Samsung HZ15W

Auto Mode

The Samsung HZ15W has three auto modes, Auto, Smart Auto and Program modes. Each of these can be activated using the mode dial on top of the camera, with a nice on-screen indicator that tells you what the mode does. The short explanation is that Auto mode takes most decisions out of your hands, but doesn't get fancy with anything.

Auto mode will take most of the options out of your hands.

Smart Auto does try to get fancy, as it attempts to recognize the type of shot you're trying to take and picks the appropriate scene mode for you. Program mode takes aperture and shutter speed decisions out of your hands, but lets you adjust pretty much anything else.

Smart Auto select the scene mode for you.

Movie Mode

Just like the HZ10W and most of its competitors the Samsung HZ15W supports 720p HD video recording at a maximum resolution of 1280 x 720 and 30 frames per second. One place where the HZ15W does differ from its predecessor is that you have a built-in Mini-HDMI port on this camera. This means you can output full HD video and audio to your television. You can also capture video at 640 x 480 and 320 x 240.

720p video capture is done at a 16:9 aspect ratio.

Drive/Burst Mode

You can change drive settings in the Function menu, with four different high-speed shooting options: Continuous, High-Speed, Motion Capture and Auto Exposure Bracketing. Unfortunately Samsung has not released any information about the maximum frames per second you can expect from the camera, but we wouldn't expect anything too impressive.

There are several drive modes available.

Playback Mode

Playback mode on the Samsung HZ15W is pretty standard. You enter playback by hitting the dedicated button just below and to the left of the 4-way controller. Once there you are greeted by a full-screen view of your latest photo. Use left/right the 4-way to move between photos and press up on the 4-way to toggle various display information for the photo. You can also zoom into the photo or zoom out to a thumbnail view using the zoom toggle. You're editing options are solid, you can rotate, resize, adjust color, fix red-eye and adjust brightness, saturation and contrast.

Playback mode can show you a lot of information about your photo.

Custom Image Presets

The Samsung HZ15W offers a variety of scene modes, most of which are accessed by turning the mode dial to Scene and selecting the appropriate scene mode from the menu. The one scene mode that has found it's way onto the mode dial is Beauty Shot, for reasons that we can't explain. We were looking at a pre-production mode so this may change before release. When you have the mode dial switched to Scene you can select any of the following scene modes from the menu: Frame Guide, Night, Portrait, Children, Landscape, Close Up, Text, Sunset, Dawn, Backlight, Firework, Beach & Snow, Self-Shot, Food, and Cafe.

You'll have to go into the main menu to switch scene modes.