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 |
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Average rating:
4.57
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Opinion: If I had the opportunity to design and build a camera this is as close to being my "dream camera" as I can imagine.
Build quality is fantastic, nice weight and balance, fantastic lens with superb low light results and the articulating LCD is the icing on the cake.
I cannot praise this camera enough. It really has that wow factor.
I have owned the Panasonic LX3 and Canon S90 and while they are both good cameras, the EX1 (TL500) outshines them both, literally!
Problems: No problems at all although I was a bit dissapointed that the camera did not come with a external battery charger and the battey had to be charged in camera so to speak.
However I was easily able to obtain a external charger and a couple of extra batteries for very little money.
Opinion: I was looking for a compact camera, but one with good low-light capabilities to make photo's indoors and great manual controls. I usually use a dslr, but I tkink it's to big to carry all the time and I don't want to look like "the photographer" all the time.
I like this samsung Ex1 very much. The combination of the amoled screen and the fast lens is great to make photo's indoors. The screen works also fine in daylight. The white balance also does a great job so the colours in low light look very natural. The operationspeed is good and the manual controls are fine. The building quality of the camera is better than I'm used to from compacts, but as a result it is a bit heavy (338 gram). I enjoy using this camera, and thats for me that's the first step in making great pictures.
Problems: No real problems, but when I normally check a review I always first look to any problems users are experiencing. Only that way I can see if there are any problems that would be dealbreakers for me.
As mentioned the camera feels a bit heavy, but one the other hand beacause of that the built quality is great.
The battery schould be charged in camera. That way it works like eg an ipod. When connected to a computer it will charge itself. On the one hand I like this concept, no need to take the battery out of the camera. On the other hand you will not be able to charge a spare battery when you are using the camera, so I bougt a batterycharger just in case.
The raw shooting speed is pretty low, after 2 shots you have to wait several seconds before you can shoot again.
The samsung website to download firmware are not clear. It's not easy to find the right firmware. I hope Samsung will improve this in the near future.
Opinion: one of the best in its class, bright sharp lens, one of the reason to purchase this camera beside the clear OLED screen and solid construction.
picture quality generally good, sharp and dynamic in most lighting condition, very good result for indoor because of combination of fast lens and high ISO performance.
Problems: the white balance sometime off, unpredictable pink cast appear, too much cyan color tone in the picture, Dear SAMSUNG,..SOLVE THIS WITH THE NEW FIRM WARE PLS, PLS..make it THE BEST, this is anoying sometime for such high quality compact camera, it ruin the color balance completely.
Opinion: I have owned many compact cameras, including G10 and LX3, and I find this camera to be the best of the bunch. The build is exceptional and the camera is very comfortable to hold and use. Controls are easy to master and image quality is great, especially in low light. The ultrawide lens is both superfast and sharp; the best I have come across.
Problems: I would have loved automatic image rotation.
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 | 22.3 megapixels 3.2" screen Full frame sensor |
