Samsung 12MP Dig Camera 5X Opt 3 In LCD Red
- 1.5 Front LCD
- 3.0 full touch screen main display
- 720p HD movie
- True dual image stabilization
- 12.2 Megapixels deliver the sharpest, most lifelike details
Point And Shoot Digital Cameras Product Description
Samsung proudly introduces a new milestone in digital camera technology. The 12.2 Megapixel Dual LCD Digital Camera with a 1.5″ front LCD screen, a revolutionary feature in the industry, lets you take part in capturing the moment like never before. The Samsung Dual LCD Digital Camera lets you see every scene in a completely new and exciting way. Just use the front LCD screen, and set up the perfect shot with you in it, time after time. A host of top-ranked features and technologies, from the lens to the user interface, turns this camera into a true must-have. And the small, handheld size makes it easy to take it with you everywhere you go. The Schneider lens optics with 4.6x Zoom lets you get up close on almost… More >>
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3:22 pm on October 12th, 2009
I can’t say enough good things about this camera! Its fun, easy to use, and takes amazing pictures! I like that when you “click” an option on the touch screen (either with wand or finger) it vibrates as if you’re clicking it. The childrens clown feature for the front LCD works amazing! I thought it wouldnt make a difference with kids, but my 3 year old cousin could not stop smiling at it! Love it love it love it!
Two things I dont like. I’ve noticed with a few other cameras, it’s very touchy to movement even with the right setting on. You have to have a steady hand or your pictures will have a slight blur. I also don’t like the MicroSD memory card. It’s just annoying to use, need an adapter for it. Though if you’re like me and dont take a crap load of pictures at once (my camera took about 15 photos on internal memory) without uploading – don’t bother even using the memory card. I’d save that annoying little thing for if you go on a vacation or birthday party.
In a whole, this camera is awesome. I’m not the brightest crayon in the box when it comes to technology but I know a good camera when I see one, and this is one of them! I don’t see me replacing my camera for a very long time.
Rating: 4 / 5
5:16 pm on October 12th, 2009
TL220 Review
PROS
Menu system is fast. For a touchscreen i find it to be more than adequate. Response times don’t keep you waiting.
Very “iphone-ish” in the sense that its touch and has features like multi-delete (select as many pictures as you want to delta in one fatal swoop instead of deleting a single image at a time), accelerometer for browsing pictures and tap to focus, which is sweet.
Sweet continuous shoot mode. Seems to capture fractions of a second at a time.
HD Video is very nice. You can trim video on the device itself and select a frame from the video to save as a photo.
Form factor is great. Not the smallest, but the size seems to fit the quality.
5x Optical Zoom is a treat for a point and shoot.
Fast boot to picture: It takes less than 3 seconds to power on the camera and snap your first photo.
I like that it has distinctly different audible beeps for 1) a positive auto focus lock and 2) when its not able to autolock the focus on your subject. Even the front LCD displays a “red Reticle” for bad focus and a “green reticule” for perfect focus when doing self portraits.
Smart Modes: In my low lit living room, the camera auto-detected that there was not adequate light and adjusted itself for the environment. The result, a nice picture with lightened features with no dark spots.
Slide show mode: You can select exactly what pictures you want to play. You don’t have to sit through all photos, including the bad ones. It has about 5 different preset audio tracks to play while watching the slide show. Nice touch.
Image Stabilization works in both photo mode and video mode.
Can record video without an audio track if no audio is needed.
CONS:
Front LCD Screen does not turn on when shooting in video
Micro SD a pain to deal with (adapters etc)
When shooting video, when you zoom in or out, the audio cuts out while the lens is in motion. Once the lens stops moving, the audio kicks in again. very odd.
When importing into iPhoto on Snow Leopard, the videos do not have thumbnails or video preview. They appear as black squares in the photo album until played.
You have the ability to attach audio snippets to your pictures while they are in the camera. However, once you import all pictures, the wav file is separated from the picture and it becomes an orphaned file. IT doesn’t stay embedded in the picture or data file. So you end up with an SD card full of wav files in your card unless you delete them.
MINOR GRIPES
Battery door seems flimsy. Since this is where the MicroSD card is I’m a bit nervous it may break in the coming months.
Move the clown image for small kids to a more intuitive location in the software (like with the other front LCD settings).
The camera does a nice job at recognizing faces then waiting for them to smile before taking a picture. Problem is that once you sync the pictures to your computer and empty the SD card to make room for the next round of photos, the face recognition goes away and you have to reset those faces you previously detected again. It memorizes up to 20 faces, but they don’t stay in the camera permanently. That is unless, you leave the pictures on the camera after syncing them to your laptop.
Only place i noticed some lag was in picture review (scrolling side to side to view pictures).
No mac software included. Only Windows.
Display brightness setting only affects rear LCD, not front facing LCD.
