Samsung announces WB5000 compact digicam

Complete with 24x optical zoom

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1 September 2009 12:50 GMT / By Duncan Geere

Samsung has outed its WB5000 compact digital camera which comes equipped with a massive 24x optical zoom, as well as a 26mm wide-angle lens.

Unquestionably at the high-end of compact cameras, it has the ability to manually focus the lens, select aperture priority or shutter priority, and there's a full manual mode, too. It carries both optical and digital image stabilization and can shoot in RAW format.

The 12.5-megapixel sensor can record 30fps 720p video in H.264 format. There's a dedicated movie recording button to switch into film mode. There's also face recognition, blink detection, smile mode and a beauty shot mode for taking pictures with lots of skin tones. No, not those kind of pictures - get your mind out of the gutter.

The WB5000 will be available by the end of the month. It's "expected" to cost around £350.