Samsung TL240

Manual Controls

The TL240 is generous with its manual control options for a compact camera, including program autoexposure, shutter-priority, aperture-priority and full manual exposure modes. You can also manually adjust sharpness, color and saturation using a sliding scale.And manual exposure compensation is available in a ±@ EV range.

Focus

The focus system can be set for multipoint or center autofocus. Face detection is available, including a 'smart': option that lets you store important faces in memory and prioritize them while shooting. Object tracking is also available, and even in the prototype it did a good job of following a moving subject after latching on. Additional face detection functions include smile shutter, which waits to take a photo until it recognizes a smiling face, and blink detection, which lets you know if somebody shut their eyes when you hit the shutter.

While manual focus in the traditional sense isn't available, there is a cool use of the touch-screen here: by touching a subject on the screen, you can tell the camera to focus on it.

The TL240 is a good choice if you're interested in getting up close and personal with your subjects (say coins in a collection, or small stuff destined for eBay). Normal macro mode focuses down to 10cm, and Super macro lets you get a cozy 1cm away.

ISO

Full-resolution ISO settings range from ISO 80-4800, with ISO 6400 available at a reduced 3 megapixel resolution. You can set the ISO manually or let the camera do it in Auto ISO mode.

White Balance

Available white balance settings include Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, FluorescentH, FluorescentL, and Tungsten. You can also take a custom white balance reading.

Metering

Multisegment, center-weighted and spot metering are supported. If using face detection, the camera will meter for a face if it finds one.

Shutter Speed

When setting the shutter speed manually, your choices range from 16 seconds to 1/2000 second. The autoexposure system will go down to 1/8 second unless you're shooting in the Night or iFreworks scene mode, in which case it can hit 8 and 16 seconds respectively.

Aperture

The 7x zoom lens has a maximum aperture of f/3.3 at its widest setting and f/5.5 at maximum telephoto.

Image Stabilization

The camera offers optical image stabilization, plus a variant of auto mode that adds electronic stabilization for particularly rocky shooting situations, presumably at the expense of additional image noise (though we could not test this on our preproducton sample.

Picture Quality & Size Options

There is a wide selection of available shooting size options: 14M (4344 x 3256), 12M (4240 x 2826), 10M (4240 x 2385), 8M (3264 x 2448), 5M (2592 x 1944), 3M (2048 x 1536), 2M (1920 x 1080) and 1M (1024 x 768). RAW shooting is not supported.

Picture Effects

There is a nice variety of color shooting effects, including Soft, Vivid, Forest, Retro, Cool, Calm, Classic, Negative, Custom and Pencil Drawing (some effects listed in the camera specs weren't implemented in our pre-production camera, some were). There are also a few 'Smart Effects' which make a photo subject look like a toy-sized miniature, produce a vintage effect, or product two levels of fish-eye distortion.