Physical Tour

Front

The main feature on the front of the TL354HD is the lens, a 3.7x zoom that telescopes out of the front of the body in two sections. When the camera is turned off, the lens shrinks down inside the camera body, and a small lens cover protects the front element. Above the lens is the AF assist light, which illuminates the scene so the auto focus can work if there is insufficient natural light. To the left of this is the remote control sensor; a simple shutter remote is included in the package. To the left of this is the hand grip, with the shutter button and the mode dial just visible. At the far side is the wrists trap loop, which was fitted with a security cable on the model we looked at replacing the standard strap.

 

The front of the TK34HD is dominated

by the large telescoping lens

Back

The back of the TL34HD is dominated by the large 3-inch LCD screen, which takes up most of the back of the camera. Because this is a touch screen device, there are only a handful of buttons on the device. To the right of the screen are buttons for (from the top) zooming in and out, accessing the on-screen menu and switching to playback mode. Everything else is controlled through the on-screen touch menu.

Most of the back of the TL34HD is taken up by

the large LCD touch screen

Sides*
*The left side is mainly a feature-free zone, but there are a couple of interesting items. At the top of the case are a number of holes that allow sound to reach the microphones inside the camera body. Above these are a couple of screws that hold the whole thing together; we don't recommend that you remove these until you are looking for an excuse to buy the upgraded model that will be out in a few months; 'Honey, we need a new camera. This one is falling apart.' Our side profile shot also shows the thickness of the camera, and how much the lens sticks out.

On the left side are the holes for the microphone

that records sound in videos**

****The right side only has a couple of screws (see above) and the wrist strap loop.

*The right side is where the strap fits

onto the camera
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Top

The shiny red top of the TH34HD is where the flash and other controls are found. From the left, we can see the rectangle of the pop-up flash, the power button (the small holes to the left of this are for the speaker), the shutter button and the mode dial. The power button is illuminated by a cool blue light when the camera is turned on.

The top of the camera is both handsome and functional.

Bottom

The bottom is a much simpler affair than the top. To the left is the cover for the battery and memory card slot, then the proprietary connector for the USB and A/V port, then the tripod socket. The tripod socket is plastic, but it looks to be robust enough for occasional use.

*The bottom is the home of the battery and memory card, plus

the proprietary USB and A/V connector
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Components

Viewfinder

The TL34HD has no viewfinder; everything is done through the 3-inch LCD screen.

LCD Screen

Because pretty much everything goes through the LCD screen, it is important that it works well. Fortunately, it seems to do so; the 3-inch screen is very clear and bright. With 460,000 pixels, it is not the sharpest we have seen, but it is very acceptable, with enough sharpness to accurately judge if a photo is in focus. The screen is a touch screen, and we found that it had decent accuracy. We were able to hit buttons on the screen and move sliders without any major issues.

*The LCD screen of the TL34HD is the main interface to

control the camera***Flash
**When needed, the flash of the TL34HD pops up from the top of the camera. When it is not needed, it fits right inside the case; there is nothing that is popping out that is likely to get caught or torn off. We weren't able to do much testing on the flash, but it is a little close to the lens, which might cause some issues with red eye. However, the camera offers both a series of pre-flashes and post-processing that can make your children and pets looks slightly less like they were possessed by Satan.

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The flash is a little close to the lens for comfort

**Lens **
The lens of the TL34HD is a 3.7x Schneider- Kreuznach with a native focal length of 6mm - 21.6mm. That works out at a 35mm film camera equivalent of 28 - 102mm, which is a decent range for a small, thin camera. The wide angle is good;  28mm is wide enough to capture group shots with no problem, and we like to see cameras that offer more at the wide end of the zoom.

The lens offers a nice zoom range for a small, skinny camera..

Connections
This is a slight limitation of this camera; although it has the usual USB and A/V outputs for connecting to a PC or a standard-definition TV, these require a proprietary cable that comes with the camera. If you lose this, you have to buy a new one from Samsung. There is also no HDMI output as standard; to connect this camera to an HDTV and get the full benefit, you'll need to buy the optional dock which includes a HDMI port.

Battery
The TL34HD is juiced up by a slim 1100mAh battery that fits in the battery cavity on the bottom of the camera, alongside the memory card. Samsung claim that the battery life of the camera will be about 100 minutes when shooting photos every 30 seconds or so with a  mixture of flash on and off, but we were unable to test this at the Photokina show. The battery is charged either through the USB cable or with the included power adapter. This is an unusual, and welcome feature; it means that you can use your laptop to charge the battery, so you don't have to carry the power adapter with you on a trip.   

