Great timing woot.. leaving for a crazy trip next month with Jetblue's all-you-can-jet pass and this will come in handy!
In for 1

mstar5 wrote:Is there any way to turn off the GPS? An option in the menu perhaps? Or are you stuck with it, for good or evil?

this model doesn't have a gps.

Aw, well, at least I captured al the action this time.

My brother used to be called Al the Action back in the early 90s, but people kept trying to catch him so now he goes by Al the Gainfully Employed.

dliidlii wrote:It is being shipped to Washington and I believe Woot now charges tax on orders to TX,NY and WA.

During the Woot Off I bought like six things, and this is the first time for sales tax...Im guessing its because Amazon is based out of Seattle...I just don't know why it wasn't on all of my orders, so it came as a surprise.

What is the delay between pictured?
I know that it depends on a lot of factors(memory card speed, image size, etc.) but an average would be helpful.

i just don;t want to have to wait a second between shots for action pictures.

Also, would anyone know the delay between the button press and picture taken?

On some of the older digitals I've delt with you have to try to time the shot because of this delay, which I would like to avoid.

Thanks in advance :-)

Edit: I guess the proper question would be:
How are the single shot and shot-to-shot shutter lag?

thaskaman wrote:
not a bad lens, gotta admit
but yea this is a refirb? i dunno, depends how you personally feel about refirbs..

thats why its sooo damn cheap here versus other online sites

just keep that in mind

The cheapest refurb I could find of the same camera is $180.

I was going to buy it too, but like several others I looked at the photos taken with it and was very unimpressed. There are several issues with the Kodak and Polaroid cameras we have now that I want to avoid, and one is the same worse than mediocre picture quality even at highest resolution. It's possible that all of those photos were taken with the setting that focuses on the foreground object, but even the foreground objects aren't especially crisp. I'd love to have 15X optical zoom and a battery that lasts, but not if the photos look like they were taken with a 5MP Chinese camera...


Does anyone know of a NiMH AA battery that runs a higher voltage than Eneloops? The Kodak we have now shuts off when the batteries are still 80% charged...

Do the TAXSUCKS Coupons only work for the States that are actually paying taxes, or will it work for anyone? Thanks in advance!

See post below. I have not bought these AA's. I have considered them but have no pressing need.

tesla33 wrote:
Does anyone know of a NiMH AA battery that runs a higher voltage than Eneloops? The Kodak we have now shuts off when the batteries are still 80% charged...

New Tech AA's

i absolutely just love samsung products.

zzax wrote:I won't pretend to be anything near a camera expert. However, after a little research I bought this camera from Costco a few weeks ago. We have been extremely happy with it so far, I have taken some amazing pictures. We got ours for $160ish, but with a memory card. It really did seem like on of the better sub $200 cameras on the market. Again, I am not an expert, but we have gotten our moneys worth out of it.

Can you tell me if you bought this camera in the store or on line at Costco? I can't find it on their website.

cheesecakeh wrote:So, Woot users, this is my first time considering purchasing a refurbished item.

What differences should I expect between a refurb'd and a new item?

In my experience (about 3 or 4 items) the difference is ....... NONE! all have been perfect.

Any ideas how long the battery last per charge?

jmbunkin wrote:Can you tell me if you bought this camera in the store or on line at Costco? I can't find it on their website.

I noticed that the camera was no longer available online from them about 1-2 weeks ago. The original price from Costco online was $200 which was less than (almost?) everyone else.

Perhaps the $160 was a closeout price.

Another interesting bit of trivia is that the more expensive HZ35W was selling for about $279 for a couple of weeks before the great reviews hit and the demand increased. The price then jumped to between $299 and $349.

My son was going to buy it at an Amazon affiliate that would honor the low Amazon price (in the affiliate's retail store in Manhattan). He was busy the week before his trip and lost the change at the low price.

So I ordered two of the woot! deals today. One for him and one for me. I would rather have the oled screen, but this price is too much of a deal for me to pass on.

CaptainWes wrote:Is the Schneider better than the Zeiss? Which heavyweight of lens awesomeness is better?

They are all licensed designs made in China, so a better question is "How good is the company that actually made they lens?"

thecracker1337 wrote:What is the delay between pictured?
I know that it depends on a lot of factors(memory card speed, image size, etc.) but an average would be helpful.

i just don;t want to have to wait a second between shots for action pictures.

Also, would anyone know the delay between the button press and picture taken?

On some of the older digitals I've delt with you have to try to time the shot because of this delay, which I would like to avoid.

Thanks in advance :-)

Edit: I guess the proper question would be:
How are the single shot and shot-to-shot shutter lag?

If you want that kind of action, you need to buy an SLR. At this time, compact cameras are still not designed to shoot as fast as SLRs. This will change with time.

