Quick Review Camcorders : Samsung SCD107

Many of the SCD107’s features are shared by the aforementioned camcorders; in particular, a 1/6-inch CCD with 680,000 pixels seems to be a consistent feature of many of these low-end camcorders. The SCD107’s 20x optical zoom and huge 900x digital zoom (as if anyone cared) set it apart from the rest of the class. And, while a ¼ inch CCD similar to that in the SCD903 would have been nice on the SCD107, it doesn’t seem like an increase in CCD size on any Samsung would do the trick. The SCD903’s mediocre low-light performance, although better than the SCD107, attests to this sad fact.

As far as other abilities and features of the Samsung SCD107 go, things look grim. Manual focus, exposure, and shutter speed are all present, but at very unimpressive levels. We had a tremendously difficult time manually white balancing our camcorder, although automatic white balance worked fine, and ended up throwing in the towel. This affected both video performance and low-light performance testing. There is no manual gain control.

On top of bad manual control, the low-light performance was bad, showing excessive noise to the point of inutility. An increased CCD size on the SCD903 seems to aid low light performance somewhat; however, things still are pretty intolerable. There is a NitePix option to help in these situations, although the amount of help provided is up to the beholder. This isn’t helped by the camcorder’s horrible handling. Aside from being bottom-loading, the camcorder is a huge bulky thing with poor microphone placement that generally feels cheap.

The SCD107 includes no widescreen options, and includes no analog inputs, thus inhibiting Analog-to-Digital Passthrough. Existing ports include: USB, FireWire, S-Video out, and A/V out. There is no headphone jack or accessory shoe.

Samsung SCD107 Compared to the...