Not intuitive how to set your own start up image when the camera powers on. I found the option but it’s not as intuitive as the other menus and I have yet to figure it out.
The camera is HD. Why not include an HD cable to connect to ones TV
MAJOR GRIPE
Speaking of TVs, this morning I hooked up the Samsung TL220 to my TV to play some video that I shot. Boy was that a mistake. Two concerns: One is that when connected to the TV the screen on the camera goes blank. Instead you navigate by looking at the TV where a small mouse cursor appears. This takes some getting used to. Two (and the largest issue here) is that it kills battery life. The camera charged over night, and by 11am (after shooting some baby videos and outputting them to the TV) the battery just died. You get a nice message saying battery is low, and then it shuts off. So, caution when connecting camera to a TV. It burns the battery at both ends!
What I WOULD ADD IN THE NEXT VERSION
SD Card instead of MicroSD (eliminate need for adapters)
Metal case for durability
GPS tagging
BlueTooth transfer
Front video screen enabled when shooting video
IN SUMMARY
Nice camera. I opted for the $299 job which has smaller pixel density on the rear LCD and is 3″ instead of 3.5″. In my opinion, the extra $50 is a nice option, but the innards are all the same. Plus, i like the ergo-grip that the extra space on the back of the camera offers when you opt for the 3″ screen. It inspires confidence that the total stranger i ask to snap my picture wont drop the camera.
4 out of 5 stars.
Well thought out device.
Highly recommended.
Rating: 4 / 5
6:16 pm on October 12th, 2009
I had a Kodak point and shoot touch screen but had problems with the software and speed of the camera. I came across this camera in a Best Buy first-day-release display and was ready to buy from moment one.
Have you ever used your cell phone camera and you may have that small mirror little space for self-portraits? I’m using it all the time – to now have great sized LCD in front is ideal. Friends are always making phone of my photos because I’m always trying to get in them but inevitably cut off a head or two.
PROS: The touchscreen is responsive and big, I be lovin’ me the haptic feedback (which is also adjustable, yay). The next, and this was amazing to me, it has BUILT IN PHOTO EDITING SOFTWARE. Both on the camera AND when you plug it into your machine. It automatically launches and helps you manage the photos – on ANY computer. It doesn’t require ANY software install… I practically pee’d my pants when I saw this; why didn’t someone think of this sooner? No worries about losing the disc, staying up to date, etc. Oy… brilliant.
The LCD screen also acts as the count-down timer when you take timer-shots with a tri-pod or however, nice add-in, however, the timer is not adjustable (10 seconds only).
CONS: First, when your taking self-shots people tend to stare at the LCD frame instead of in the lens, this causes two issues: 1) it looks like people aren’t looking at the camera, and 2) the face detection technology uses an IR eye sensor, so if you don’t look into the lens, it won’t detect and lock onto the face. Second, I wish there were a one click, or one button activation of the LCD – you have to go to the menu option, then select the LCD mode each time you turn the camera on – annoying.
Third, I wish there were photo keyword tagging like I had on my Kodak – this was INCREDIBLY, and unexpectedly, helpful when going on vacations, etc and taking hundreds on photos then uploading them to computer or Flickr and having them already tagged – I smell firmware update :::ahem:::
Fourth, the memory card is a MICRO SD card, NOT a regular SD card. This A) means all your previous SD cards are incompatible and B) you cannot use the eye-fi wireless card now. I get why they went the Micro SD card route, because theoretically you can hot swap between your digital camera and a cell phone so that you can remote upload your photos – but I’d rather have to use an adapter and have a regular SD card slot with more options – bad move and was almost a deal breaker
Fifth, there’s no quick way to delete a photo right after capturing it if you decide you don’t want it. You have to hit the play button, then select delete, then confirm. What? Did someone say ‘firmware update’ :::cough cough:::
Sixth, speaking of egotistical… proprietary Samsung connector jack for charging/PC connecting. Why you gots to hate on the micro/mini-USB connector? The Kodal used the mini-USB and it was nice to be able to charge from my iGo, now I have sadness.
Seventh, and not too big of a deal, but I wish the playback volume/speaker for video was slightly louder. I’m not expecting Dolby Surround Sound here, but a little louder for the hearing impaired would be nice…
Eighth, I wish the connector jack was on the side and more so because I wish the camera could also function as a USB web-cam. I mean, I’m not in the porn business or anything, but it’d be nice to consolidate devices where possible.
Overall I’m incredibly pleased with the camera – some major pros and excellent features I didn’t go into detail on, but if you do a yahoo search for technical reviews, you may run into several features that you’ll end up finding really useful.
Rating: 4 / 5
8:27 pm on October 12th, 2009
First off let me say that the reviewer that said it is hard to delete your photo’s right away simply does not know what he/she is talking about! Obviously they have not read the manual, researched the camera before buying it, or did not spend as much time with it as maybe they should have.