Schneider Lens?! Look at that horse!

j021294 wrote:Seriously tempted to get this. I have a Panasonic DMC-TZ1 which is a great camera (10x optical zoom, Leica lens), but is now having trouble focusing when zoomed (anyone have a solution?).

Let's sort out a few things. When these small cameras zoom out, the aperture closes down to around f/5.6 or sometimes f/8.0. This slows down the ability to focus. Second, is it focus or "blur?" At 12X and at f/5.6 the shutter speed may be to slow to freeze the image.

(Many SLRs also slow when the lens f/stop becomes too small and have the same blur problem. That's why they try stabilization tricks.)

It is my observation that many people try to do things with these small cameras that they never would have tried with a similar film camera.

Higher ISOs in the future will solve this problem.

I have this camera and I love it! my photographer son helped me pick it out.

Batman4oz wrote:Well, I hope this works better than the Kodak CD82 that just arrived today...claims of the 5X Digital Zoom are false on this one! Not a nice thing, when it is to be a gift!

http://www.stuporduck.com/sounds/DS001.wav

Why would you even want to consider totally fake Digital zoom?"

Of course, just ordered one right before they come out on woot. Got a new one for $195 though, so not so bad. Price just went back up after a Samsung rebate expired.

Bought it based on a review at dpreview.com. They reviewed the 35W, but same camera.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/Q210grouptravelzoom

Looks like a nicer version of the Samsung S1050 I bought from Woot a year or so ago for a similar price.

I'd be in for one if not for 2 reasons the S1050 is still working fine and this takes some wierd funky(proprietary) battery and doesn't come with a spare pack. No thanks I'll stick with AA rechargeables.

Hapgood610 wrote:If you ever want to see photos from a particular camera - you can always type the camera model into Flickr and see what comes up. Here are Samsung's promotional shots:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/samsungzone/sets/72157623472578641/with/4772528049/

hmm, why is the camera not listed here?
http://www.flickr.com/cameras/samsung/?nomodel=1#models

I don't really trust "promotional shots." who knows what pro or out of camera processing happened. I wanna see pics from pure amateurs.

I've owned a couple of Samsung cameras and have encountered the same problem with both of them.

With my cameras there was always an issue with the power... I would take a few photos and the batteries would suddenly drain! This was even worse if I used flash, which practically killed the batteries in one shot.

Maybe they've fixed this issue, maybe they haven't, but I'm not going to risk it.

I own the hz35w and it takes nice pics for 15x P-N-S. Even the digital zoom is useful. I'm more concerned with "getting" the shot as opposed to pixel peeping.

Too bad the 30w doesn't have the oled screen--it's incredible and draws much less power.

how risky is buying a refurb?

Here is an in depth review of the camera's sister. The only difference between this model and the one reviewed is the addition of GPS on the and a slightly better screen on the one reviewed. Jump to "conclusions" if you want to see that it did very well compared to the competition.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/Q210grouptravelzoom/

jessiebyrd004 wrote:96/100 from the alatest reviewers average.
http://alatest.com/reviews/digital-compact-camera-reviews/samsung-hz35w-wb650/po3-95327371,147/

4.7 star average on Buzzillions too.

Note: The review mentioned is for the HZ35W, big brother to Woot's HZ30W. However, according to this announcement,

http://www.dpreview.com/news/1001/10011903hz35whz30w.asp/

the only difference is that it lacks a GPS capability and has an LCD display instead of a brighter AMOLED display.

As for the GPS capability, this review found it quirky:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/Q210grouptravelzoom/page11.asp]/

However, they did like it a lot, and if this deal had come along before our Alaskan cruise last month, I would have grabbed it. However, I couldn't find one locally to try out beforehand, and it was too pricey to order sight unseen. I could find the Canon SX210 at Best Buy, and it seemed fine to me, and several thousand photos on the cruise showed it was a good choice. (I am a compact Canon fan, this being my fifth--the first one purchased in 1999).

Also, as has been noted earlier, no one makes a compact digital camera with an optical viewfinder any more. I think my previous Canon (SD800 IS), which still works fine, but only has a 3.8 zoom, was the last of the breed. It definitely was a problem trying to determine if the piece of ocean that I'd zoomed in on in the distance included the whale, what with the sunlight washing out the image, although after a while I did get good at it--or lucky.

Since I couldn't find an HZ35 to test, I don't know if the AMOLED display would have fared better.

Since I can't find a professional review of the HZ30W, I've been using reviews of it's more expensive sibling, the HZ35W, as a proxy.

