Hardware
There is no viewfinder on this camera: all previews are shown on the LCD screen
LCD
The LCD screen of the TL500 is very impressive: it is a 3 inch AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic LED) with a resolution of 614k pixels. All of that means that the screen is very bright and very sharp; images look very clean and have good detail. The screen is also on a pivot, so it can be both rotated and flipped, so you can tile the screen to shoot from above, from below or to fold it flat against the camera body.
It can also be flipped out from the camera body, and then rotated by about 270 degrees, meaning it can be used for self portraits or for shootingwith the camera held above or below.
Flash
The TL500 has two options for flash use: you can use the internal flash, or attach an optional flash. The internal flash is located in the top left corner of the camera body in a small housing that pops out of the camera body when you move the flash release slider. We were not able to test the performance of this flash.
The second flash option is the hot shoe, which allows you to attach an optional flash to the camera. However, this does not appear to be compatible with the standard hot shoe used on flashed designed for SLR cameras, so it does not seem to be possible to attach a third party flash to this camera. Samsung did not have details of the available external flash units that will be compatible with this camera.
Lens
The lens of the TL500 is one of the main selling points of the camera: it has a minimum aperture of f/1.8, which is much wider than most point and shoot cameras. That means it can gather more light, which makes for better low light photos. It also means that the camera can have a very short depth of field, which means that you can have an object in the foreground in focus, but the background nice and blurry. The lens has a zoom range of 24mm to 72mm, which represents a 3x zoom range. That's a little shorter than many compact cameras: most others offer 5x or longer zoom ranges. But the ace up the sleeve of this camera is the fact that the lens has a 24mm wide angle; great for shooting landscapes and group shots.
Jacks, Ports & Plugs
There are two ports under a small cover on the right side of the camera body: a compact HDMI port and a multi-purpose port that provides the USB and analog video outputs of the camera. Compact HDMI ports are rather unusual, but there are adapters available that can convert this into a standard HDMI port to connect to your HDTV.
Battery
The TL500 gets its power from a Lithium Ion battery that fits into the bottom of the camera body. This holds about 1130 mAh of power, which is a pretty average amount for a camera of this size. We were not able to test the battery life of the camera, but we hope that the lower power draw of the AMOLED screen means that it will be longer than others. But that remains to be seen: we will know more when we get the camera into our labs for testing.
Memory
SDHC cards are where the TL500 stores its images, although it also includes a small amount of internal memory. The SDHC cards fit into a small slot above the battery, shown in the photo above.
Design & Layout
Design & Appearance
The TL500 has a rather austere look to it; this is a camera that's about taking photos, not looking stylish. But that's what a camera of this type needs, and the design is simple but effective enough to carry it off.
Size & Handling
We found that the TL500 fitted well into the hand, with the large grip on the front of the camera body providing plenty of space for the fingers to grip onto. The index finger falls naturally onto the shutter button, and the zoom control that is located around this is easy to handle; we didn't feel the camera slip when we used it. The two control dials on the top of the camera are also well located for the thumb; we could reach both easily, although this was easier when holding the camera in two hands.
This dual control dial approach means that you can control a lot of options without using the buttons on the back of the camera: you can set the shooting mode, the burst mode, the self timer and the bracketing while holding the camera in one hand. This is the first camera we have seen that has this, and makes this feature-filled camera a very easy one to control.
Two other controls are also new: a control wheel around the 4-way control on the back of the camera, and a small scrolling wheel on the front of the camera. These are used for a number of functions; the front scroll wheel controls exposure compensation and aperture, while the control wheel on the back scrolls through menus and sets the shutter speed. Although it is a little confusing at first, this approach is very useful in manual mode, providing a quick and easy way to set both aperture and shutter speed without having to duck into menus and the like.
Menu
The TL500 uses a new menu interface that looks much like the one found on Samsung camcorders. There are two menu systems on offer: the function menu and the main menu. Pressing the function button on the bottom right corner of the camera accesses the function menu, which controls settings such as ISO, image size, etc.
The second menu is the main menu, accessed by pressing the menu buttons. This controls all of the features of the function menu, plus offering deeper access, such as formatting memory cards,setting focus area, etc.
Ease of Use
We were impressed with the ease of use of the TL500. It's a complicated camera that has a number of complicated features, but we found it to be simple to use and control in our limited time with it at the PMA show. In particular, the dual control dials on the top and the controlwheel on the front make it easy to quickly set the camera up as required.
