Owning a WB850F, my thoughts

A very comprehensive analysis. Sorry to hear you are finding things a struggle. You should not need patience though. How your average Joe on the street is going to cope with this I do not know. You have to wonder what field testing if any has been done on the camera with its production software firmware installed. They must stop beta testing the stuff with early take up buyers in the rush to get to market. Samsung really need to put a chunk of money into goodwill or their reputation with the photographic community will go farther down the toilet than it already is.

Sorry I am sounding like steakb. I will sign off for the day until I get better but it is depressing sometimes just looking at the way Samsung work. They do make money but a bit of Sony's customer orientation, though extravagant, would be nice occasionally.

I was tempted to switch my lumpy but reliable with long battery life Canon SX40 to a WB850 but that idea has completely evaporated.

peewit wrote:

Patience is a virtue.

Greynerd wrote:

A very comprehensive analysis. Sorry to hear you are finding things a struggle. You should not need patience though. How your average Joe on the street is going to cope with this I do not know. You have to wonder what field testing if any has been done on the camera with its production software firmware installed. They must stop beta testing the stuff with early take up buyers in the rush to get to market. Samsung really need to put a chunk of money into goodwill or their reputation with the photographic community will go farther down the toilet than it already is.

Sorry I am sounding like steakb. I will sign off for the day until I get better but it is depressing sometimes just looking at the way Samsung work. They do make money but a bit of Sony's customer orientation, though extravagant, would be nice occasionally.

I was tempted to switch my lumpy but reliable with long battery life Canon SX40 to a WB850 but that idea has completely evaporated.

Customer orientation by Sony? In lots of cases they treat customers like a POS.

But I agree about the beta testing. It is however not new, and cameras getting complicated software wise make the same practices from there (software development) come to cameras. It's not just Samsung

A very similar phenomenon was taking place in other fields already in the late 1980s, where a dealer told, about failures of televisions, that none are tested in the factory, as just letting the customer find out about problems, then fixing that TV, is cheaper than testing each TV for faults!

I'm not sure how much such concepts are applied in the production of cameras, causing a lot of individual camera failures that would have been found out with proper testing. Insider info is welcome!

While being only an occasional hobby photographer, I do understand your point. I know from my experience as developer in a different but related field that the complex management structure of a very large company ironically often dooes not allow for common sense towards their customers. Software releases are usually rushed in with significant problems remaining. Marketing agenda's have seldom anything to do with the actual quality of the product and satifaction of the buyer, which is sad. Product and project managers are usually geared to meet deadlines that are often set way too short by their superiors. The blame cannot be placed onto the developer, who often works more that 12 hours a day on multiple projects and is seldom given enough time to really finish. If something takes too long, to meet the "bottom line", the upper management usually decides to abandon the problem - to either discontinue or in some cases to outsource which is even worse. Although there are exceptions, but smaller companies, who do not have this problem seldom make it very far. Understanding this, makes it very hard to buy anything these days.

Anyhow, I am probably not as much disappointed as you are, but the root cause of dissatisfaction that you describe can be found in pretty much all trades of life.

I was thinking more of Sony's presentation of goods. I am sure they can make the life of a customer who is trying to get something fixed a misery as well as the rest. I have always found Sony stuff very reliable, my A200 never had a firmware update, there never was one made available but it functioned perfectly and I could use an ancient Minolta lens on it fully automatically, no software problems. The camera industry is most probably in a bit of a melt down at the moment with too many companies making too many types of lens mounts (with CSC can be 2 per manufacturer making the market increasingly thin) and increasingly complex operating software in the cameras and now the lenses (Samsung has 2 suites of lens firmware) and at the same time phones are making inroads on the whole industry all the time. All this in a time of growing austerity in the Western economies. Something must break soon

I do wonder what anguish and confusion lies behind the bland exterior of these large corporations. I should think the meetings in Canon on what to do about mirrorless cameras would be pretty entertaining, a great pity all this drama is so secret.

swhs wrote:

Greynerd wrote:

A very comprehensive analysis. Sorry to hear you are finding things a struggle. You should not need patience though. How your average Joe on the street is going to cope with this I do not know. You have to wonder what field testing if any has been done on the camera with its production software firmware installed. They must stop beta testing the stuff with early take up buyers in the rush to get to market. Samsung really need to put a chunk of money into goodwill or their reputation with the photographic community will go farther down the toilet than it already is.

