With its touch-screen interface, most menu
tasks for the TL34 are performed with a poke or a swipe. The system is
icon-based, but while your finger is in contact with the graphic, a label
will appear with a suitable explanation of the glyph's function. Remove
your finger and a menu pops up. Dragging your digit to the next icon will
reveal its label; dragging your finger to an empty area on the screen
will prevent any menus from popping up.
What icons appear on the screen depends on
what mode the camera is in. In Auto mode, for example, there's an icon
for displaying the photo style selector--normal, soft, vivid, forest,
retro, cool, calm and classic. There are also glyphs for determining how
much information should appear in the screen, choosing focus mode, controlling
the flash, determining the size of the photo, toggling face recognition,
defining the focus area, picking the quality level for a picture, activating
the self timer, recording voice memos and activating image stabilization.
In Program mode, you have additional options
such as control of white balance, light sensitivity, exposure compensation,
sequential shooting options, metering options, color choices, sharpness
choices, contrast options and saturation choices.
In Manual mode, additional options include
control over the shutter speed and aperture for a shot.
In other modes you will have fewer options. Night mode, for example,
limits your options to flash, image size, focus area, image quality, self-timer,
voice recording and image stabilization. A similar downsized option set
is available in Beauty mode, but added choices include face tone and face
retouch.
Movie mode has choices relevant to shooting
video--like size, frame rate and muting sound when zooming. And it has
other options such as image stabilization, color, auto focus mode, metering
mode, white balance, self-timer and exposure compensation.
When the camera is in Playback mode, icons
appear on the display for showing pictures as a slide show, trashing images
and clearing the LCD of icons. A slider at the bottom of the display can
be used to move forward and backward through images and videos stored
in the camera.
Not all menus can be accessed from the touch-screen. Pressing the menu
button at the back of the snapper, gives you access to four menu trees.
The sound tree permits you to choose a variety
of beeps and dings for functions such as beep, shutter and start-up. It's
also where the camera's volume can be controlled and aural alerts for
AF mode and self-portrait mode can be toggled on or off.
The set-up tree is where basic setting for the
unit can be customized, settings such as language, date & time, start
image, display brightness, time pictures remain on display after capture
and auto display shutoff.
The third menu tree provides you with some
file utilities. You can format a memory card, for instance, or reset the
camera to its factory defaults as well as create a recycle bin for deleted
files, set file naming conventions, imprint date or date & time on
captured images, pick a time period at which the camera will automatically
power off and toggle the AF assist lamp on or off.
Video choices are available through the
fourth menu tree. From it, you can control the camera when it's connected
to a Samsung TV that supports Anynet+ with the TV's remote. You can also
choose an HDMI size for displaying content in the camera on an HDTV through
an optional HDMI cradle, as well as pick a video output standard--NTSC
or PAL.
The TL34 comes with a Windows-only software
program Samsung Master. Not only is the program ornery to install--it
rebooted my system before it finished installing itself--but it behaves
sluggishly.
The application has an explorer window for browsing folders and files
and a palette for viewing thumbnails of photos and videos. When you click
on a thumbnail, a larger version of it will appear in a preview window
located below the file browser on the left side of the program's interface.
An info tab allows you to see information about the image or video. Video
can be played in the preview window, but when I tried to play HD video
there, all that appeared was a black box with sound from the clip.
Samsung Master includes some tools for editing images and video--although
when I tried to edit HD video, sound and no pictures appeared in the edit
viewer--as well as features for e-mailing content from the program and
creating screen savers and Web albums.
Interface & Software
