Samsung L74 Wide

Reviewed August 2007

Characteristics

The L74 Wide captures images with a 1/2.5-inch, 7.4 million pixel CCD, of which 7.2 million pixels are effective. Six image sizes are offered to capture photos:

Three levels of JPEG compression are available at all image sizes:

• Super Fine: the highest image quality;
• Fine: an average compression; and
• Normal: the strongest compression, which allows capturing a greater number of images, but with a lower image quality.

CCD sensitivity can be selected manually when the Program is used, and ISO settings of 80, 100, 200, 400, 800 or 1600 ISO are available. With all other modes, sensitivity is under the control of the camera, which increases it as necessary to compensate for the brightness of the ambient light.

The L74 Wide is equipped with a Samsung NV 3.6X zoom lens with a focal length range of 4.7 to 17 mm, equivalent to a 28 to 101 mm in the 35 mm format. The lens has 2 apertures, f2.8 and f5.6, when it is at the wide angle end, and f5.8 and f11.6 at the maximum telephoto.

In addition, the L74 Wide also provides a 5X digital zoom that takes over where the optical zoom ends, creating a combined zoom effect of 18X. The digital zoom is a cropping zoom that captures a progressively smaller area in the middle of the full size image as the magnification of the digital zoom is increased, and then interpolates the cropped image to the currently selected image size.

The L74 Wide has a shutter speed range of 1/1000 second down to 1 second when the camera is set to the Auto mode or most of the Scene modes, and up to a maximum of 16 seconds when the Night mode is used.

While many settings can be accessed by tapping the icons for the current settings on the monitor (see the Ergonomics section) a few additional settings are contained in the Recording menu, which appears when the MENU/EFFECT on-screen button is tapped.

When the camera is set to a capture mode, the display shows two tabs on the left side of the monitor: MENU at the top, and EFFECT below.

The MENU tab offers four sub-options, each of which contains further options:

• Recording: contains additional capture settings.
• Sound: contains settings for the camera's sounds (see further).
• Setup1 and Setup2: contain basic settings. (See the Interface and Software section of the review.)

The Recording menu offers the following settings:

• Auto Focus decides how the auto focus operates:
  • Centre AF: forces focus at the centre of the frame.
  • Multi AF: allows the camera to select focus from any of 5 focus points.
• Voice Memo: On or Off. Captures a 10-second audio clip after an image has been stored.
• Voice Record: On or Off. Allows the L74 Wide to be used as a digital voice recorder, recording audio as long as there is space to store it in memory, or on a memory card.

• Sharpness controls the sharpening applied to images as they are stored: Soft+, Soft, Normal, Vivid, Vivid+.
• Contrast provides three settings: High, Normal, or Low.
• Voice Mute (Movie mode only): On or Off. Decides whether or not sound is recorded with a movie.

The next section of the menu is called Sound:

• Volume decides overall volume of the sounds produced by the camera: Off, Low, Medium or High.
• Start Sound: offers a choice of three different sounds, or Off.
• Shutter Sound: offers a choice of three different sounds, or Off.
• Beep Sound: offers a choice of three different sounds, or Off.
• AF Sound simply offers a choice of On or Off.

• Colour Effect allows changing a recorded image's colours:
  • Colour: No effect, Black and White, Sepia, Blue tone, Red tone, Green tone, Negative.
  • Custom Colour: allows the user to adjust RGB values.
  • Colour Filter: changes all colours except red, blue, green and yellow to black and white.
  • Colour Mask, which serves to select a round area that will retain its colours, while the rest of the image is black and white.

• Image Adjust: serves to adjust the saturation.
• Fun offers four choices. Once the selection is made, the camera processes the image immediately after capture prior to saving it:
  • Cartoon: allows creating a composite image with text bubbles.
  • Photo Frame: serves to add kitschy frames to images.
  • High Light: allows selecting an area in the frame about to be captured that will be sharp while the rest of the image will be recorded blurred as if out of focus.
  • Composite: allows creating a composite image one frame at a time.

When the L74 Wide is set to the Playback mode, tapping the MENU/EFFECT button presents a two-tab screen as well. The MENU tab offers:

• Slide Show serves to setup a slide show of the images in memory (see below).
• Playback: opens the playback options.
• Sound: contains the same options and settings as are found in the capture mode menu. (See above.)
• Setup1 and Setup2: contains the Setup options. (See the Interface and Software section of the review.)

Slide Show provides the following choices:

• Show Start: starts the slide show.
• Effect offers three different transition effects that can be used as one image replaces another, or none.
• Music provides three different looping background music pieces, or none.
• Interval selects the on-screen time of images (1,3,5,7 or 10 seconds).

Playback contains the following options:

• Voice Memo: makes it possible to add a 10-second memo to an image.
• Protect: serves to tag images so they cannot be erased accidentally. Images can be selected for protection one at a time, or all at once.
• Delete: serves to erase unwanted images either one at a time, or by selecting them from an index view.

• DPOF: serves to choose images that will be printed. The number of copies to make of each image, the print size, or the creation of a print index can be set.
• Copy to card: to copy images from the L74 Wide's internal memory to a memory card.

The other tab of the menu screen when the camera is set to the Playback mode is EFFECT. It contains the same choices as those found in the capture menu, but there are some differences:

• Image Edit: opens another set of options, this time presented horizontally at the bottom of the screen, offering the following options:
  • Resize: serves to re-record an image at a lesser resolution. The option can also be used to resize an image that will be displayed when the camera is powered on.
  • Rotate: allows rotating an image in 90° increments to the left or right, or by 180°.
  • Trimming: serves to capture part of an image that has been zoomed into as a new image.
• Colour Effect offers the same choices as in the capture mode, but saves the altered image as a new image.

• Image Adjust: serves to adjust Brightness, Contrast, Add Noise, adjust the saturation, or automatically remove Red-eye.
• Fun offers the options of the capture mode (Cartoon, Photo Frame, High Light, Composite) and adds:
  • Sticker allows adding a cartoon sticker such as an "idea light bulb" and placing it anywhere in the frame.
  • Pen Tool: allows doodling or writing and erasing on top of the image using the stylus, in varying stroke sizes and ink colours.

In addition, although the L74 Wide is sold without a memory card, it offers a memory card slot, located next to the battery, underneath the camera. The camera is compatible with SD (Secure Digital) cards and SDHC (secure Digital High Capacity) cards up to 4 GB, and MMC (MultiMedia) cards up to 2 GB.

The chart below provides approximate capacities for the internal memory with the Tour files present, and an optional 1 GB SD card:

The Samsung L74 Wide is powered by a small rechargeable Lithium-ion battery (SLB-1137D) which is inserted into a compartment underneath the camera, next to the memory card slot. The battery is recharged in the camera, using the USB cable that connects to a Travel Charger (SAC-45). The process takes about 150 minutes.

Recharging the battery, or any other external connection is made through the connector that is underneath the camera.

The connection offers 3 functions, each dictated by which of 2 cables is used:

• USB Port, compatible 2.0 High Speed, to connect the camera to a computer or a PictBridge/DPOF compatible printer. Note that the battery can also be recharged from the computer.
• A/V (Audio/Video) Out, compatible with either NTSC or PAL, allowing the camera to be connected to a television.
• Charger connection to recharge the battery as explained above.