Some caution is required when inserting the symmetrical battery

into the camera to make sure it's right-side up.**Memory**

The TL34HD takes SD and SDHC memory cards, which fit into the memory card slot just above the battery. SDHC cards are much smaller than their CompactFlash cousins, and Samsung guarantees compatibility with cards up to 8GB capacity. Bigger cards will probably work as well, though.  ******

Other Features**
*Face Detection & Smile Shot *– The TL34HD has several smile detection features. It can track faces and focus on them, as well as holding off picture-taking until it detects that the subject is smiling. We tried the latter feature, and it didn't seem to make much difference; the shutter took the photo at the same time with it on and off. However, we are naturally happy people who smile a lot, so it might just be us.

Blink Detection* - *This feature quickly analyzes the photo after it is taken, and if a blink is detected, it takes three more photos in rapid succession, the idea being that there should be at least one shot where the subject is not blinking. It will not, however, do anything about your four-year-old nephew who insists on picking his nose in every family photo.

Beauty Shot* - *If your subject is less than perfect looking, this feature can try and hide their aesthetic challenges by processing the skin tone to hide blemishes. Two options are available; skin brightness and facial imperfections, and there are three levels of processing for each. Our brief experiments with this mode didn't show much difference with the feature on or off, but that may be because we all have perfect, clear and soft skin, with no imperfections (a job requirement). We also have clear, bright eyes and good teeth and gaze confidently into the future, so we will reserve judgment on this feature until we can find someone without our dashing good looks to try it on. Sometimes beauty is a curse.

Design / Layout

Model Design / Appearance
The TL34HD is definitely an attractive camera; the thin profile and big screen will make it a talking point at parties. And we liked the different color schemes that are available, as the color accent on the top adds a touch of style without being garish. At about 6.4 ounces (181g) and just 0.78 inches (18mm) thick, the TL34HD is not the smallest camera out there, but it is definitely pocket-friendly.

Size and Handling

The TL34HD fits comfortably into the hand, with the shutter button falling under the index finger. However, the zoom controls are poorly placed, as they did not fall under the thumb. And moving the thumb to reach them meant that the camera slipped, so we found ourselves using two hands if we had to adjust the zoom. The touch-screen menu also means that you will need both hands if you want to change any settings on the camera. So, one hand is fine if you just want to point and shoot, but two will be needed if you want to zoom or change the settings.

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• The zoom control of the TL34HD does not fit
  

comfortably under the thumb

Menu
The TL34HD uses an on-screen touch menu, which can be both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that it means there are a minimal number of buttons, but the curse is that it can be a pain if the touch screen does not work well. We found that the blessing generally outweighed the curse here; the touch screen was responsive to a light touch and seemed to be accurate in our limited testing. To change the features of the camera (such as the exposure mode or the face detection mode), you touch the icons around the edge of the screen. To access the main menu, you hit the menu button. In either case, the options then appear on screen, and you can use a touch to select, or the on-screen scroll bar to move down the list. Overall, the menu system seems well designed, if a little complex. Using on-screen icons does make the screen look somewhat cluttered, but it provides for quick access.

 
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• Ease of Use
  

Overall, we found the TL34HD to be a mostly easy to use camera. The touch-screen approach is mostly well executed, and puts the settings you need to change mostly within easy reach. The zoom control is a problem, though, since it can't be comfortably used with one hand.

Modes

Auto Mode**
The Auto mode of the TL34HD does exactly what you would expect; set the camera to Auto and the camera takes control, leaving only leaving the zoom setting for the user to fiddle with. We weren't able to do extensive testing of the auto mode, but it seemed to make good decisions in our limited experience. A program mode is also available, which lets the user change things such as the ISO setting, exposure mode, etc, but the camera makes decisions on the shutter speed and aperture settings.

Movie Mode
One of the big selling points of the TL34HD is that is shoots high definition videos at 1280 x 720 resolution. That's somewhat less than a dedicated camcorder, though; most modern camcorders record that 1920 x 1080 resolution. At its maximum resolution, the TL34HD video is also interlaced; the camera only captures 30 frames a second, while many cameras can capture 60. In fact, the TL34HD can capture 60 frames per second video, but only at the lower 320 x 240 resolution.

We found the video mode to be generally straightforward and easy to use. However, to enjoy the full resolution of the video, you will need to spend a bit extra on the optional dock, as the TL34HD does not come with a digital video output as standard equipment. The optional dock adds an HDMI port and allows the camera to output 1080i video.

Drive / Burst Mode**
Samsung claims that the TL34HD can capture three photos every two seconds for a frame rate of 1.5 frames per second. The maximum number of photos that can be taken at this speed is 30. These are acceptable, but not outstanding numbers; lots of cameras are slower than this, but there are plenty that are faster. However, these tend to be much more expensive than the TL34HD, so it's a pretty acceptable compromise. If you really need a higher speed, the M Capture mode can snap up to 30 frames per second, but at a much reduced one-megapixel resolution.