All you have to do to delete a photo or movie clip “right away” is, with your finger make an “X” on the screen (Touch Screen) over the picture, a delete button pops-up you press it and the picture is gone. It literally takes 2 seconds, if that.
Below is my review of what I have discovered so far, mind you I DO NOT Personally own the Camera yet, mine is on the way, but I have toyed with it for probably almost 3 hours already at Best Buy (Went to Best Buy again today just to toy with this Camera some more, Twice! Once by Myself, another with my daughter). I have done extensive research on the TL225 and the TL220 (an incredible amount). The review below was written by me a couple days ago for a different web-site to educate folks on this camera.
Here ya gooo…
I went to Best Buy yesterday and played around with the TL220 (st500 and st550 in Europe and Asia, and is the same cam as the TL225, just less features) for over an hour (no kidding, an employee told me to “Just buy the thing already”lol), and I can not express how much I LOVE this thing!
I have never had so much fun playing around with a camera before! It is sooo user friendly, I picked it up and knew everything within a couple of minutes!
The Pictures it took where pretty good, it didn’t do so well with close moving subjects, much blurr, but still pics where clear and the colors where vibrant. I found a Korean site to where a gentleman who bought this Cam posted a TON of Pic’s, they all looked wonderful as-well. He also stated that this was a “Very Very good Cam”.
My favorite feature that sent me over the top was the “Beauty Shot” mode and front LCD feature! I have scars on my face due to acne (pretty bad scaring), and I went into Best Buy looking greasy and very sweaty (just got off of work). The pictures I took of myself in Beauty Shot mode made me look like a Model!!! I am not kidding, my face went from greasy and nasty in regular pics I was taking of myself, to looking like I belonged on a runway for a photoshoot once in Beauty Mode!!! I was SHOCKED at how perfectly complected my face looked, you could not see one acne scar or blemish, it was amazing! I did not expect this feature to work so well!!!
I took probably 80 or so pic’s of myself, I absolutely love the front screen! Yes, I took pics of myself before, but only for web-sites a forum purposes. With this, it was a BLAST!!! I had so much fun with this camera, I did not expect myself to care to much for the front screen, but I will be using it all the time once I pick-up this cam!!
All I was looking for was a decent point and shoot that had great HD video and good quality Pic’s for vacationing, and playing with this cam for as long as I did sent me over the edge with all the features it has, I REALLY LOVE IT! I would like to note that my fiance owns the Nikon D90 and I use it often, so I have some decent knowledge on how pictures should look. I also own my share of P&S cams.
The girl at Best Buy told me they Sold Out right away and have the cam on back-order, and that she hears nothing but good things about it (she is actually going to school for photography and said she thinks the cam is a really good buy, and she was not saying this because she works there, I have known her for atleast a year already (from Best Buy) so we are more friends then me being just a customer to her.
I also tested the HD video and it was WONDERFUL! Someone posted 3 test vids on YouTube using the tl220, the new compression format makes it look like HD even when choosing not to watch in HD! Never seen such great quality Vid before in a camera!!! It is also REALLY REALLY cool how you can Pause when recording, and then resume play when you decide to, this way all recordings are on the same file. You can also edit the vid in camera by trimming the vid, meaning takeout parts you don’t want and keep what you do want.
I will be getting the TL225 instead of the TL220. It has a bigger screen, metal back instead of the Tl220′s plastic back, HDMI inputs (for viewing your Pics and Vid on an HD TV) that the TL220 does not have, and I believe the TL225 has 2 more modes that the TL220 does not have. One is Action mode (which may fix the blurr in moving subjects, it should), and another mode I have which to identify. The TL225 shows 16 different modes in “Smart Capture” mode, and TL220 shows 14. The TL225′s also has haptic feedback, which vibrates the screen slightly so the user knows when he/she selects a command, TL220 does not have this. The TL225 also wieghs a half-ounce more then the TL220 due to the choice of displays. One more thing to note is that the TL220 3.0-inch LCD screen resolution has 230,000 dots, while the TL225 has much much higher resolution at 1,152,000 dots on it’s 3.5-inch LCD, the highest ever resolution on a Point and Shoot Camera (for you newbe’s the higher the resolution the clearer the screen will be and you will be able to see more detail on whatever it is you are taking a picture of). To me, the extra $50 for the TL225 is well worth it if you can offord it.
Note that both Cams (TL220 and TL225) look identical other then the back screen being bigger on the TL225, and the colors they come in. I do wish the TL225 came in Red and Blue, but the orange will have to do for me. I will also be posting this same review for the TL220 for people looking to get that since thats the actual Cam that I toyed with.
I have done sooo much research on these cams in the past 2 weeks it is ridiculous!!lol I will give a more extensive review once I have this puppy to play with for longer then just a couple of hours.
All I have to say is I LOVE THIS CAM and can’t wait to get it, it def exceeded my expectations thus far!
Rating: 5 / 5