Samsung L74 Wide

Reviewed August 2007

Image Quality

With the Samsung L74 Wide, it is almost impossible to disassociate the interface from the image quality as the former impacts the latter. Clearly the interface places a fair load on the camera's processor, and the result is that the L74 Wide is occasionally slow. Although there is little shutter lag, any change to the camera's settings requires tapping the screen a number of times to navigate to the desired option and back out as quickly as possible by touching the shutter release.

Indeed, in our opinion, the way the interface functions acts to slow down camera operations — excepting image storage — and can lead to missed photos. Even turning the mode dial quickly, let's say from Program to Movie, is accompanied by an animation of a spinning dial on the monitor which adds considerably to the time required to change from one mode to another, and which cannot be deactivated.

Another aspect of the interface is the current settings icons that occupy the periphery of the screen. These icons are comparatively large and can easily mask some of the frame, making it easy to fail to notice a flaw in an image's composition, such as parts of a subject missing.

Aside from this, however, the L74 Wide is a solid performer. Optically, the lens has only a modest amount of barrel distortion at the 28 mm equivalent wide end, and with high contrasts, photos can sometime reveal a slight chromatic aberration.

The rest of the zoom's focal range is effectively free of distortion, and does not appear to have any chromatic aberration. We did note, however, that using the default camera settings for sharpness tended to yield images that had a generally soft focus, and effect that is more marked with wide angle images.

Other areas of the Samsung L74 Wide are similarly positive. Used with bright natural light, the Auto white balance turns out pleasant and natural colours. Likewise, the default Multi metering pattern is very adept at calculating exposure parameters that result in a well exposed image, even when it contains strong contrasts.

Three levels of compression are available with the L74 Wide, and the highest image quality, Super Fine, applies a compression that seems to be in the range of 6:1.

At this compression level, the images show no serious trace of the process and given a very well-lit subject, are quite detailed.

While shots captured in bright daylight and sunlight are free of noise at 80 and 100 ISO, some noise starts to appear — at least in shadows and sometimes in areas of uniform colour — as soon as the amount of light available to the camera decreases, and even at 80 ISO.

Similarly, if they are captured with enough ambient light, flash images can show noise. The reach of the built-in flash is short, particularly if the zoom is used, and often requires the use of Auto ISO to boost its range, resulting in an additional noise penalty.

Yet, used with natural light, the L74 Wide is able to yield low-noise images up to 200 ISO, and even 400 ISO when both subject and light lend themselves to it. The upper sensitivities, however, are much as they are on current compact cameras. 800 ISO is noisy, and 1600 ISO produced images that look a tad pointillist.

Photos captured with the L74 Wide print extremely well, right up to 8 x 10.6 inch size (20 x 27 cm) at 288 dpi, a density that is sufficient to produce a continuous print on current inkjet type printers.

We would be remiss not to close this section without a comment on the World Tour Guide the L74 Wide has been endowed with. In our opinion, the World Tour Guide is of limited value. The information it contains is often inaccurate, and the descriptions and explanations of points of interests read much like elementary school socials projects. A good DK Eyewitness Travel Guide would be a considerably better companion on a trip. Yet, the guide on the L74 occupies its own dial position, and takes more than half of the large internal memory.

So, while we realize that the World Tour Guide is an additional feature to make the L74 Wide stand apart from its competition, a more nimble interface, and better thought-out photographic controls might have been more reasonable enhancements to a camera.