Samsung has announced a new camera, and the feature packed device is scheduled to reach store shelves in the USA in October. The newly announced HZ25W will be called WB5000 in Europe, and will be available for US$400. The camera seeks to combine the form factor of compact pocket cameras with the larger zooms that are seen in the DSLR range, an attribute that obviously puts it between both these ranges.
Samsung has endowed the HZ25W with 24x optical zoom coming from a 26mm wide-angled lens. The 12.5 megapixel camera can record 720p HD video in H.264 format, handle uncompressed RAW images (JPEG images of course work too), and there’s a list of (mostly usual) goodies to augment its manual controls. HZ25W has automatic adjustment for color, brightness and movement, and then there’s optical and digital image stabilization, face recognition and blink detection. What’s lacking here is an HD output, presence of which would have made the pot sweeter.