The first Samsung camera
to use a 3-inch touch screen, the L74 Wide —
Wide is a reference to the 28 mm (equivalent) wide
angle end of its zoom — is unassuming and nearly devoid
of any external controls.
The 3-inch screen dominates
the back, and although the touch screen can be operated with
finger tips, Samsung supplies a plastic stylus for use with
it. Regrettably, the stylus is designed to clip onto the wrist
strap, which makes it somewhat inconvenient. A system such
as is used on most PDAs, where the stylus slides into a slot
would have been preferable. Similarly, in our opinion, a rounded
stylus would be more comfortable to use than a flat one.
The top of the camera supports
three controls in addition to the microphone and the speaker.
On the left side, next to the microphone, the power
switch is recessed at the bottom of a dimple in the
surface so the camera cannot be turned on accidentally. A
blue LED rings it when the camera is on.
The Mode Dial is next, and next to it, the Shutter
Release positioned on top of the small extension
created by the small grip on the front of the camera. The
shutter release is a 2-stage release, with metering and focus
activated at the halfway point, and locked as long as the
release is held there.
The Mode Dial
extends slightly past the edge of the body, making it easy
to rotate with the thumb. The Mode Dial has 8 positions, and
the active position is marked by a small blue LED like the
one around the power button:
Auto mode
handles most camera settings but the user can select the
face recognition feature, macro focus, flash mode, self-timer,
and image size and quality.
P
Program
mode allows access to all camera settings, such as white
balance and ISO sensitivity, while the camera selects
the aperture and shutter speed.
ASR mode
stands for Advanced Shake Reduction.
It serves to capture sharper images when there is insufficient
light. It works by increasing ISO sensitivity gradually
and by processing the image post-capture. Capture time
is longer than normal, the camera indicating "Capturing!"
and then "Processing!" on the monitor, a period
during which the camera is not supposed to be moved.
Night mode
serves to capture images at night, either automatically,
or by selecting one of two apertures, and the shutter
speed (up to 16 seconds). Long exposures are processed
for noise reduction automatically.
Portrait
mode offers face recognition — the camera can detect
up to 9 people — and allows the user to set image
quality and size, as well as select the flash modes or
the self-timer modes.
SCENE
provides access to the 12 Scene modes
of the L74 Wide, which preset the camera to photograph
the selected subject. The specific scene mode is selected
in a sub-option of the Recording menu:
Children
Landscape
Close-up
Text
Sunset
Dawn
Backlight
Firework
Beach and Snow
Self-Shot
Food
Café
Movie Clip
mode allows capturing video clips in MPEG-4 format
at either one of three frame sizes:
800 x 592 pixels at 20 frames per
second.
640 x 480 pixels at 30 frames per
second, or 15 frames per second.
320 x 240 pixels at 30 frames per
second, or 15 frames per second.
Focus, metering and white balance are continuously
adjusted as the recording progresses. The optical zoom
remains available, but sound recording is temporarily
suspended when it is used, in order to prevent the sound
of its motor being captured. Recording can last as long
as there is space on the memory card up to a maximum
of 2 hours.
Given its own mode dial
position, the World Tour Guide is an
in-camera travel guide created by the Korean Tourism
Organisation and Hana Tour Services, also based in Korea.
The World Tour Guide resides in the 450 MB internal
memory of the L74 Wide, its 9841 files occupying 200
MB of it, all of it located in a folder called "Tour".
Worth noting, if the user tries to format the internal
internal memory of the L74, a warning pops up indicating
that the process will eliminate the World Tour files,
freeing the entire 450 MB of memory, but rendering the
World Tour Guide mode dial position useless.
The World Tour
Guide begins by presenting a map of the world
from which a region can be selected. The selected region
is then displayed, allowing a further selection (the
coloured parts of the map of Canada shown at left may
raise a few eyebrows in both east and west). In the
example shown here, British Columbia is selected, and
the World Tour Guide displays the areas on which information
is available.
The process presented here is
typical, the quantity of information about a specific region
depending on its popularity, population, and history. Places
such as Paris, London, or New York will contain much more
extensive list of tourist attractions, than newer cities such
as Vancouver.
The Guide, as far as we could
determine, is available to date in Korean and English only.
While the concept is interesting, the English version of
the Guide is not without some problems. Not only are there
factual errors, the spelling and grammar leave a lot to be
desired, and occasionally make little sense. Moreover, many
parts of the globe are clearly shortchanged. Africa, for example,
contains only information on Egypt and South Africa, the Middle
East is represented by Israel and the United Arab Emirates,
while South America holds no information whatsoever and the
Scandinavian countries are not part of Europe.
As noted at the outset, there
are very few external controls on the L74 Wide since the controls
are on-screen.
The on-screen controls are presented as the current settings
of the camera, stacked in columns on the right and left of
the monitor. With the L74 Wide set to the Program mode, the
column on the left provides access over 4 specific
settings, the one on the right over 7 settings.
Tapping any of the current settings with the stylus immediately
opens up the possible settings for that particular function.
Tapping any of the 4 items on
the left side of the screen — the items
between the shooting mode icon and the MENU/EFFECT
on-screen button — presents options (shown here over
a black background for added legibility) for:
Flash Modes: Forced Off, Auto, Auto with
Red-eye Reduction, Forced On, Slow Synchro, Red-eye Fix
(detects red-eye in the image and automatically corrects
it).
