Oooh, shiny!

This post was transferred on January 3, 2010. It was originally posted on September 28, 2009.

My new Samsung Tap and Take camera arrived today. I won the camera through a Twitter contest. (Note to self: If you win something on Twitter, favorite it!)

It's been nearly a month and anticipation was part of what kept me awake in the middle of the night last night after a leg cramp woke me up. I was up from about 2 a.m. til nearly 5, and didn't go to my one class today. But enough about me - what about the camera.

It comes with a special rechargeable battery, so I had to install and charge the battery first. I took that opportunity to go back to sleep. When I woke up, the battery was charged.

The camera takes a micro SD card, which is not included. I'll buy one tomorrow. It has about 55 M internal memory, so I did take a couple of pictures. All of Amanda's cat, Chicken.

Chicken (Amanda's cat)

One thing that bothers me (and I could be wrong) is that the proportions don't seem right to me. This picture is cropped, so that doesn't show. But the following picture is the proportion that it was taken with:

Chicken

To me, the proportions seem too long. From what I observed, when you are choosing the file size of the pictures, it's in metric, so it seems that it's in European proportions. (I may not be making sense here.) What I mean is that where we (in the United States) use 3-by-5-inch and 4-by-6-inch photos, those are (apparently) not the proportions that this camera uses. I have not read the entire 110-page manual yet, so there may be a way to fix that.

The camera makes an annoying little noise when you select things on the touch screen, but there's a fix for that. You can select no volume when you adjust the sound/haptic (vibration) option in the menu. It stays that way when you turn off the camera and turn it back on.

There are also advanced settings like ISO (that I haven't dealt with in years). There are options under "scene" that are designed for different light situations, even for fireworks. I'll have to wait awhile before I can test that one out.

The front screen is good for a couple of things: you can see what you will look like if you take your own photo, and it has an animation you can use to get the attention of small children. Samsung Imaging, the company's photo blog, has 20 new animations to download.

So I haven't had much time to try the camera out, but it's pretty cool so far. I kind of wish they would have killed a tree for the printed manual, because I could be reading that when I'm out and about and need to check on something. It comes as a 110-page PDF on the CD-ROM and is also available online.

One thing that is annoying is that when I touch an icon to change something, it reacts so fast I can't read what that feature is. I'll have to read the manual to learn what all the icons mean.

It will be interesting to see if the little kids at church like the animation(s). That's pretty much where I have contact with kids - unless a co-worker brings a kid in, which happens from time to time.

Now it's time to go to work, so I'll have to stop playing with my new toy and get ready. Sigh.

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