Samsung WB600 review

Packing a 15x zoom lens, the WB600 compact camera offers seriously good value

Samsung WB600
The Samsung WB600 has a whopping 15x zoom lens

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samsung wb600

The Samsung WB600's image quality is excellent.

Our tests suggest it could stand to be a touch sharper, as cropping in revealed a merely average amount of detail resolved, but the vast majority of photographers will find nothing to complain about.

samsung wb600

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In particular, the WB600 rescues itself from this minor criticism by rendering colours beautifully, edges sharply, and - impressively for such a long lens - taking images with very little chromatic aberration.

A more serious criticism comes when the lens is extended all the way to 360mm. Detail resolution in the middle of the frame remained good, but the edges lost sharpness almost entirely.

samsung wb600

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In fairness, it's a problem you'll only really notice if critical details are in the corners of your compositions, but it's worth watching out for.

Low light performance is reasonable. The WB600 offers ISO settings from 80 to 3200, although as is the case with most compacts sporting such ambitious sensitivities, the highest settings are best ignored unless your subject truly transcends image quality.

samsung wb600

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Dull colours and an obscuring fog of digital noise means ISO 3200 is best saved for emergencies or, even better, not used at all. You have to reach a fair way down the scale to find ISO settings truly unaffected by noise, although ISO 800 is just about usable if you want to avoid using the flash.

For wildlife and sports photographers looking to make the most of the long lens, the WB600 includes a motion capture mode, which in our tests took 30 frames in just 4.7 seconds - an average speed of 6.4fps.

samsung wb600

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That's significantly quicker than the burst modes on low-end DSLRs, but the speed comes at a price, as image resolution is reduced to just 0.3 megapixels, or VGA. If you want to take pictures at the WB600's native resolution of 4,000 x 3,000, you'll need to live with the considerably slower burst speed of around 1fps.

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Dave is a professional photographer whose work has appeared everywhere from National Geographic to the Guardian. Along the way he’s been commissioned to shoot zoo animals, luxury tech, the occasional car, countless headshots and the Northern Lights. As a videographer he’s filmed gorillas, talking heads, corporate events and the occasional penguin. He loves a good gadget but his favourite bit of kit (at the moment) is a Canon EOS T80 35mm film camera he picked up on eBay for £18.