Focus:
AF provides a focus range of 80 cm
(31.2 inches) to infinity.
Macro provides a focus range from 5
to 80 cm (1.95 to 31.2 inches) at the wide end and 30
to 80 cm (11.7 to 31.2 inches) at the telephoto end.
Self-Timer: Off, 10-second Self-timer,
2-second Self-timer, Double Self-timer (one photo after
10 seconds, another after 2 seconds), or Remote (optional).
Face Recognition: On or Off.
Tapping any of the items on the
right side of the screen — the items
below the battery icon — displays that series of settings,
opening groups of three items at a time,
the next group of three repeating the last item of the previous
group:
Exposure Compensation: offers a compensation
range of ± 2 EV in 1/3 EV increments, set using a
scale on the monitor.
White Balance: Auto, Daylight, Cloudy,
Fluorescent H (daylight), Fluorescent L (white), Tungsten
and Custom (set under ambient light conditions).
ISO: Auto, 80, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600
ISO.
Drive provides:
Single: captures 1 image when the
shutter release is pressed.
Continuous: captures images continuously
until the memory or memory card is full.
M Capture: has a rate of 6 images
per second for up to 30 images. Image size is set to
VGA.
AEB (Auto Exposure Bracketing): captures
three images bracketing the exposure with one exposure
at -0.5 EV and one at +0.5 EV.
Wise Shot (ASR mode only): captures two exposures,
one with a sensitivity increase, the other with fill-flash.
Both images are saved.
Metering selects the metering mode:
Multi: calculates the exposure based
on an average arrived at by segmenting the frame, but
with a bias for the reading obtained at the centre of
the frame.
Centre-weighted: bases the exposure
on a measurement of the entire frame, and of the centre,
giving greater importance to the reading obtained at
the centre of the frame.
Spot: meters the centre of the frame
only.
Image Quality/Frame Rate
serves to set the image quality:
Super Fine, Fine, Normal, for still images;
and the frame rate for movies: 15
fps, 20 fps (800 x 592 only), 30 fps.
Three external controls are
available on the back of the L74 Wide. At the upper right
of the back is the zoom control, which moves
the lens from wide angle to telephoto in approximately 2 seconds.
In addition, the zoom control also serves to zoom into an
image that is on-screen during Playback when pushed to the
side (up to 12X with a 7 megapixel image), or zoomed out using
the
side, which then can also display images as an index with
9 thumbnails per screen.
The other two buttons are
near the bottom of the camera. The one on the right, labeled
,
starts the camera in Playback mode without
extending the lens when it is pressed for more than four seconds,
and can also be used to turn the camera off. Should the shutter
release be pressed while the camera is in this mode the camera
will switch to the capture mode, extending the lens.
In addition, when the camera is connected to a PictBridge
compliant printer, the same button, ,
serves to print images that have been selected for printing
using the DPOF options found in the Playback menu.
The button on the left, ,
controls the level of information displayed on the monitor.
In the capture modes, the default presentation stacks icons
representing settings at the top and on both sides of the monitor
(see above). Pressing the button once removes most
of the icons — and with the access to the settings they
represent — leaving only the shooting mode icon, the number
of images remaining, the MENU/EFFECT on-screen button and the
AF area. Still, when the shutter release is pressed halfway,
the camera indicates the aperture and shutter speed it has selected,
as it always does.
With the L74 Wide set to the
Playback mode, the button controls either of 2 presentations.
The first is the default, and it simply displays the icon
for the Playback mode, the source of the image (internal memory
or memory card), the battery state, arrows on the right and
left of the screen to navigate to other images, the MENU/EFFECT
on-screen button and an icon to delete the image currently
on screen.
Pressing the button once adds all the shooting data, including
ISO, aperture shutter speed, flash mode, image size and capture
date.
The Samsung L74 Wide is solid
and well crafted, and the touch screen is generally easy to
use. The icons that completely surround the image, however,
make the screen look quite cluttered, and can hide elements
in the frame, or lead to cut-off parts in the image as the user
does not realize the framing is off. Moreover, the interface
design does not seem to take full advantage of the touch-screen
system, and in combination with the odd-shaped stylus —
particularly when the latter is tethered to the wrist strap,
as the strap gets in the way — can lead to errors while
trying to set functions.
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Ergonomics
side (up to 12X with a 7 megapixel image), or zoomed out using
the 
side, which then can also display images as an index with
9 thumbnails per screen.
,
starts the camera in Playback mode without
extending the lens when it is pressed for more than four seconds,
and can also be used to turn the camera off. Should the shutter
release be pressed while the camera is in this mode the camera
will switch to the capture mode, extending the lens.
,
serves to print images that have been selected for printing
using the DPOF options found in the Playback menu.
,
controls the level of information displayed on the monitor.
In the capture modes, the default presentation stacks icons
representing settings at the top and on both sides of the monitor
(see above). Pressing the button once removes most
of the icons — and with the access to the settings they
represent — leaving only the shooting mode icon, the number
of images remaining, the MENU/EFFECT on-screen button and the
AF area. Still, when the shutter release is pressed halfway,
the camera indicates the aperture and shutter speed it has selected,
as it always does.
