73%
Silver Award
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73%
Silver Award
Reviewed:
Jul 2010
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The Samsung TL500 (EX1 in Europe) is a premium compact camera with a fast f/1.8-2.4 wide angle 3x (24-72mm equiv.) image stabilized zoom lens. It comes with an 1/1.7"" 10MP CCD sensor and a 3.0"" multi-angle AMOLED display. The camera also offers full manual control, RAW capture, VGA video recording in H.264 format and a new faster DRIMeIII processor. Its biggest limitation is that the lens range is a touch short for some subjects (particularly head-and-shoulders portraits).
The Samsung TL500 is a very good camera - it takes good images, has a great lens, flexible feature set and, unlike most mirrorless cameras, it maintains its go-anywhere, shoot anytime capability when slipped into a jacket or coat pocket. The TL500's few quirks are not significant enough that we'd consider it less desirable than more polished competitors (the Panasonic LX5 and Olympus XZ-1 being the most obvious), but its advantages are similarly marginal.
| Quick links: | Announcement | Review | Sample gallery 1 | Sample gallery 2 | Forum |
| Announced: | Feb 20, 2010 |
| Summary | The TL500 / EX1 is a very capable and well-featured photographers' compact camera. Its excellent (and articulated) OLED screen helps distinguish it from the conceptually similar Panasonic LX3. Overall it's among the best compact cameras available if the super-bright lens is more important to your type of shooting than overall zoom reach. |
| Good for | Photographers looking for something smaller than a DSLR that gives shooting flexibility. |
| Not so good for | Not the perfect all-round or travel camera, due to its short (but bright) zoom. It's also a bit short for traditional portraits. |
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Scoring is relative only to the other cameras in the same category. Click here to find out more.
Posted:
Jul 5, 2010,
Images:
35
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Posted:
Jun 7, 2010,
Images:
42
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Reviews and specs
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Galleries
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Challenges
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 | 22.3 megapixels 3.2" screen Full frame sensor |