Sorry I am sounding like steakb. I will sign off for the day until I get better but it is depressing sometimes just looking at the way Samsung work. They do make money but a bit of Sony's customer orientation, though extravagant, would be nice occasionally.

I was tempted to switch my lumpy but reliable with long battery life Canon SX40 to a WB850 but that idea has completely evaporated.

Customer orientation by Sony? In lots of cases they treat customers like a POS.

But I agree about the beta testing. It is however not new, and cameras getting complicated software wise make the same practices from there (software development) come to cameras. It's not just Samsung

A very similar phenomenon was taking place in other fields already in the late 1980s, where a dealer told, about failures of televisions, that none are tested in the factory, as just letting the customer find out about problems, then fixing that TV, is cheaper than testing each TV for faults!

I'm not sure how much such concepts are applied in the production of cameras, causing a lot of individual camera failures that would have been found out with proper testing. Insider info is welcome!

I have to say that the mechanics and optics on the WB850F do seem very good and are just let down by the poor firmware/software.

The lens on the WB650 did also seem good except that I did have it replaced under warranty about two weeks before the 12 months was up. It had the problem with the stuck lens cover that others seem to be currently experiencing.

It is interesting to read the comments about conflict between marketing and development depts. in large companies. Beta testing can not have happened on the WB850F as the problems are hard to miss.

Peewit

A nice analysis, agreed; it's a bit unfortunate how many problems you are having. Sony's new travelzooms seem very competent; perhaps you should take a look at those if you can return your samsung.

It seems many peoples' fears, including my own, about Samsung's wi-fi implementation, are becoming true, that they are very gimmicky/marketing hype than actually useful in execution. It's weird how samsung can be so competent with their appliances, TVs, smartphones, even laptops, yet their camera division suffers. when people say samsung isn't a photographer's company, i just think that they are a hugely successful electronics company in a time when so many others are losing profit. but the weird thing is, the photographic things like their sensor, UI, lenses, external controls, are good, but it's the electronic stuff they're failing at- write speeds, GPS, wi-fi, etc.

Greynerd wrote:

A very comprehensive analysis. Sorry to hear you are finding things a struggle. You should not need patience though. How your average Joe on the street is going to cope with this I do not know. You have to wonder what field testing if any has been done on the camera with its production software firmware installed. They must stop beta testing the stuff with early take up buyers in the rush to get to market. Samsung really need to put a chunk of money into goodwill or their reputation with the photographic community will go farther down the toilet than it already is.

Sorry I am sounding like steakb. I will sign off for the day until I get better but it is depressing sometimes just looking at the way Samsung work. They do make money but a bit of Sony's customer orientation, though extravagant, would be nice occasionally.

Not at all. The problems people are having with the WB850F is definitely a reasonable cause for your worries about Samsung. steakb would just be ranting and making personal attacks.

I was tempted to switch my lumpy but reliable with long battery life Canon SX40 to a WB850 but that idea has completely evaporated.

peewit wrote:

Patience is a virtue.

Lucky you had the problem before the warranty was up. Stuck lens covers seem to be a general problem with all makes.

peewit wrote:

I have to say that the mechanics and optics on the WB850F do seem very good and are just let down by the poor firmware/software.

The lens on the WB650 did also seem good except that I did have it replaced under warranty about two weeks before the 12 months was up. It had the problem with the stuck lens cover that others seem to be currently experiencing.

It is interesting to read the comments about conflict between marketing and development depts. in large companies. Beta testing can not have happened on the WB850F as the problems are hard to miss.

