Samsung S1030 and S850 digital cameras

The Samsung S1030 has a stylish casing

The standard 3x optical zoom of the S1030 is 'enhanced' by an additional 5x digital zoom, with all the attendant problems that brings; but the main advantage of a 10 megapixel camera is not to print poster-sized shots, but to have the ability to crop into an area of interest when you get it home. The S850, on the other hand, boasts a full 5x optical zoom, getting you that much closer to the action.

The black-on-black makes the controls on the S850 sometimes a little tricky to find and use

At full resolution, images are crisp and sharp - although the autofocus occasionally misses the subject, producing out-of-focus images that are hard to spot on the LCD screen. There's some noticeable colour fringing in these areas, too, but no more than you'd expect from cameras of this size.

What is more surprising is the almost total lack of noise in the images, even in large areas of flat colour shot under low lighting conditions - plain walls, especially, are regions that are most susceptible to noise. While the lack of noise is certainly welcome, it's almost too good; the image has clearly been smoothed in the camera, which might make for better initial results, but means that those users who like to sharpen their images in Photoshop afterwards are in for a tough time. Any sharpening enhances the smoothed areas to an unnatural degree, showing up the process that made them so smooth in the first place.

The S1030 has all the standard modes you'd expect: variable image size from 640 x 480 right up to 3648 x 2736 pixels in 11 steps (do we really need that many?), and movie recording at up to 640 x 480 pixels and up to 30 frames per second, with sound.

The S850 adds a range of features not found in its little brother (albeit with a confusingly bigger-sounding name). Movie recording is up to 800 x 592 pixels, although here the frame rate drops to just 20 frames per second; automatic stabilising does a reasonable job of minimising camera shake.