Samsung Digimax U-CA 5 Camera Review

Is this one of most under rated or over looked little cameras around? It certainly seems so. I have owned a Samsung Digimax U-CA 5 camera for about 6 years. And after all those years it still works perfectly, and keeps on amazing me with it's reliability and excellent pictures. Samsung cameras on the whole have really shocked me with their ease of use and superb quality pictures. For a company that doesn't specialise specifically in just cameras, they really do make a good one.

The Samsung Digimax U-CA 5 is a 5 mega pixel camera, and in today's market with their being more mega pixels now available for the camera in your mobile phone, the Samsung U-CA 5 camera would be laughed at by most. The professional reviews of the Samsung Digimax U-CA 5 would make you think it's the worst camera ever made! Don't believe them. This is a good little camera that does what it's supposed to - take good pictures. No one expects it to be a DSLR, well except the "expert" reviewers. If anyone is expecting DSLR quality from this camera, then I guess there in for a shock.

The Samsung Digimax U-CA 5 camera has 3 key features. Taking pictures, recording video, and recording audio. There is a push switch at the top of the camera that makes it as easy as just moving the switch from side to side to change which one option you want to use. With just a 64mb memory card it can record  4:16 of video, 1 hour 35 minutes audio, or take 257 pictures with super fine quality enabled. This camera has loads of manual settings to tailor certain picture types. Popular pictures like fireworks, beach & snow, night, portrait, children, landscape, close up, text, sunset and dawn. These are most of the manual modes you can set this camera to. To be honest, I most just use auto a lot of the time and that's good enough for most picture types.

I have never upgraded my Samsung U-CA 5 and it still has the same 64mb memory card that it came with the day I bought it. I know that memory cards are really cheap, specially a 1GB, and if I needed one I would upgrade. But the truth is it's never, or I've never needed it. With just 64mb It has the capacity to take 257 pictures at the smallest size which is 640 x 480. This size is perfect for most of my pictures. If you are not sure of how big that size is just take a look at any of the pictures on this website that I have taken, they are all 640 x 480 in size (when clicked and enlarged) and were all taken with my trusty Samsung U-CA 5, mostly on auto setting. Obviously if you were to up the size the quality would have to be compromised. Using the camera with the smallest image size available and with the "super fine" image quality option enabled, this is probably the best setting for achieving high quality images.

A few days ago I borrowed a Kodak Easyshare C195 camera, which is 14.1 mega pixels. Or so it says. After using the Kodak it was clear that it didn't even come close to the quality and clearness that can be achieved from using the Samsung U-CA 5. Add to that the cheap plastic feel of the Kodak, the very confusing options and terrible flash, and I think it's safe to say that I would never consider buying a Kodak camera. Sorry Kodak fans.

I love insects and nature

I was reading reviews on some highly regarded cameras the other day, and though out the process of looking through many different cameras and reviews, one thing I read from 3 separate people was that they had the Samsung U-CA 5 and were looking to upgrade, so they took the plunge and bought a better camera and couldn't believe that it wasn't miles better than their trusty old Samsung U-CA 5. I'm not saying that the U-CA 5 is the best camera in the world, or even the best point and shoot in its class, but for what it is, and with it being just 5 mega pixels, it really performs much better than expected. It takes great pictures!

It does have a few downfalls though, one being the video mode. Once you have pressed record you can't use the zoom anymore while it's recording video. And the video quality is pretty bad for 2019. Also the shutter speed is pretty slow. But don't we love a few drawbacks. No camera has everything.

The Samsung U-CA 5 has an SHD lens with 2.5x zoom. A 2.5x zoom doesn't seem lot with what's available today, but it's actually not too bad for normal picture taking.

After all these years of use the battery of my U-CA 5 still holds a charge like it did when I first bought it, which I have never experienced with any other product, not just cameras.

Samsung Digimax U-CA 5 cameras must be going for Penny's these days. Although I don't think many places sell them anymore because it's an older model. but you can buy one if it's big brothers for pretty cheap. And if the U-CA 5's anything to go by, I'll bet the newer models must be great too. Actually, that's not always the case. 

