Samsung TL34HD

Reviewed January 2009

Characteristics

The Samsung TL34HD crams 14.7 megapixels onto a 1/1.72-inch CCD sensor. The sensor's diagnal measure is less than half an inch--about 0.581 inches. By comparison, the diagonal measure for a 35mm frame of film is 1.74 inches.

Startup time for the snapper is relatively swift. It averaged 1.64 seconds.

Shot-to-shot performance was good, too. It averaged 1.78 seconds for images captured in single-shot mode at maximum size and best quality.

The camera stores still images in JPG format and video in MP4.

Seven image sizes are supported from 4384 x 3288 pixels to 1024 x 768 pixels (See Specifications Section). Three quality levels--Superfine, Fine and Normal--can be applied to each size. Compression levels range from a high of 6.1:1 for 4384 x 3288 pictures at Normal quality to 1.5:1 for 1024 x 768 snaps at Fine quality (See Compression Table).

Three video sizes are available in the bytecam at three speeds and two quality settings. Sizes range from 1280 x 720 pixels to 320 x 240 pixels. Speeds are 15, 30 and 60 frames per second. Files sizes can be as high as 14.6MB for 10 seconds of HQ video at 30fps to as low as 732KB for 10 seconds of 320 x 240 video at 15fps (See Specifications Section).

When shooting pictures, focusing is performed automatically by the camera by partially depressing the shutter button. That partial poke causes a focusing box to appear on the LCD. If the box is green, a focus has been obtained. If it's red, the shot needs to be refocused.

Auto focusing can be modified, however, for close-up or macro shots. In Macro focusing mode, the DSC will focus on objects between two and 31 inches. There's also an Auto Macro mode, which will kick in automatically when a subject in from two and 19 inches from the camera.

How the autofocusing system chooses what to focus on in a frame is determined by choosing a focus area. With Multi AF, the unit focuses on a subject based on one of nine areas in the frame. With Center AF, the camera concentrates on an area at the center of the frame. There's also a Touch AF mode. It allows you to tell the camera what to focus on in a frame by tapping the subject on the LCD.

For the most part, the system did a good job sharply focusing on subjects. On occasion, though, it took its sweet time in obtaining a focus it liked.

Multi analyzes the light in several areas of the frame and sets the exposure based on that analysis. It's a good general purpose method for obtaining the proper exposure for a shot.

Spot measures the exposure at only the center of the frame. It's useful when shooting subjects against bright lighting. That situation can also be accommodated by Auto Contrast Balance. ACB, which is always on in Auto mode, will balance the contrast in a frame where there's a large illumination difference between subject and background.

Center-Weighted metering takes an average reading of the light in the frame, but optimizes the exposure for the reading at the center of picture.

Whatever the metering method, the exposure of a shot can be manually altered through exposure compensation. When the EC icon is tapped on the screen, a slider bar appears with a marker. Dragging the marker right increases exposure; left decreases it. Exposure can be increased or decreased up to two stops in one-third increments. Although I found the TL34's touch-screen to be responsive for most functions, its slider bars, like this one, could be irritating at times. The marker often remained stuck at a location on the bar and the dragging motion had to be repeated several times before the marker would move.

Bracketing exposures with this Samsung is made easy with its AEB, or Auto Bracketing mode. In that mode the camera will capture three consecutive images--one at normal exposure, one overexposed and one underexposed. Unlike exposure compensation where the amount of over- or underexposure can be altered by a shooter, AEB automatically sets those values.

In Continuous mode, the unit will snap pictures while the shutter button is depressed at about 1.6 frames per second until it fills its memory card.

In High Speed mode, the DSC captures pics until a card is full at about 1.5fps.

And in M.Capture, the snapper will shoot a maximum of 30 1MP images at about 7.5fps.

In Auto mode, the flash will fire when lighting conditions require it.

There are two Red-Eye modes. One fires a “pre-flash” to reduce red-eye when the main flash fires. The other, “Red-Eye Fix,” corrects demon orbs through the camera’s software.