What Twenty20 has done to cricket, digital cameras have done to photography ? made it popular, more colourful, less expensive, easy to use and time saving! Shooting pictures has become as easy as firing an SMS. In my whole life, even in my dreams, a ?camera? always appeared in a black body with chrome trimmings! No more, now they come in as many vivid and bright colours as they take pictures in. As if they are competing with their own pictures.

The Samsung L830 is eye candy. A gleaming metallic cherry red with steel trims compact digital camera with an oversized (in respect to the body) 2.5? TFT LCD display screen.

At the front of the L830 is the zoom lens that telescopes out as you power it on. Just above the lens, are an auto focus sensor lamp and a tiny flashlight and below on the extreme right corner are the three pinholes for a microphone. Yes the camera can record 10-second voice memos while shooting still pictures and can also double up as a voice recorder with almost 10 hours of audio recording.

The top panel has six pinholes for the speaker followed by a shutter release button, mode dial and the power ?ON? button in an indented slot with a luminous ring that glows florescent blue as you press it to switch the camera on or off. The left panel has a sleek and stylish steel wrist strap eyelet. The base of the camera houses the USB/AV connection terminal and tripod socket along with memory card and battery slot but has a sloppy lid with inefficient locking mechanism that opens up accidentally as you hold the camera to shoot pictures. The rear panel is the happening area of the camera. The display screen takes up most of the space, the rest accommodates (from top) a tiny camera status LED, a zoom rocker button, an ?E? (effect) button, a function / delete button, a biggish five-function joy pad, a ?play? mode button and an ?FR? (face recognition) button. The LCD display screen is crisp and adjusts its brightness according to the ambient light conditions for optimal image viewing.

Another plus in the camera is the high sensitivity to the light-1600 ISO/ASA (in graduated steps of ISO/ASA 80, 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1600). The knurled ?mode? dial is conveniently placed and easy to use with the thumb. Though it has scene preset modes, program and auto exposure modes along with the manual mode there?s no aperture and shutter priority modes. What a pity!

The auto focus lens zooms between 6.3 mm to 18.9 mm (38 mm to114 mm-equivalent to 35 mm film camera) smoothly with the help of a zoom rocker button and snaps to focus instantly.

The Samsung L830?s colour channel controls, a face-detection mode, and advance shake reduction function buttons are easy to access. It packs some unusual but useful features into its compact body (95 mm x 59 mm x 21 mm) like manual colour adjustments (white balance), and a high-resolution movie mode (near SVGA 800×592 resolution) but only at 20 frames per second; for standard 30 fps video, one needs to use the VGA (640 x 480) resolution or lower-resolution settings.

While shooting in daylight the camera reproduces very natural colours and poster-like images. In low light in-doors, near and around the windows, colours still hold, even at ISO/ASA 800. But as you touch its highest sensitivity of ISO/ASA 1600, colours tend to wash out and the image gets grainy and unacceptable. Photographs appear much better if taken at ISO/ASA 200 or below.

Surprisingly the tiny flashlight is good and effective. The compact size and light weight (132.6 grams sans battery and memory card) makes it very convenient to carry around no matter where you go. The metal body gives it a sturdy feel. Samsung had been quite lavish in packing the L830?s CCD with 8.1 mega pixels but at the same time it held back and gave it a miserly 3x optical zoom! Had it been an equation of 5 mega pixel with 8x optical zoom, my advice to enthusiasts would have been to make a beeline for it!?

At an MRP of Rs 13,990, the Samsung L830 has more of an ?ornamental? value.

In the box:

* The digital still camera

* Battery with charger

* USB cable

* AV cable

* Wrist strap

* Carrying pouch

* Software CD

* Instruction booklet.