Samsung has just announced its rather nice looking WB5000 compact digital camera, featuring an impressive Schneider-KREUZNACH 26mm wide angle lens, 24x optical zoom and 12.5 megapixels.
Samsung has effectively launched a hybrid camera here, taking the best bits of a compact camera but including features that are standard on a DSLR but you wouldn’t expect on a compact, such as that massive zoom range, lots of manual shooting controls and the option to store files in RAW format.
Naturally, favorites such as image stabilization (both optical and digital), face recognition (with a 20 face memory), blink avoidance and the like are all built in, but so are features that will improve the aspiring photographer, such as full manual focus.
There’s also the near-obligatory high definition movie mode (720p at 30fps).
Available this month, with full specifications and pricing to be confirmed.