Samsung L73 First Impressions Review

by Richard Baguley
Published on January 08, 2007

Navigation
Intro	Physical Tour
Components	Design / Layout
Modes	Control Options
Image Parameters	Connectivity / Extras
Overall Impressions	Conclusion

Manual Control Options
The L73 provides some manual controls, but it’s really designed more as a point-and-shoot camera. Users cannot manually select shutter speed or aperture settings.

Focus
Auto Focus
The auto focus on the L73 seemed reasonably good in our basic tests at the CES show; it quickly found the appropriate focus spots in less than half a second. We weren’t able to test it in very low light or other situations, but it did seem a little reluctant to focus in on some dark objects against dark backgrounds.

Manual Focus
Manual focus is present, but it is not particularly easy to use. You have to navigate through the on-screen menu and use the Smart Touch slider to change the focus point.

ISO
The L73 has a wide ISO range of 50 to 1600, with stops at 100, 200, 400 and 800 on the way, plus a full automatic setting. That’s a good selection for a compact camera since most stop at an ISO setting of 800. We weren’t able to test what effect the higher ISO settings had on noise, but we would expect to see some at the higher settings. We’ll wait until we have a camera in our test lab before we can see how much there is.

White Balance
The white balance options include the usual full auto mode, plus presets for Daylight, Cloudy, Florescent_H, Florescent_L, Tungsten and a custom preset. The custom preset is an evaluative mode, so you can’t set the white balance value directly.

Exposure
Basic exposure compensation is provided, from two stops under to two stops over in 1/3 stop steps. In the auto mode, this is simplified to a slider that goes from dark to light.

Metering
The usual three metering modes are offered: multi (uses the entire image), spot (uses a small area at the center of the image) and Center Weighted.

Shutter Speed
The L73 has a wide shutter speed range, from 2 seconds right down to 1/2000 of a second. That’s a good range for a compact camera. We did notice some significant shutter lag, though, and the camera was somewhat slow to start up. But, like the drive mode, this may be explained by the pre-production state of the camera. We’ll have to wait for the final version to find out.

Aperture
The Samsung NV lens has an aperture range of f2.8 at the widest to 4.9mm at the telephoto end. There is no way to manually set the aperture, though.