Samsung GX-1L First Impressions Review

Viewfinder
The GX-1L's viewfinder vignettes a little in the corners, at least for those who wear glasses. It shows a range of shooting data, allowing the user to keep the camera at eye-level. The camera uses a pentamirror with 96 percent coverage, rather than a pentaprism. Pentamirrors are usually darker than prisms, but they are not as heavy and less expensive. They may make it harder to focus the camera manually, but most GX-1L users will likely rely on autofocus.

LCD Screen
Like the *ist DL, the GX-1L sports a 2.5-inch, 210,000 pixel LCD that is bright and has good color. In this first impression review, we did not have the chance to look at it in daylight, and can't judge how well it performs in bright conditions. Indoors, though, it is adequate to judge image quality, though too dark to test how easily the screen solarizes. The GX-1L's top LCD panel is large and easy to read. It shows exposure information and other camera settings including burst mode, meter pattern and so on.

Flash
This GX-1L's pop-up flash has a guide number of 15.6 in meters at ISO 200. That means that it would need a lens set at about f/8 to shoot at 2 meters (about 6.5 feet) at ISO 200. The flash syncs at up to 1/180 of a second. Sync modes include auto, auto with red-eye reduction, manual and manual with red-eye reduction. According to Samsung, it can cover the equivalent of a 28mm lens on 35mm body.

Unfortunately, we did not get an opportunity to informally test the flash. Samsung’s model on the floor at PMA sported an attached external flash with the GX-1L’s flash disabled.

Lens / Mount
The Schneider-Kreuznach kit lens is a D-Xenon 18-55mm f/ 3.5-5.6. It 's equivalent to about a 28-90mm zoom on a 35mm camera. Look for our full review to see how the lens tests out. We will say that we generally regard lenses like this one as the bare minimum that manufacturers can offer. This lens seems mechanically delicate, and we find an f/5.6 maximum aperture very limiting indoors, particularly with a pretty weak flash. Even given the camera's ISO 3200 setting – which seems extremely noisy – shooting in dim available light will be very problematic with this lens.