Samsung tl350 full manual P&S saves RAW

[clanthar]

Hi All,

Had a little extra ebay cash and my pocket camera was 2 years old so I started looking around for an upgrade. Went and bought the Samsung tl350 for $279.00. There's plenty of info out there for the camera but not a good collection of sample images so I thought I'd get a few up and give my first impressions of the camera -- had it for two days now and shot 20 photos.

I'm going to keep it which says a lot right there. It's an impressive bang for the buck all things considered. Got a few observations:

PRO:
1. The AMOLED screen kicks butt. Been seeing some adds for Apple's new "retina" display on the iphone. Either Apple hasn't see this screen or they're lying as usual.
2. Remember this is a P&S pocket camera but it does offer full manual exposure control and both shutter and aperture priority exposure control.
3. It saves both JPEG and RAW files. Yep, that's right 10.2 megapixel RAW files in a camera the size of a phone that costs under $300.00. Is this the only under $300.00 camera that saves RAW files?
4. The f/2.4 max aperture Schneider zoom lens covers a range of 24mm to 120mm (5x) (35mm equivalent). Most important for me: it starts at 24mm.
5. Lens performance is overall impressive given the camera's class. I teach photography at the college level and with a hundred plus students a year I get to see the results from ALL the cameras out there. One of my students has it and I've seen what it can do; from every DSLR to every P&S. This camera's lens ranks with the P&S leaders. CA is minimal. Center sharpness is good with noticeable loss to the edges especially on the long end (120mm). No surprises there and better than average.
6. Build quality is overall reasonable.
7. Given the size of the sensor noise is better than average. This is where the option to shoot RAW is a deal maker. I've been able to pull respectable images out of ISO 1600 RAW files from this camera. You've got to keep reminding yourself that this is a P&S that fits into a shirt pocket and costs less than $300.00.
8. Better than average fast response.
9. Supposedly this camera has impressive video abilities. I'll never find out -- I do stills.

CON:
1. Controls are under engineered and too easy to bump off their settings. The thumb wheel on the back screams, "I'll be broken before you can make 500 exposures."
2. RAW format is Samsung proprietary. Almost sent it back for this one. It comes with a RAW converter which I was able to warm up to pretty quickly, but I'm still spittin' and cussin' that I have to install and run another bleep bleep program to use this camera. I was re-packing it over this one. Then I calmed down and took some more photos.
3. I've owned and used a lot of different Schneider lenses over the last 30 years. This is the worst of them. Got to keep reminding myself that this whole camera costs less than what I used to pay for just one Schneider enlarging lens. I shot a room interior with the lens at it's wide end. The barrel distortion is so bad that great great granddaddy Schneider must be rising from the grave and scraping his name off the headstone. OK, it's a P&S that costs less than $300.00, they all do that. No reason to expect this one wouldn't.
4. It resets too many defaults when you turn it off and back on. I want the function button to immediately bring back the last function I used and it doesn't do that. Sloppy, poor programming.
5. It's loaded up with all the usual consumer market cr*p but you can sit down with the manual for 10 minutes and turn it all off.
6. The thumb wheel that controls shooting modes (single, continuous, self-timer, etc.) is just weird and it's operation is lame.

OVERALL: When that thumb wheel on the back falls off in two months I'll be sorry I bought this camera, in the meantime I have a pocket camera with the 24mm lens I need that allows me full manual control, saves RAW files, has a better than average lens and only cost me $279.00 shipping included.

Here's the samples:

These are full res JPEGS saved from the RAW files. I used the camera's default exposure in all but one of these (-.3 for the hydrangea leaves). Sharpening in the camera is off. Sharpening in the RAW converter is off. I loaded the RAW files in the converter, made no adjustments and saved a TIFF file. I opened the TIFF file in Photoshop, made no adjustments and saved an sRGB JPEG to upload.

1. http://photojoes.org/tl350_test_01.jpg ...Lens at the wide end, hand held.
2. http://photojoes.org/tl350_test_02.jpg ...Lens at the long end, on a tripod. Lens is weakest at the long end. Sharpness is mediocre and edge fall off is pretty bad. NOTE: As I said I've disabled sharpening in the camera as well as the post software.
3. http://photojoes.org/tl350_test_03.jpg ...Lens at the wide end again and hand held.
4. http://photojoes.org/tl350_test_04.jpg ...ISO 1600 and hand held. I bumped the exposure comp on this one down to -.3 to get the shutter speed up a little. Noise/sharpness for a P&S here with a sub-postage stamp size sensor is impressive.
5. http://photojoes.org/tl350_test_05.jpg ...The lens's close focus ability is excellent.
6. http://photojoes.org/tl350_test_06.jpg ...Here's the room interior with the lens at the wide end. Someone should be punished for that barrel distortion -- comes right out in Photoshop though. NOTE: this is at ISO 800 hand held. I engaged the camera's IS for this shot which is probably responsible for the increased CA.

Take Care,
Joe