Peewit

Thanks for taking the time to summarize your experience. I am surprised about the long time to get a GPS lock that you experienced with both cameras. My WB650 will reliably lock within 45 seconds from a completely cold start (i.e. hasn't been turned on for days). The trick seems to be to turn the camera on and set it down somewhere with a wide view of the sky. Resist the temptation to hold the camera while it is locking. Either the proximity to your body or small hand movements (or both) seem to interfere with its ability to get a quick lock.

Hi thielges

Thanks for the tip. I will certainly give it a try when circumstances allow. I was trying to use my travel zoom in a spontaneous way, where I was not thinking about photography all of the time. I certainly got the 45 seconds lock time sometimes however if there were trees or buildings in the vicinity it could take much longer or not work. My ageing iPhone 3GS would always get a GPS fix far faster and in poor situations such as being on a bus as it drives through a city of tall buildings.

My hope was that with the elapsed time since the WB650 came out, that the GPS sensor in the WB850F would have been improved to what seems to be the current standard on other devices. It was a let down to find the same slow response and lack of sensitivity.

Peewit

thielges wrote:

The trick seems to be to turn the camera on and set it down somewhere with a wide view of the sky. Resist the temptation to hold the camera while it is locking. Either the proximity to your body or small hand movements (or both) seem to interfere with its ability to get a quick lock.

peewit wrote:

Hi thielges

Thanks for the tip. I will certainly give it a try when circumstances allow. I was trying to use my travel zoom in a spontaneous way, where I was not thinking about photography all of the time. I certainly got the 45 seconds lock time sometimes however if there were trees or buildings in the vicinity it could take much longer or not work. My ageing iPhone 3GS would always get a GPS fix far faster and in poor situations such as being on a bus as it drives through a city of tall buildings.

My hope was that with the elapsed time since the WB650 came out, that the GPS sensor in the WB850F would have been improved to what seems to be the current standard on other devices. It was a let down to find the same slow response and lack of sensitivity.

The reason GPS in a phone is faster is because it can use A-GPS (assisted gps). Providing that in a camera would require a phone account for the camera and would incur charges. A-GPS downloads some of the data required for the initial fix from an assistance server on the telecommunication provider's network. More details here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GPS

My iPad2 seems pretty quick and sensitive to locate a position and I have not got a sim in it and hence no access to the cellphone network. However I take your point.

Peewit

My iPad2 seems pretty quick and sensitive to locate a position

If I were to design a wifi+gps enabled device like an ipad I'd exploit the fact that wifi base stations are usually stationary and can provide a clue to the current location, speeding up GPS lock time. Plus you could also implement some of the A-GPS techniques like downloading the current satellite ephemeris over wifi to further speed up GPS locks.

While the WB850 has wifi I'm not sure Samsung has implemented any A-GPS style techniques.

There are some iPad2 apps for pilots of small aircraft where they are used to provide a moving map display of aircraft position using GPS. Wifi and cellular networks are not going to be of much help for an aircraft doing 100 knots at 4000ft agl.
My Memory Map app is useful for position location and tracking on the ground.

Maybe the restrictions of the WB850F housing contribute to its underwhelming GPS performance.

Peewit

I didn't that wifi is required to use GPS, just that it can accelerate the initial lock time. Most pilots don't just jump in the aircraft and fly off. They usually spend at least several minutes on the preflight check which is plenty of time to get a cold lock even without wifi or any other A-GPS techniques.

Your right. Maybe I just need to accept that fact that the GPS performance of the WB850F has not improved in the two years elapsed time since I got the WB650.
Disappointed.
The iPad2 with its big battery and large case is bound to be in another class.

Peewit

True though I don't know of any handheld GPS devices without wireless that lock quicker. It could be an inherent limitation of the technology. The only GPS devices I know that lock quicker are either using A-GPS or the initial position trick that automotive GPS units use. Samsung could use the trick that the iPad uses via wifi though I would not count on a firmware upgrade given past history.

I'm going to get a handheld GPS+GLONASS receiver soon so it should be interesting to see whether the addition of GLONASS improves lock times.