours I spent playing with it, I am already saying this is an amazing camera! Anyone who knows me, knows that I have my fill of gadgets from camcorders, cameras, and laptops. tablets, etc. Let’s take a quick look at what had me saying this is a great buy for $199 camera.
Integrated Wi-Fi and social services
The DV300F is small and compact, my wife tried to wrestle it from me in the first hour. The camera feels great in my hands and the features were easy to get to, a very intuitive interface. The thing that attracted me to the device was the built in Wi-Fi, SkyDrive, Facebook and YouTube integration. I take a picture and select to post it directly from the camera saving time for those great pictures I want to share right away.
More sharing options
The device also includes options to share to Picasa, Photobucket and directly to email. A bonus for me that I did not plan on is the fact I have 2 Samsung smart TV’s, one in my family room and the other in the basement (aka Man cave). The Samsung AllShare software built into the TV sets, allow me to display pictures over Wi-Fi directly to the large screen televisions for instant friends and family sharing. The device allows me to sync photos to one or more PC’s in the house also over the Wi-Fi network so I do not have to remove the card or connect the camera to the PC to share pictures or take them off the camera. I plan on giving Live Essentials: Photo Gallery a work out after spring break with the family later this week.
In order to connect to the AllShare services running on my computers or TV’s the camera and other AllShare devices have to be on the same access point (AP) or Wi-Fi network. This should reduce if not eliminate the fear of your neighbor being able to see what is on your camera by accident since you tell the camera which Wi-Fi AP to connect to.
All in all there are a lot of neat options to work with, backup and share your pictures for a fantastic price.
Dual View Front Facing display
One of the nice surprises was how well the dual view display is implemented. There is a display on the front of the camera for those who love the self pic Facebook picture. When I took the device out of the box, I was thinking where in the world is the front display. Looking that the camera you cannot tell there is a display behind the plastic casing, it is very well concealed and just lights up when pressing a button on top of the device to activate it. When touching the area where the front facing display is located it is covered with the same material the casing of the camera is covered with. Tough to describe here and even tougher to show in the pictures I got from the internet attempting to show how well done the front facing display is integrated into the case o the camera.
In addition the device does take a mini SDHC card holding up to 32gb of content, again the good thing is you can take your favorite pictures push them up to SkyDrive using Wi-Fi directly from the camera and free some content up on the card right away.
Did I also mention this is a 16 megapixel camera? The device has a number of features for adding fun backgrounds other photo editing capabilities built in. Samsung does have a few other models in this series of WiFi enabled cameras that enable things like long optical zoom (up to 21x) and 1080p HD video recording. I just picked a different device for video recording so I opted to not go with the higher end camera, this was one has enough features at the right price to keep me going for some time now.
Here is the official site for the DV300F camera - https://www.samsung.com/us/photography/digital-cameras/EC-DV300FBPBUS