Samsung HZ15W

Viewfinder (0.00)

As with most point-and-shoot cameras, the HZ15W does not have a viewfinder.

Display (4.15)

The LCD is three inch, 230,000-dot model. Not very high resolution, but it’s plenty large.

The Up button alters the information on the screen. You can have just the image, shooting details, shooting details plus function explanations (which are shown when you hit the Fn button) and finally full information, overlaid grid and brightness histogram.

Flash (5.00)

The flash on the HZ15W is very bright, though slow to recharge. The coverage from the strobe was even, and the light dropoff towards the corners was minimal. There was one oddity we hit with this camera, though. Because of the wide-angle lens, depending on how you hold it, it’s very easy to block the light from the flash hitting the lower right corner of the image. If you’re using the flash, be very careful where you put your hands on the grip, and keep your knuckles as far to the right as you comfortably can

The flash can be set to auto, red-eye reduction, auto and red-eye reduction, on, off and slow synchro. Slow synchro uses the flash in conjunction with a longer exposure time, so that both the foreground and background of the shot are exposed correctly. The flash can be set to one of five levels of intensity.

Lens (8.50)

The major selling point of this camera is its 10x zoom lens, with a good wide-angle, packed into a reasonable-sized frame. The focal length of the lens is 4.2-42mm, which is equivalent to a 24-240mm if you were shooting with a 35mm camera. Even though the camera packs a 10x zoom, the maximum telephoto setting isn’t that high. For instance, the Nikon Coolpix S630 only has 7x zoom, but has a greater maximum focal length, so it can actually zoom in further, though it lacks the Samsung’s wide-angle capability.

The aperture range is f/3.3-f/5.8. This isn’t very fast, but it’s fairly standard for this level of zoom.

Zoom Ratio Examples
4.2 mm	16.6 mm	42.0 mm

Battery (6.00)

Samsung rates the battery life of the HZ15W at 280 shots per charge. This is a little low, but not horrible, will still give you a solid weekend of shooting.

One of the interesting little features of the HZ15W is that it doesn’t come with a separate battery charger, but charges via the camera’s USB port, thanks to a USB to AC adapter. This means that you can charge the battery through your computer, or run it through any other USB to power cable adapter you have floating around, saving you one piece of gear to lug around everywhere. Unfortunately, the USB port on the camera is proprietary for charging, so replacement cables may cost a little extra.

Memory (3.00)

The camera takes SD and SDHC cards which are inexpensive, small, high capacity and easy to come by. Sounds like a winning combination to us.

Jacks, Ports & Plugs (5.50)

There are two ports, one on each side of the camera. One is a proprietary I/O port, used for USB, AV and charging the camera. The other is an industry standard mini-HDMI port. While the camera doesn’t come with an HDMI cable, they’re pretty low cost and easy to come by, so it’s easy to pick one up, and plug the camera into your brand new big-screen HDTV.