It seems that there are a lot of complaints (from users) about image quality for the camera Woot has for sale (HZ30W), especially regarding image noise. However, the professional review of its sister camera (HZ35W) doesn't really mention the noise problem. In fact, dpreview's compact travel zoom group test gives the HZ35W a "gold" award.

I thought these were the same basic camera, the only difference being the GPS and AMOLED screen on the more expensive model. Does anyone know if there really is a difference in image quality between these two cameras? Does anyone know if the innards of these two cameras are the same? or different?

Thanks. TMW

Does it zoom in and out while its recording video?

XxquesterxX wrote:Fixed the link above....

Another link with the specs...
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/specs/Samsung/samsung_hz30w.asp

When looking for camera reviews, specs and opinions I always visit DP review.

To some of the things stated above...

About the view finder:
This isn't that type of camera. It's a point and shoot. smaller and more compact than most with a view finder. It's designed to be put in a pocket or purse and taken along.

Is it better than Zeiss optics:
No, there aren't many things that are up to the quality / standards of Zeiss. Just below or equal to Zeiss optics I would put Leica.

That being said, Schneider makes fair optics. After all this (even at the new price) is a mid priced & mid sized camera. It's a fair lens for this price.

It's not overly large so that is why it is f3.2 at 24mm. It is a little surprising it only goes to f5.8

Seems to be an average camera that most point and shoot folks would get good use from. The price seems about what it should be for a refurb.

At least one other person at dpreview.com returned it for very poor image quality, so I pass on this one:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/read_opinions.asp?prodkey=samsung_hz30w

speedoo wrote:The "review" you provided is contradicted by the DP Review, which has been referenced and linked for all to read. Unless you can link us to your "review", I'm going to accept DP Review's high grades on image quality instead of the comments you've summarized.

For what it's worth, it's the first review at Amazon.

JeanLaFeet wrote:Note: The review mentioned is for the HZ35W, big brother to Woot's HZ30W. However, according to this announcement,

http://www.dpreview.com/news/1001/10011903hz35whz30w.asp/

the only difference is that it lacks a GPS capability and has an LCD display instead of a brighter AMOLED display.

As for the GPS capability, this review found it quirky:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/Q210grouptravelzoom/page11.asp]/

However, they did like it a lot, and if this deal had come along before our Alaskan cruise last month, I would have grabbed it. However, I couldn't find one locally to try out beforehand, and it was too pricey to order sight unseen. I could find the Canon SX210 at Best Buy, and it seemed fine to me, and several thousand photos on the cruise showed it was a good choice. (I am a compact Canon fan, this being my fifth--the first one purchased in 1999).

Also, as has been noted earlier, no one makes a compact digital camera with an optical viewfinder any more. I think my previous Canon (SD800 IS), which still works fine, but only has a 3.8 zoom, was the last of the breed. It definitely was a problem trying to determine if the piece of ocean that I'd zoomed in on in the distance included the whale, what with the sunlight washing out the image, although after a while I did get good at it--or lucky.

Since I couldn't find an HZ35 to test, I don't know if the AMOLED display would have fared better.

Even with the brighter oled I've found the 35w to be a little difficult to see in direct sunlight. And yeah, the gps is usless--but you can turn it off so it doesn't sap power.

Anyone know if the battery can be recharged via the USB port connected to a PC? This would eliminate the need to take the charger along.

sophist23 wrote:What's so special about a lens made by a janitor?

LOL. Best post of the day.

thermometer wrote:Anyone know if the battery can be recharged via the USB port connected to a PC? This would eliminate the need to take the charger along.

Yes..but the cord that comes with the camera is only 20 inches long.

XxquesterxX wrote:Fixed the link above....

Another link with the specs...
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/specs/Samsung/samsung_hz30w.asp

When looking for camera reviews, specs and opinions I always visit DP review.

To some of the things stated above...

About the view finder:
This isn't that type of camera. It's a point and shoot. smaller and more compact than most with a view finder. It's designed to be put in a pocket or purse and taken along.

Is it better than Zeiss optics:
No, there aren't many things that are up to the quality / standards of Zeiss. Just below or equal to Zeiss optics I would put Leica.

That being said, Schneider makes fair optics. After all this (even at the new price) is a mid priced & mid sized camera. It's a fair lens for this price.

It's not overly large so that is why it is f3.2 at 24mm. It is a little surprising it only goes to f5.8

Seems to be an average camera that most point and shoot folks would get good use from. The price seems about what it should be for a refurb.

Lets be real honest, be it Zeiss, Schneider or Leica, none of those guys true lenses are going on any of these point and shoot cameras, be it Sony, Samsung or Panasonic. Its all marketing under license. Still doesn't make it a bad product.

sneezix wrote:Use the TAXSUCKS coupon code and get free shipping.

WOO-HOO! It worked! $5 off! Thankie...