Samsung has announced the NV7 OPS 7.2 megapixel camera as the mid-range entry for the New Vision line of luxury cameras the company is currently rolling out. The $450 NV7 is a solid point and shoot device that boasts 7x Schneider optical zoom, a 2.5” LCD, two separate types of image stabilization systems, and 30 frame-per-second video in VGA (640x480) mode. The image stabilization technology applies to both still and video modes, and the black stainless steel case should hold up to plenty of knockin’ around. Digital stabilization is very important when you’re holding a camera that’s less than an inch thick.

The NV7 features all of the usual camera preset modes for indoor, outdoor, low light, macro; but it does include a unique feature that I’ve been dreaming of. Shoot anything from books to t-shirts and the NV7 is able to provide an editable text file with some handy bundled text recognition software. This might sound like just another digital gimmick, but I do this kind of thing all the time by hand. It’ll be fantastic to have some software to automate the process. Samsung has offered this text mode on several other cameras in the past, but the newest version won’t be on shelves until this fall.