Modes
Auto Mode
There are a couple of automatic modes on offer: a standard program mode and the Smart mode. The Smart mode is a fully automatic mode; all the user can do there is to set the size of the image. The program mode offers more control, allowing the user to go in and tweak most of the cameras settings, such as white balance, ISO, etc.
Movie Mode
The movie mode of this camera is a huge disappointment; it is limited to shooting standard definition video at a resolution of 640 by 480 pixels. The reasoning behind this escapes us; other cheaper cameras from Samsung can capture high def video (the TL350 can capture 1080p video), but this flagship model is limited to standard definition. That's a big limitation for anyone looking for a do-it-all camera.
Drive/Burst Mode
The TL500 is unusual in putting the burst mode control on one of the top control dials on the camera body; most relegate it to an on-screen menu or a secondary button feature. Samsung didn't give any figures for the speed of the burst mode, but we found it to to be around 2-3 frames a second. However, the model that we looked at was not running the final software, so that will probably change before the camera is finally released.
Playback Mode
A dedicated button on the back of the camera body puts it into playback mode, and photos look great on the big, bright screen. The usual suspects for playing back photos are present: you cancreate slideshows, zoom in up to 10x and sort photos based on what mode they were shot in.
Scene Modes
A good selection of scene modes are available by turning the mode dial to the SCN setting. There are modes called beauty shot, night, portrait, children, landscape, close up, text, sunset, dawn, backlight, fireworks and beach & snow. It seems a little odd that there are separate modes for sunset and sunrise, but that Samsung combined beach & snow mode. But that selection of scene modes should cover most eventualities.
Controls
Manual Controls
You get a lot of manual control features with this camera, including shutter and aperture priority mode and a full manual mode. That's unusual on a point and shoot camera, but is often found on the higher end models like this. However, this is one of the few point & shoots where this mode is actually usable because of the separate control dials for shutter and aperture settings.
Focus
We found the auto focus of this camera to be pretty snappy and responsive in our limited tests of the camera at the PMA show, but we were not able to fully test it. The TL500 includes four focusing modes; a single center spot, multiple focus points, a smart focus mode that uses most of the frame but picks out the interesting things to focus on and a tracking focus mode that tries to keep a moving object in focus.
ISO
The TL500 has a very wide ISO range: from 80 right up to 3200, all at the full 10 megapixel resolution of the camera.
White Balance
The TL500 offers the usual selection of white balance modes and presets, with a full auto mode and presets for sunny, cloudy, two florescent and incandescent. In addition, there is also an evaluative mode and, unusually, a direct entry mode that allows you to enter a white balance mode in degrees Kelvin.
Metering
There are metering modes for evaluative, center weighted and spot metering.
Shutter Speed
The shutter speed range of this camera is also pretty wide: it can go from 4 seconds down to 1/2000 of a second.
Aperture
The TL500 has a very wide aperture range. At the widest, the zoom lens has an aperture of f/1.8, which allows it to gather more light and to isolate objects from the background by creating a small depth of field.
Image Stabilization
Two image stabilization modes are offered; there is an optical stabilizer that moves an element of the lens to correct for camera shake and an electronic mode that increases the shutter speed to minimize shake. The optical system can be turned on or off at will, but the electronic mode is only enabled when the mode dial is set to the Dual OIS mode.
Picture Quality & Size Options
There are a range of image size options, ranging from the 10 megapixel maximum down to VGA resolution (640 by 480 pixels). There are also several image compression options, including a RAW mode that saves the data captured by the image sensor without compressing it. That's unusual on a point & shoot, but it is very welcome; it gives the best image quality and provides the best options for editing the images after capture.
Picture Effects
The TL500 offers a number of special shooting modes: you can use sketch (which turns your photo into a pencil sketch), anti-fog, soft, vivid, forest, retro, cool, calm, classic, negative and custom. In addition, there are three smart filter effects: miniature, vintage, and fish-eye. Miniature uses selective blurring to produce a tilt-shift focus look in your image that looks like it is a miniature model. Vintage produces an effect that looks like a pinhole camera, while fish-eye produces a distortion effect that emulates a fish-eye lens. These are fun, but you can get better effects by processing the images in Photoshop.
Conclusion
Meet the tester
Richard Baguley is a veteran writer who has written about technology ranging from Alphabet to Zip file utilities. He has contributed to pretty much every major tech publication, including Amiga Format Magazine, PC World, Wired, CNET, Toms Guide, Forbes, and many others. He lives in the Boston metro area with his wife, dog, and an indeterminate number of cats.
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