Samsung EX2F Digital Camera Review

Sharpness

We're calling shenanigans on the EX2F's sharpness.

The vast majority of compact cameras employ edge enhancement to make their shots seem sharper. This is a way of faking performance using software, which manifests itself as black lines and white halos along high-contrast edges, and doesn't represent the true performance of the lens. This is sort of an unfortunate truth when it comes to compact cameras, and we've learned to live with it, as long as overshapening doesn't exceed 5% or so.

But never before have we seen a camera use such overwhelmingly drastic software enhancement. For photo geeks, we recorded the EX2F at as much as a 9% undershoot and 40% overshoot, meaning edges appear almost 50% sharper than they actually are. If you don't care about the numbers, what this means is that all your fine details and clean edges will be surrounded by an unnatural glowing halo that's very bright and extends about five pixels wide.

It's a shame, because we have a feeling the EX2F does have a legitimately sharp lens, just nowhere near the performance suggested by the software. More on how we test sharpness.

Image Stabilization

The EX2F features optical image stabilization, however the functionality is rather irrelevant, since maximum zoom is only 3.3x and the aperture opens up to F1.4. Still, we left stabilization turned on when we weren't testing, and couldn't detect any drop in image quality.