Samsung Tl320 Digital Camera Review – Really Nice dSLR Companion

We loved:

The Samsung TL320 has immensely huge feature set and a rock-solid high end feature set.

We hated:

The Samsung TL320’s photo quality dips significantly above ISO 200.

Introduction:

The Samsung Tl320 Digital Camera is among the very few ultracompact cameras that provide great controls over your photos; at least we haven’t seen many providing that amount of control over photos. The lets you do what not many of the cameras permit and be it playing with the shutter speed and aperture, want to adjust white balance, exposure and color further than presets, or want to pinch contrast, saturation and sharpness, you can do it all with TL320.

Apart from this and the immense feature set makes the TL320, just the perfect pocket camera for the dSLR users who generally are familiar to having such cameras under their fingertips as well as for those who just wants a broad-featured point-and-shoot. Though, the performance and photo quality of the camera doesn’t match the dSLR levels.

Build and Design:

The high end build and design of Samsung Tl320 Digital Camera justifies the price tag of the camera. The complete metal chassis of the camera gives it a pleasing heft and the textured grip on the right of the camera both looks and feels good. Its beauty is enhanced by a beautiful 3 inch display,  which in this case is an active-matrix organic light-emitting diode display (AMOLED). It is pretty bright and most probably is better on battery life than an LCD. Positioned on the top are two analog gauges: one is there for residual battery life and another one if for finding out the available space on the SD/SDHC card.

Placed along side it is a little power button, which is ringed in blue light, a hollow shooting mode dial and a shutter release. To make it easy for you to change with your thumb the dial is exposed at the rear end of the camera. Placed underneath it is a lever given for the 5x zoom of the 24mm equivalent wide-angle lens. Move down a bit and you will find a Menu button, Playback and Fn (function) buttons and directional pad/navigation dial.

Pressing the Fn button of the camera displays a context-sensitive shooting menu, while pressing the Menu button brings a striking interface for admittance for all the other directions of shooting functions including, display, settings and sound. The entire system can be steered using the dial swiftly or can be more controlled with the directional pad underneath the dial.

The one thing that we didn’t liked particularly about the design of the camera is the proprietary jack located at the bottom and for power, AV output and data. There also is a USB cable positioned for charging through a wall outlet or through a computer plus an analog cable to let you connect it to a TV. But if you want to connect through HDMI then you will have to go for a cradle (SCC-HD2).

Specifications:

Manufacturer: Samsung
Part Number: EC-TL320BBP/US

Price: $189.00 – $278.88
Product Type: Digital camera Compact
Weight: 5.6 oz
Dimensions (W x D x H) in inches: 3.8 x 0.8 x 2.4 inches
LCD size: 3 inch LCD
Resolution: 12 megapixels

Optical Sensor Type: CCD
Camera Flash: Built-in flash
Flash Modes: Fill-in mode, Auto mode, Flash OFF mode, and slow synchro and Red-eye reduction
Shooting Modes: Frame movie mode
White balance: Automatic, Presets and Custom
Supported Flash Memory: MultiMediaCard and   SD Memory Card
White Balance Presets: Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten light, 2800K – 10000K, Fluorescent light (warm white) a and Fluorescent light (daylight)
Exposure Modes: Program,   Manual,   Shutter-priority,   Automatic and Aperture-priority
Software: Samsung Master, Adobe Reader, Drivers & Utilities and Apple QuickTime
Connector Type: HDMI, DC power input and USB
Additional Features: Direct print , DPOF support , Face detection , Face retouch , Built-in speaker , Audio recording , Resizing an image , Contrast control , Brightness control , Sharpness control , PictBridge support , Exif Print support , In-camera red-eye fix , Saturation control , Digital image rotation , USB 2.0 compatibility , Dual image stabilization , 720p HD movie recording , Scene Detection Technology , Blink Detection technology , Auto Contrast Balance (ACB) , Smile Detection technology and Digital image stabilization
Shooting Programs: Text , Dawn , White , Macro , Sunset , Action , Children , Tripod , Fireworks , Close-up , Anti shake , Landscape , Beach/snow , Back light , Night mode , Macro text , Frame guide , Beauty shot , Night portrait , Portrait mode and Backlight portrait
Focus: Manual and   Automatic
Features: Built-in lens shield
Supported Battery: Samsung SLB-11A

Performance:

The Samsung Tl320 Digital Camera’s performance can be described best with the term “average”, it’s neither too bad nor just exceptional, but it does lags behind the competition a bit. The camera takes a tad sluggish 1.9 seconds of time to get ready for a complete off stage, but then gets even slower and takes 2.4 seconds between two subsequent shots, which becomes 3.6 seconds, once you turn on the camera flash. The camera is comparatively slower in focus and shoots as well, and takes 0.5 second in good lighting conditions and 0.8 seconds in dim conditions.

Like most of the point-and-shoot cameras the Samsung TL320 also delivers great quality photos up to ISO 200, but after that its performance starts getting down. Especially if you view the photos in full view you will see a slight graininess in it.

The video quality, though, is pretty decent and while recording you gets use to the zoom and optical image stabilization. Although, the performance and photo quality delivered by Samsung TL320 is not like the large digital SLR, but it wasn’t all that poor either and if not performance then the feature set and price of the Samsung TL320 makes it worth buying.

Expert Comments:

The innumerable shooting options of Samsung TL320 makes it a really decent dSLR companion, but the camera falls short on performance and photo quality, which here are just of a decent point-and-shoot camera.