My Samsung zoom is not working, rendering the camera useless!

I shot a lot of photos last October 5 in my flight home to Bacolod. In the evening I discovere the following message after recharging the batteries:

The zoom did not operate normally.
Insert the battery again and turn the camera on.
If the camera does not operate nomally, 
do not put excessive pressure on it and
contact the service center.

I can still view stored photos in my camera SD card. I will try to have my camera repaired at the Samsung Service Center. But I will go back to Manila in November. Meanwhile I still have my old Panasonic VG-100 camera s my main camera. Money is tight, and I may not be able to use a bigger lens camera.

Programmed mode may offer the WB-150F user finer control.

I brought my Samsung compact camera with me to Philcoa for supper. Here are some shots I took using Smart and P(program mode). The main difference is that I set the EV value to +0.3 to lighten the scene. Here are some results. The last set shows that Smart mode may display truer colors at night than P mode. The suggestion is to be able quickly take shots in varied settings, perhaps the beauty of P mode is that one can get the advantages of automated exposures but one can adjust the very important EV value.

A lucky find? A spare battery at SM Annex!

My brother and I have the same Samsung model WB-150F camera. We were looking always for a spare battery as we were only able to take fewer than 200 photos before the battery completely discharges.

Today October 1, 2012, we found on the 5th floor at the SM North Annex Buidldng that a spare battery is available! It set us back for 610 pesos. I hope the battery will last long. I am now giving it a full charge. Hope to shoo the whole day without an intervening recharging periods. (will do the recarging in the house at night only.)

The battery is not branded Samsung but has the item

number PPDC-SLB-10A. It comes with a three month warranty. Hope it holds up during the warranty period.

I tested the battery yesterday on our way home from Pampanga UP Clarkfield. The battery lasted into the whole afternoon,and had it recharged but the battery seems to have expanded dimensions. It does not spring out when you push it to extract it from the camera. It is tight-fittting. I think we might encounter problems with this spare battery in the future, for long term use but we are satisfied with it right now for the simple reason we cannot find the original Samsung battery in stores.

2,000 Pesos Price reduction for WB150F camera.

I was stunned! the camera is now selling for 9,900 pesos at Photoline, SM City Annex in Quezon City. I think Samsung may be selling a better model with more powerful zoom. In that case, it better improve the battery charging and charge indicator system. We only hope Samsung will be successful, and more consumers will take to the Samsung brand in the future!

Samsung Quick Reference Guide

This is preliminary. I am going to update this frequently.

• How do you ugrade the firmware of the samsung?
Click on Samsung.com Support for update instructions.
• The battery of Samsung discharges quickly. what can I do?
Buy a spare one. The battery information is: Samsung SLB-10A battery, 3.7V 1030mAh. Amazon sells a spare or replacement battery for 18.99USD. .

Shooting birds with the Samsung WB150F

I shoot distant birds in the maximum 18x optical zoom range of the camera. Later I crop the image using either Gimp or ImageMagick and the effect can be quite good since the camera has a high resolution of 14.2 megapixels. Here is one photo of a bird I am trying to identify:

Photographing tall trees.

How do you photograph tall trees or tall structures? Set your Samsung Wb150F to live panorama mode. Then shoot the tree vertically by pressing the shutter button while moving the camera up. Nothing can get easier than this! No excuse for excluding the tops of tall objects.

But the only con about this is that the photos are in low resolution mode!

Photo taken in University of the Philippines, Diliman campus near the College of Architecture.