Samsung TL500

Manual Controls

You get a lot of manual control features with this camera, including shutter and aperture priority mode and a full manual mode. That's unusual on a point and shoot camera, but is often found on the higher end models like this. However, this is one of the few point & shoots where this mode is actually usable because of the separate control dials for shutter and aperture settings.

The shooting screen of the TL500 shows a wide range of information

Focus

We found the auto focus of this camera to be pretty snappy and responsive in our limited tests of the camera at the PMA show, but we were not able to fully test it. The TL500 includes four focusing modes; a single center spot, multiple focus points, a smart focus mode that uses most of the frame but picks out the interesting things to focus on and a tracking focus mode that tries to keep a moving object in focus.

ISO

The TL500 has a very wide ISO range: from 80 right up to 3200, all at the full 10 megapixel resolution of the camera.

The ISO control menu of the TL500

White Balance

The TL500 offers the usual selection of white balance modes and presets, with a full auto mode and presets for sunny, cloudy, two florescent and incandescent. In addition, there is also an evaluative mode and, unusually, a direct entry mode that allows you to enter a white balance mode in degrees Kelvin.

Metering

There are metering modes for evaluative, center weighted and spot metering. 

Shutter Speed

The shutter speed range of this camera is also pretty wide: it can go from 4 seconds down to 1/2000 of a second. 

Aperture

The TL500 has a very wide aperture range. At the widest, the zoom lens has an aperture of f/1.8, which allows it to gather more light and to isolate objects from the background by creating a small depth of field. 

Image Stabilization

Two image stabilization modes are offered; there is an optical stabilizer that moves an element of the lens to correct for camera shake and an electronic mode that increases the shutter speed to minimize shake. The optical system can be turned on or off at will, but the electronic mode is only enabled when the mode dial is set to the Dual OIS mode.

Picture Quality & Size Options

There are a range of image size options, ranging from the 10 megapixel maximum down to VGA resolution (640 by 480 pixels). There are also several image compression options, including a RAW mode that saves the data captured by the image sensor without compressing it. That's unusual on a point & shoot, but it is very welcome; it gives the best image quality and provides the best options for editing the images after capture.

Picture Effects

The TL500 offers a number of special shooting modes: you can use sketch (which turns your photo into a pencil sketch), anti-fog, soft, vivid, forest, retro, cool, calm, classic, negative and custom. In addition, there are three smart filter effects: miniature, vintage, and fish-eye. Miniature uses selective blurring to produce a tilt-shift focus look in your image that looks like it is a miniature model. Vintage produces an effect that looks like a pinhole camera, while fish-eye produces a distortion effect that emulates a fish-eye lens. These are fun, but you can get better effects by processing the images in Photoshop.