What can you do to make your videos look good?

This blog is devoted to the issues with the Samsung SC-MX20 and there are many. I do endorse this camera over others in the same price range for the fact that in spite of it's issues, it's still a really good camera (once you figure out how to get around the issues) and others in this price range and below suffer from poorer quality or poorly designed hardware or both.

But there are better cameras out there. Much better cameras. And if you are comparing the image quality you get with THIS camera to THOSE cameras, you will be sorely disappointed. But fear not, part of my mission is to help those of you stuck in this price range to get the most out of this camera.

Three levels

Your Samsung SC-MX20 has three levels of user control that affect the color, contrast, brightness and sharpness of your videos. These levels are not labeled as such in the user manual, but you will get the drift of what I am talking about as I explain them.

First, for the beginner or young user there is the EasyQ level. This mode of the Samsung SC-MX20 is activated by pressing the EasyQ button on the left hand side of the camera (in the space where the view screen folds into. Once in this mode, the camera takes complete control over all the settings on the camera, allowing the user to just point and shoot, but offers not flexibility in adjusting the settings.

In most cases, EasyQ mode will give you pretty fair results. If you are not too picky about color balance and sharpness and just want to "get the shot", this mode is great. It also allows you to hand this camera to someone and say "just shoot" and you don't have to worry about them messing with any settings - because they are locked out.

Now if you want a little more control over how your videos look, there are the iScene modes. At this level you have a little more control without having to worry about how a particular setting works.

There are several of these and I am not going to list them all, but you can consult the user manual or just play with them. These modes adjust the settings to best match the scene they describe. For example there is a beach mode that is intended for you to use in extremely bright situations, walking on the beach or in the desert. The camera then sets all it's settings to take the best picture (in the designer's opinion) in that situation, compensating for the bright sunlight, the reflection off the and and making your subject, presumably a person or an animal, stand out.

Again, these modes to a really good job of getting you the shot that you want. They do a better job of managing the color than the EasyQ mode, but still don't give you full control over all the settings. Think of these as pre-sets (which they truly are) that allow you to quickly choose the environment without having to fiddle with the controls yourself.

Now, if you really want to get all arty and professional, then this camera allows you to do that too. Let's call this the "power user" level.

At this level there are really only three controls available to you. Unlike "professional" cameras that have a lot of settings, the Samsung SC-MX20 was not built for that professional user. But you can work within these three settings to get the picture and color quality that you want. I highly suggest you take the time to learn about them and work with them because this is the best way to get the best results from this camera without a lot of tedious post-processing.

Three controls do all the work

The controls you have available to you are White Balance, Exposure, and Shutter. Now, I am not a camera or photography expert, so don't ask me how these controls relate to F-Stop or ISO or Aperture or Lemon Meringue pie. If you check various online Wikis you might be able to figure it out. But like designers of this camera I am going to keep things simple. As I've said before, this is a Dad's camera, not designed for the professional, but even so you can get good results.

Let's start with the easiest setting. White Balance. White balance is what most affects the colors in your videos.

The idea behind this setting is that you "tell" the camera what white should be. There are some presets that allow you to choose the lighting condition. These are pretty good. Just flip through them until the image on the screen looks as close to what you are seeing in real life. Tungsten works best for home settings, like birthday parties, florescent is better for school plays and such, and there are various settings for outdoor situations.

If you are a true power user, you can even choose what white should be. Choose the manual setting, point the camera at something that is white, and press enter. Be warned, however. While you may know that whatever you are pointing at is white, it may not be "truly" white in the given lighting conditions. However, if you tell the camera that it's white, it will make that shade look pure white in the finished video. Say, for example you point it at a white door, but in the given lighting that's a little shady, the door is actually a shade of gray. In the finished video it will be white, but the color of everything else in the shot will be adjusted color wise as well. Get it? So use this setting wisely.

The next setting is Exposure. This is how much light you are letting into the camera. It's kind of like the brightness setting on your TV, the higher you turn it up, the brighter the picture gets, but if you turn it up too high the colors all blend and you lose quality.

You will most want to play with this setting in very brightly lit situations. It will be easy to lose your subject if the exposure is too high. Also there are times you may want to capture an image that is more dimly lit than something else in range. You can make the dim object brighter while making the brighter object too bright to steal the scene.

The final setting is Shutter. This is how fast the shutter moves to capture each frame. This is not frames per second (which, as far as I can tell, on the Samsung SC-MX20 is set at a constant 30 frames per second) rather it is what fraction of a second the shutter is open to capture each frame.

To be honest, this setting is the most confusing for me. The speed of your shutter also affects how much light is getting into the camera, so you will have to adjust your exposure accordingly. Shutter speed most affects the sharpness of your video. Faster moving subjects will need a higher shutter speed. For example, if you are taping a golf swing, you will want a very high shutter speed, otherwise all you will capture is a blur.

I haven't found a good use for this is "normal" video conditions, but the option is there for you to play with.

There is one more setting that I did not include in these three and that is focus. Everyone knows what focus is. Most cameras, including this one, have a really good auto focus system. However, if you need to focus on something that the auto focus is not getting just right, this option is available to you.

In conclusion let me just say that I have found that the best way to capture a scene that most closely approximates what I am seeing with the naked eye is to use these three settings to make what I see on the view screen match reality. No digital camera is going to give you perfect life-like quality, but you can get pretty close with the Samsung SC-MX20 if you are patient enough.