Samsung TL500

Shooting Modes (16.00)

The TL500 offers plenty of control over the shooting process, with a wide range of shooting modes. Twisting the mode dial to the Smart setting turns the camera into a true point and shoot, as the camera automatically picks a scene mode. The only control the user gets is picking the image size and turning the flash on or off. Program mode provides more control, and aperture and shutter priority put the user in the driving seat. Serious photographers will set the camera to the full manual mode, where the user gets control over shutter speed, aperture and all other settings.

Auto Mode Features

Focus – We found the AF system to be generally responsive and quick to find the right point, although it did sometimes swim a bit in low light. It also offers a good face detection system which can detect up to 10 faces in a frame. It can also detect smiles and even individual faces. Those you want to make sure are in focus can also be set as favorite faces, and the camera will detect and focus in on those particular faces.

Exposure – The TL500 offers a wide selection of tools for controlling the exposure of the camera, including the ability to apply 2 stops of exposure compensation, in one third of a stop steps. The exposure compensation is controlled with the EV dial on the front of the camera body.

In addition, the TL500 can capture 3 bracketed frames using either white balance or exposure bracketing. The camera can also use the bracketing feature to capture 9 images using all of the photo styles options it offers with a single press of the shutter button.

Metering – The usual options are on offer here: there are multi, center weighted and spot metering modes available.

Self-Timer – The TL500 offers the standard 2 and 10-second delays, plus a face detect mode that can be used to take a self-portrait when you are correctly framed. Support is also offered for an optional remote, but there is no support for interval shooting or other customizable self-timer modes, which is disappointing.

Scene Modes

The TL500 also offers a decent selection of scene modes (12 in total) that are available from the SCN spot on the mode dial. These scene modes cover a wide variety of shooting situations, including Beauty Shot (which softens skin tones), Night, Portrait, Children and Landscape. In addition, the dual IS mode available from the mode dials uses both electronic and optical stabilization.

Picture Effects (2.00)

The TL500 offer three special effects modes, called Smart Filter. Examples of these are shown below. These can also be applied to images after they have been captured.

Picture Samples
Miniature Vignetting Fish-eye More...

Manual Controls (9.20)

Focus – In the manual mode, you control the focus point with up and down on the directional pad, and the screen shows an enlarged part of the center of the screen. There are also four options for the focus area: center, multi (9-point), selection and tracking. The first two are pretty straightforward, but the selection option allows you to set a particular point in the frame to focus on by moving the target around the center two thirds of the image. The tracking option will try and keep the object in the center of the frame in focus as it moves around the frame, and we found that it worked well, although it was unable to track very fast moving objects, or those that changed shape (such as a person turning around).

White Balance – A decent selection of white balance controls are offered: 5 presets, auto, evaluative and an option to enter the color temperature in degrees kelvin directly. The latter is unusual on a point & shoot, but could be useful.

Aperture – As befits a camera with extensive manual controls, the TL500 offers a good aperture range and control over how to use it. At the wide angle zoom setting, the lens offers a very wide f/1.8 aperture, which is great for gathering a lot of light and keeping the depth of field short. The aperture priority and manual modes also make it easy to control the aperture.

Shutter Speed – In auto mode, the shutter speed range of this camera is from 1/8 to 1/1500 of a second. That gets extended to 1 second in program mode, 8 seconds in the night scene mode and 16 seconds in aperture, shutter priority and manual modes. That’s a wide enough range for most uses, although it would have been nice to have a faster speed to freeze objects in motion.

Drive/Burst Mode (4.00)

The TL500 offers two drive modes: single shot or continuous. In the latter mode, the camera keeps taking photos for as long as the shutter is held down, until the camera runs out of memory. There are no variable or higher speed modes.

Shot to Shot (1.47)

Shooting in the continuous mode in the highest JPEG quality and resolution, the TL500 managed to capture an average of 1.4 frames per second. That’s a little on the low side, but it is adequate for capturing many things, and it is good that it is unlimited: using a 4GB SDHC card, we found the camera had no problem at all capturing continuously at this speed until the card filled up.