Show Review by: Michael Gazzola

Images captured on Olympus E-520

Samsung have gone to quite an effort at this year's Imaging Technology Show with its stand towering over its surrounding counterparts, complete with officials from Samsung HQ in the Asia Pacific region putting in an appearance. Ben Halcomb who is the digital still camera product manager took time out from the show to give a five star tour of the stand along with providing details of specific product along the way.

Explaining that the stand design was based around 'lifestyle' you can easily see the link of photographic and AV products geared toward blending into people's lifestyles, and the lending of technologies from one product to the next.

Mr Halcomb went on to reveal that around 60% of all componentry in Samsung products is their own - which is quite remarkable considering you could crack open the back of most digital cameras to find the percentage considerably lower.

We began browsing the entry level cameras such as the S860 which has 8.1 million pixels, a 3x optical zoom, a selection of 4 colors in silver, black, pink and blue and best of all takes good old fashioned AA batteries. The camera for all its features comes in at a rrp of just AUD149 which really is quite impressive.

Next we had a look at the NV series which is a big step up in quality from entry level but not so in price. The NV4 is quite a multi use, multi media unit other than being a digital camera. With MP3 and MP4 capability you can easily watch movies while travelling on a bus to work, or just listen to music while critiquing your photographic work. The storage system allows you to store files in a number of formats without any dramas, including text all for just an rrp of AUD399.

If you are looking to purchase the i8 any time soon you'll be happy to hear that a price drop is on the way from AUD299 down to AUD249 - the saving should be in place next month.

Next up we looked at the fast growing market of digital photo frames. Samsung has yet to release the new frames but a quick hands on viewing revealed they are well made and quite stylish. The two on show were in a base of white with fine grey pin stripes.

The camera at the Samsung stand attracting the most attention was the GX-20. It's their flagship and Samsung are proud of it. The GX-20 comes with a 14.6MP APS-C sized sensor and a K-Mount, which means there are basically 8 lenses in their line up that will fit this camera plus an additional 400+ other lenses on the market and from now and yesteryear (K-Mount is also the same system Pentax use).  Mr Halcomb ran through almost an endless number of features, but the ones which really stuck were the gasket and seals, wireless TTL flash, dual dust reduction system and a very handy button on the side for RAW - to switch to any time while shooting - all for a rrp of AUD1599

Finally, the closest thing we could get to an exclusive was that in the second half of this year consumers can expect a new line up of Samsung compacts to be delivered - just in time for Christmas - and confirmed that at this stage we will not see any new DSLRs... just yet.

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