If you are looking for a small camera that can take good pictures and you don't want to spend much money, the Digimax range is a very good choice. A Second hand buy would be very cheap now. I just had a look. Some can be bought cheap, but some sellers on eBay actually want like £40 - £50.That's a bit steep considering you can now buy a nice Panasonic LUMIX DMC-FZ28 (used condition) Bridge or similar for that type of money. Still, if you can find a U-CA 5 cheap, like £15 - £20, they are well worth considering.

Update: I still have this camera and it still works. However, it has become faulty after being dropped a few times. But still, it is the most reliable camera I've even owned, giving me well over a decade of trouble free picture taking. I have upgraded to a Samsung WB500. A pretty good cheap upgrade, but not as good in auto mode. But, to its credit it is much better at recording video and makes a great car dashcam. Overall the pictures are good also.

My Seagate External Hard Drive Broke

I bought this Seagate 1TB External Hard Drive about 8 months ago and it's been great, no problems with it at all. Then today I tried to plug the USB cable into the connector on the hard drive casing and the connector snapped, falling inside the hard drive casing..So, after opening the case I see that the connector has completely broken off the motherboard circuit inside.

I managed to press the broken connector down really hard onto the board in the spot where it was originally attached, and lone behold, it worked. So the 1000GB hard drive still works perfectly. After about 5 minutes of holding this piece on the board my thumb was aching!

At least the hard drives still good!

So now I have a few choices, I can either buy a soldering kit and solder the connector back on to the board, buy a new SATA hard drive enclosure, or just buy an IDE, SATA to USB converter kit. I think I'll go with the converter kit as it can be used many times and costs about the same as a soldering kit. Also, with the SATA to USB converter kit it can be used for all other hard drives of all types and sizes, like IDE drives, Laptop drives etc, so it seems like a really good buy. Then again, I might take the risk and buy another external hard drive, but not a Seagate! Toshiba 1 TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive seems to be a good choice. The reviews make me think this external drive might last longer then a few months. Price isn't too bad as well.

Comfast Wireless USB WiFi Adapter

After my last Wifi adapter started to play up I thought I’d better go and buy another one before it stops working completely. My last one was a full sized USB adapter that is very easy to knock on accident due to it just hanging out the back of my laptop. So this time I thought I’d get one of those tiny USB adapters because they are much smaller and less likely to get knocked.

So I had a look on Amazon and ended up buying a tiny USB Wifi Adapter. Some people call them a Nano adapter. In fact, I think that may be the correct term. The exact model I bought is a Comfast 802.11b/g/n 150Mbps Mini Nano USB Adapter.

Once it arrived I thought Great. No more using a book to hold my old faulty Wifi adapter in place so it stays connected to the Internet. Straight away I had problems. The mini driver disc that came with the adapter did not work in my CD ROM drive. The CD ROM drive wouldn’t even detect that there was a disc in the drive.

So I took the disc up to my desktop computer. My Asus CDRW wouldn’t even detect the disc, and that drive usually picks up any disk. It was only when I put this miniature disc in my DVD ROM that it just about worked. First it worked and then it would vanish, so I would end up being asked to “Enter a disc into Drive D”, when the disk was already in there. Very annoying.

Finally, the disc stayed readable for long enough for me to copy and paste all the files to my computer. From there I installed the Comfast Driver for XP and it worked very well. Surfing the Internet is fast and I have no complaints as far as the speed of the adapter is concerned. However, it was quite annoying to have been supplied with an obviously faulty disk. And to mess about copying drivers onto flash drives in order to install the required drivers on my laptop.

Also, I thought that this adapter would be totally concealed except for the tiny square block that houses the circuit board but it isn’t fully concealed. Check out the picture below to see how much is still exposed. That is with the adapter pushed in as far as it will go. I guess the manufacturers made it like that so the user has something to grab onto when taking it out of the USB slot

I don’t mean to just point out all the bad points of this adapter, it does work well once installed. These are just a few niggles that I thought would point out so a potential buyer of this product knows what to expect. A good alternative product is the Edimax EW-7811Un 150 Mbps Wireless 11n Nano Size USB Adapter.