Cameras are not getting very well with water, especially, when it’s raining. I bet you understand what I mean if you have experience to try to close the camera bag with a plastic bag. It’s true that most of the lenses with a few exceptions are weak to water and rain. However, Samsung has released a waterproof camera, the WP10.
The WP10 comes with 4 colors and includes an optical 5x zoom inner zoom lens having a waterproof cap inside.
Looking at the front from the simple power and shutter button on the top, you will see the neat design of this product. Especially, in order to have the international standard which I will explain later, it has only an inner zoom lens on the front without flash and assist light. As a waterproof camera, the inner zoom has an advantage, because it can zoom without protruding the lens. That means it can protect the lens from water. It has 175mm of focal length and F3.6-4.8. It also has 1/2.33” (7.79mm) CCD with effective 12.2M pixels.
On the side of the WB10, USB cable port is located and it’s like USB cable for everything such as, recharge, data transfer, and video output. On the back side, SD/SDHC memory card and battery chamber are located and taking a closer look at it, you will see water and dust proofing shield made of rubber.
This shield is necessary. How well is the camera protected from dust and water? The WP10 has gathered IP6X for dust-proofing and IP8X for water proofing. IP gathered from IEC(International Electrotechnical Commission) means ‘Ingress Protection’ not Internet Protocol. Like the above table, the left is for dust with IP6x and the right is for water with IP8X. And the number is the level and the higher is the better. However, this isn’t about chemical materials, so it will be damaged if rubbing it with a chemical product.
I explained so hard, and take look at it. I put it in water.
It’s recorded by the WP10. The sound of water flowing was also recorded well. This product supports up to 20 minutes of recording in 720HQ and 1 hour for standard quality.
After the waterproofing issues, let’s take a look at the functions. The WP10 supports 4 modes and Smart Aufor comes first.
Samsung has invested a lot for Smart Auto. That’s why the category and process has been drastically developed. Especially, a lot of modes for nature and portrait have been added. Smart Auto has been made to take great landscape and portrait shots even by the small change of the lens angle. As a compact camera, it supports great portrait shooting features with 4 portrait modes among 16 scene modes of Smart Auto.
The performance of the WP10 can also be checked in Program Mode. It supports various image sizes from 12M pixels with 4000x3000 size to 1M pixels with 1024x768 size, ISO 80 to 3200, Auto Focus including tracking AF, and Smart Filter such as Vignetting and Fish eye effects.
It’s not only the concern of the manufacturers, but also of reviewers. I think it will be used in a sea and swimming pool with friends and lovers at first and also considering that it has received the highest standard for dust, not only waterproofing, I will also be used for people enjoying extreme sports like related Internet clubs. I think we need explanation for this, because portrait shots are the most important when traveling.
The WP10 supports 5 kinds of portrait shooting options. Standard is usually selected most of the time and it automatically recognizes up to 10 faces. Then, there’s Smart Face Recognition and the second one is when My Star is not registered.
It has Face Registration registering up to 14 faces orderly and My Start registering up to 8 faces. When registering a face in My Star after taking 5 shots from different angles, it’s marked with ‘*’ and focus and exposure are automatically set for this face.
It also supports Self, Smile, and Blink Detection, so with the WP10, you will no longer worry about water when taking shots of your lovers, friends, and family.
In Scene mode of the WP10 supporting 14 various modes, Aqua mode has been added and located on the top.
When selecting this mode called Aqua mode, on the first page, it says that you have to check the battery and USB cover closed firmly. Users don’t really have many options to choose in Aqua mode, but please set the flash and use it while taking shots in water.
When it comes to video recording allowing up to 20 minutes in 720HQ and 1 hour in SQ, the WP10 also supports Smart Scene Recognition recording. Especially, by using Vignetting or Fish eye effects in high quality, you can take rainy streets or I also want to recommend taking shots with the sea as a background.
I don’t want you to consider the WP10 is just an item to take to Swimming pool in summer. Dustproof and waterproofing mean endless usage of compact cameras which have not been before. For example, you don’t have to worry about water and mud when taking fish, shooting in a rainy day, and enjoying fishing or MTB. One more happiness is that you don’t actually need to just push the shutter when you go out with your family with the WP10. Now you can have fun together with your family.
