Samsung Digimax V4 and SPH-V3/V4 Underwater Housing

[cbrown767]

Anyone familiar with these products? I am looking at the Samsung Digimax V4 digital camera and their SPH-V3/V4 Underwater Housing.

[the transporter]

I`ve had excellent results with my Under Sea Video Housing and a Cannon ZR-10.

[antze]

makers and have been putting out housings for them for years.

[stewbear]

Why wouldn`t you use it?
- It`s got a double O ring housing, good to 70m - OK, you may not be going to 70m but it`s nice to have the safety margin regardless. - It uses the same clone electronics that the majority of manufacturers use, the major differentiator in quality being the lens - and Samsung have bought in one from Schneider. - It`s got some excellent reviews. - Where I come from, it`s about 50% cheaper than the equivalent `major name` equipment.
Fair reasons to take a look?

[antze]

about the same as the S400 or the S45. Tad cheaper perhaps. Canon`s housing to 130` runs a bit under $200.
Samsung has proven to be a solid player, but they aren`t a camera maker, and I don`t think I`ve ever seen their UW housings in use. So I`d need a compelling reason to use them instead of what I have (S400+DC800) or Olympus and their PT series housings.

[stewbear]

"Where I come from" happens to be the UK! The V4 + housing tends to be around 125GBP (about $200) less than the S45 & housing (which is only rated to 30m)
I have to agree with your comments about Canon & Olympus - they are both safe bets, but I`m not going to ignore the V4 until I`ve tried it (unlike the Sony DSC which I borrowed! Ugh! Press the shutter, wait, wait some more, keep waiting, subject swims away, do a bit more waiting, flash!)

[sofonisba]

The Samsung Digimax 4 has an impressive specification and appears to be excellent value for money. I have read several reviews of this camera, 2 of which criticised its definition.
The first was in PC-Pro (British) - `Image quality was not incredible and the auto white balance left a greenish cast in our indoor shot without flash and a blue cast when using flash. [paraphrased]:The auto-focus was not as we`d hoped`
PCWorld (US) stated: `...but our cropped and magnified shot looked a little fuzzy, and a shot taken with the flash looked dark. A couple of other shots looked flat. We`re fairly sure that`s a true representation of what the camera can do; we tried three earlier samples of the Digimax V4, all of which had egregious* color problems. Samsung says it mistakenly sent us preproduction units on the first two occasions and a malfunctioning unit the third time around. [* according to my dictionary this means: `conspicuously bad or offensive or reprehensible` why could the reviewer use a simple word like `undesirable`?] .....but some similarly priced cameras take better pictures.`
Other reviews were more favourable.
Comments from Digimax 4 users on this group would be welcomed.

[SSJSaiyaman]

In other words, a piece of crap.

[sofonisba]

general release. Many manufacturers of many kinds of hardware fall into this trap.

[Dolio]

compare it with directly but quality of pictures have been very good so far. I`ve had a couple of indoor flash shots in natural light where there`s been a bluish cast but easily fixed by runnung through Levels on Photoshop Elements.
The pictures are a bit softer than some straight out of the camera (using the standard sharpness setting) but I prefer them like that. I`ve sharpened some in software but left others as they are.
If you haven`t already seen them, there are good reviews on Steve`s Digicams, Megapixel and ePhotoZine.