Product Tour
The TL320 doesn't set out to redesign the wheel, but rather tweaks the design of a standard point-and-shoot slightly, like by adding a larger grip, or the use of analog dials for battery charge and memory.
Front
The front of the TL320 has a distinctive grip against the edge of the camera. You'll notice a small circle beneath the Samsung logo, this is a receiver for an optional remote control. The similar circle beneath the flash is the autofocus assist bulb.
Back
The big new feature of the TL320 is its OLED screen, with 460,000 dots. The primary method of control is a dial, which also acts as a four-way control, and has a series of small dots on it which give a bit of grip. Along the right edge of the camera is a thumb-rest, that provides a little extra grip when not zooming with the small toggle right under your thumb.
Sides
The left and right sides are both barren, though on the right you can see the thumb-rest poking out.
**
Top**
In a rather stylish touch, Samsung have attached small dials to the top of the camera which show the battery level and amount of storage on the memory card. These little analog meters give you an easy and constant reminder of how the camera is doing. Also on top of the camera is the power button, shutter control, and mode dial.
Bottom
Here on the bottom of the camera, you'll find the tripod mount, the sole proprietary port, and the battery and memory card slots.
Hardware
LCD
Unfortunately, the photo below doesn't do the screen justice. It's a 460,000 dot OLED (optical LED) display, which have the advantage of being brighter and using less power than LCDs, as well as providing a greater viewing angle. In our casual and brief use of the camera, we weren't able to discern much of a difference between LCDs and the OLED screen, but we'll have a firmer grasp of this when we get a unit into our labs. As you'll usually find with a point-and-shoot camera, hitting the display button varies the amount of information on the screen, from basic information, to a shooting grid for all information. Oddly, you can't remove all the information and display just the live view.
Flash
The flash can be set to red eye reduction, slow sync, off, on, red eye fix or auto. Flash exposure compensation can be set at ±1EV.
Lens
The lens on the TL320 offers a pretty standard 5x zoom, but has a good 24mm wide-angle focal length. Fully zoomed out, the aperture ranges from f2.8 to f8.0, which is relatively standard. Zooming is controlled by a small slider on the top right of the camera's back, and seems to operate pretty smoothly.
Jacks, Ports & Plugs
Once again, Samsung have decided to provide only a single proprietary port, and to leave it completely uncovered. While this does save some space on the camera body, proprietary cables are expensive to replace, and leaving the port open to the air invites trouble with dust and sand.
Battery
The battery on the TL320 is a Li-Ion unit, but we don't have any specifics about the number of shots it can handle. However, as OLEDs tend to use less power than standard LCDs, you might be able to get a bit more juice out of this camera than normal.
Memory
As with most point-and-shoot cameras, the TL320 uses SD and SDHC cards, which are inexpensive and easy to come by.
Design & Layout
Design & Appearance
The Samsung TL320 is a relatively minor variation on the standard layout of a point-and-shoot camera. They've moved away from using a four-way pad, to a circular dial that can also be clicked like a four-way pad. The camera feels well built, and quite tough.
Size & Handling
The TL320 is 3.8 inches wide (97mm), 2.3 inches high (60mm), and 0.86 inches thick (21.8mm), a standard size for this type of camera. The buttons all feel well made, and the camera has a pleasant heft in the hand. The substantial grip and thumb-pad also provide plenty hold on the body, so you're unlikely to drop it.
Menu
Samsung's new menu system is based around two concentric curves, one showing your current selection, and the other showing the next level of options. It seems quite straightforward, and a little elegant.
Ease of Use
Unfortunately, due to the pre-production nature of the camera, it was hard to judge the user experience of the camera. Once it gets to a more stable iteration of the firmware, we guess it will be pretty straightforward to use.
Modes
Auto Mode
The TL320 has a number of auto modes, including program, smart auto, and dual image stabilization (which uses both optical and digital image stabilizers).
Movie Mode
On the pre-production firmware of the TL320, the movie mode was non-functional. Apparently it can record 720p video using the H.264 compression algorithm.
Drive/Burst Mode
The camera can be set to single shot, five frames per second at reduced resolution, and auto exposure bracketing.
Playback Mode
Once again, due to the unfinished nature of the camera, the playback mode wasn't functioning fully.
Custom Image Presets
On the mode dial of the camera, there's a User mode, which is a manual mode that allows you to store all your settings until you need them at a later date. This includes setting up your own picture style, adjusting image contrast, sharpness, and saturation, and micro-adjustments to white balance presets.
Controls
Manual Controls
Much to our delight, the Samsung TL320 has a complete set of manual controls, letting you tweak almost every facet of the camera to your hearts content.
Focus
The camera can be set to macro, auto or manual focus. In this last mode, focus is controlled using the dial on the camera's back, and the center of screen is blown up to assist in this. If you turn on face detection, you can set it to normal, self-portrait, smile (which will take a photo when it detects one) and blink (which won't snap while your eyes are closed).
ISO
The ISO runs from 80 to 3200, an eminently respectable range.
White Balance
White balance can be set to automatic, daylight, cloud, fluorescentH, fluorescentL, tungsten, custom or manual Kelvin entry. You can also tweak and shift the color space of these settings, which is a feature that we usually only see in SLRs.
Metering
Metering can be set to the usual multi, spot and center weighting.
Shutter Speed
As there are no official spec sheet, we don't currently know the range of shutter speeds.
Aperture
The lens is pretty fast for a point-and-shoot, and at the wide end, the aperture runs from f/2.8 to f/8.0.
Image Stabilization
Optical image stabilization can be turned on and off through the menu, but the TL320 also has a dual image stabilization mode, which uses a proprietary algorithm to electronically stabilize the image.
Picture Quality & Size Options
Images can be set to 4:3, 3:2 and 16:9 aspect ratios, and range in size from 4000 x 3000 pixels down to 1024 x 768. Picture quality runs as superfine, fine and normal.
Picture Effects
On Samsung cameras, these are called Photo Styles. On the TL320, you can shoot normal, soft, vivid, forest, retro, cool, calm, classic or negative modes.
Conclusion
Meet the tester
Tim Barribeau is a valued contributor to the Reviewed.com family of sites.
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