Playback Mode
The TL34HD has a good selection of features for playing back and editing photos; you can look at thumbnails of up to 9 photos, then  easily set up a slideshow. Some limited editing tools are also available; images can be rotated, cropped, colorized and resized. A number of automatic processing tools are also available for correcting exposure errors or removing red-eye, as well as retrospectively applying the beauty touch processing that tries to remove skin blemishes.

Custom Image Presets**
A wide selection of scene modes are available; 15 in all, including the usual suspects of portrait, night and fireworks. These can be accessed by setting the mode dial to Scene, then touching the scene mode button on-screen and selecting the desired one. A brief text explanation also appears, politely suggesting what the mode would be good for.

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Control Options

Manual Control Options
The TL34HD has a limited, but usable set of manual controls. To use this, you rotate the mode dial to M, then set the shutter and aperture directly. However, you cannot alter both easily; you have to do one, then the other. There is no shutter or aperture priority mode; you just get the choice of program, a scene mode or full manual

Focus
Auto Focus
We found the auto focus of the TL34HD to be generally responsive in our tests; the camera quickly found the right focus point in the well-lit conference hall at Photokina. However, it did seem to have some issues when we tried to focus on the darker parts of the hall, hunting for the focus but sometimes failing. We'll need to do more tests before we can decide if this is a real issue or just a quirk of the lighting.

ISO
The ISO range goes from 80 at the low end up to 1600. An option for 3200 is available, but the resolution is then restricted to 3 megapixels. That's a decent range which should allow for shooting in most lighting situations, and there is also an Auto mode, where the camera makes the call.
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White Balance**
A limited number of white balance settings is available; daylight, cloudy, Fluorescent_H, Fluorescent_L, Tungsten and a custom setting that comes from a photo of a white object. Again, that should be more than enough for most users; most will simply set this on auto and not worry about it. 

Metering
Options for multi, spot and center-weighted metering are available. If the face detection mode is enabled, the camera will use the detected faces to meter against. 

Shutter Speed
In the auto mode, the shutter speed can range from 1/2000 of a second down to 1 second. This gets slightly expanded to 4 seconds in the firework scene mode. That's a pretty typical spread for a point-and-shoot camera like this.

Aperture
The aperture of the zoom lens goes from f/2.8 at the wide setting to f/5.9 at the telephoto end. The telephoto end is a little too small; you might have difficulty taking low-light shots with the zoom extended, as it won't gather as much light. Samsung did not specify the minimum aperture.

**Image Stabilization
**The  TL34HD offers two image stabilization modes; an electronic mode that boosts the ISO and shutter speed, and an optical stabilization mode that moves an element of the lens to compensate for camera shake. Both of these modes can be enabled by setting the mode dial to the Dual setting, or one or the other can be enabled from the on-screen menu in most other modes. We were not able to test the efficacy of this, but we generally find that optical image stabilization produces better results.

Picture Quality / Size Options
The TL34HD offers three options for image quality; Super Fine, Fine or Normal. The options for image size range from the maximum of 4384 x 3266 pixels down to 1024 x 7688. At the highest quality and size, Samsung estimates that a 1GB memory card will hold 136 images.

Picture Effects Mode
A number of picture effects modes are on offer; you can set a number of photo styles (Normal, Soft, Vivid, Forest, Retro, Cool, Calm or Classic) or shoot in any one of seven color modes (Normal, B & W, Sepia, Blue, Red, Green or Negative). The sharpness, contrast and saturation of any of these modes can be tweaked by the user as well.

Conclusion

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Conclusion**

Samsung made a couple of odd choices with the TL34HD. For one, it can shoot high definition video, but does not come with a high definition video output by default; you have to pay extra for the dock connector to get HDMI output. This seems like an odd choice for a camera advertised with the slogan 'capture life in HD.' The placement of the zoom button is also poor. It is very awkward to use the camera with one hand. Plus, the lack of a dedicated shutter or aperture priority mode seems like an odd omission; it would have been easy to include both, and it would have made sense for an advanced point-and-shoot like this.

But there are lots of things to like about this camera. It has a clean, stylish look, and the touch screen menu is well designed and easy to use. We were not able to test the image quality of the TL34HD, but other recent Samsung cameras (such as the Samsung NV40) have provided good image performance. We'll have to wait and see how this ones does when we get it into the lab, but the signs look good. Overall, the TL34HD appears to be a good deal for someone wanting an easy-to-use point-and-shoot with high resolution and some flexibility. Priced at around $330, the TL34HD offers a lot of performance bang for the buck.

Specs

**Specs Table
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