1. Easy & Enjoy

Intelligent Camera PL55 remembering my precious day

Various functions, ultra wide angle lens, ultra slim design, etc. They were good, but I was wondering I really needed them. After buying a high level expensive camera, we actually didn’t use all of the functions of the camera a lot of times. Just expensive cameras mean nothing. Normally, we just take a picture for fun with it. Considering a practical camera to take a life, an auto compact camera like the PL series from Samsung is the best. Just by pushing the shutter, the PL55 takes a great picture and it fulfills the needs of customers properly.

Interesting functions, easy control, and great quality

Holding the PL55 for a day, the camera makes me have a question like “Do I need a more expensive camera?”. Everything such as Smart Auto, Perfect Portrait, and various additional functions is great enough. For my parents, a trip with friends, a diary, it’s so nice. The PL55 following the PL50 has a stronger optical 5x zoom lens and all the additional functions of Samsung cameras with a simple interface and satisfactory results. It will be a popular model in 2009.

Vivid image and optical 5x zoom lens

The biggest change is the optical 5x zoom lens. Recently, cameras supports optical 5x zoom rather than optical 3x zoom. As it says, zooming is quite important when taking shots outdoors. 24.5mm of thickness which is not that slim is because of the lens. Actually, the image quality is quite great from wide to telephoto angle, and the slightly thick body provides a better grip. However, I don’t like that there’s no OIS.

Maximum Wide angle                            

                                                          100% cropped original

Optical 3x zoom                                 

Optical 5x zoom maximum telephoto angle                           

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Maximum telephoto angle + Digital zoom

The F value is rather large in wide angle, and Macro mode is 10cm according to the specification, but the actual Macro was better than that.

Great Grip, Strong and colorful metal design

A little thick and circular appearance is familiar and comfortable. The strong metal design gives more luxurious feeling. By adding a little volume on the front grip, the grip becomes more stable. AF and built-in flash are located on the front top and a microphone is below. The combination of a black barrel and body color looks so elegant. It comes with silver, blue, red, and black colors. I think men will prefer black and silver, while women like red and blue.

The design of the top is accented by black lines and slightly dented, so when your thumb is on a button, you feel comfortable. From the left side, a power button, speaker, and shutter button are located.

Intelligent 6.86cm(2.7”) 230K pixels LCD

The LCD is a recent standard 6.86cm (2.7”) 230K pixels for compact digital cameras. It has smooth frames and vivid quality. Viewing angle from left, right, and down side is great, a shot with various angels is possible. The color is cool. Even though there’s some rough noise on very dark spots, the overall quality is really good. Brightness can be set to Auto, dark, normal, and bright, but the Auto spends a little more battery. However, there’s no histogram or 3 division guide lines.

Lever type zoom button, Mode dial, and other buttons are ideally arranged. Mode dial consists of Smart Auto, Beauty shot, and Advanced DIS mode making up the absence of OIS.

Long battery life up to 320 shots

The battery is SLB-10A(1050mAh) Li-Ion battery which is the same model as the PL50. On CIPA standard, it can take up to 320 pictures. Actually, it could last for a day. However, it takes 180 minutes to charge it fully. Up to 8GB of SD/SDHC memory is supported.

Dual charge with AC adaptor and USB cable

Through the USB/AV/DC port, data transfer and recharge are possible. It’s a very convenient way to charge.

2. Smart Auto

Just push the shutter on Smart Auto

The Smart Auto mode is getting better. Taking shots with the Smart Auto mode, it automatically recognizes the scene and gives a perfect shot under any circumstances. In a backlight situation, ACB compensating dark spots is applied, and when recognizing faces, the Face Recognition function is automatically applied, so you don’t have to worry about selecting a mode for scenery or portrait.

Smart Screen

Smart Auto can recognize 11 different kinds of scenes such as Scenery, White, Night Scenery, Night Portrait, Backlight, Backlight Portrait, Macro, Macro Text, Tripod, and Action. Compared to 16 scenes of the more expensive ST series, 11 modes are enough to cover almost all situations. When taking with Smart Auto, the camera automatically selects the most appropriate scene depending on the current environment and subject. Let’s take a closer look at the Smart green icon on the top. It keeps changing by the scene.

Program Auto

Smart Auto – Recognized as Backlight, dark spots become brighter

Program Auto

Smart Auto – Recognized as Backlight Portrait, brighter exposure is set.

By using a tripod, when taking with Night Scenery, it automatically changes to the Tripod mode. At this time, ISO 160 is automatically set and shutter speed goes to proper exposure. If you want longer exposure, you can use Night Scenery mode from the scene mode which allows up to 8 sec of exposure.

From Smart Auto, you can only set the size and flash. One thing you should understand is to use it indoors. You don’t know when the flash pops, so you’d better check the current flash setting all the time.

Smart Auto mode – Smart Flash On

Smart Auto mode – Flash Off

Just follow the instruction of the shooting guide.

The shooting guide is a special function for beginners. Judging the current situation, following the tree structure, and the camera sets the most appropriate settings and takes a shot.

File Manager ‘Smart Album’

Smart Album helps users sort files by various items and watch them. When in the play mode, by clicking the zoom button to downward for a while, Smart Album is executed. Files can be sorted by type (Photos, Videos, and voices), date, week, and color. It takes a little while to initialize, but once running it, it’s so fast to search and play. And the color sorting function is so special.

Smart Play

Smart Play (Multi Thumbnail)

3. Perfect Portrait

My beautiful face, ‘Beauty Shot’

When we didn’t sleep well or drank a lot, people can recognize it from our faces. Besides, sometimes a big pimple on our face bothers a lot. Women are afraid to show their no-make up face to others. If you get used to a cell phone camera which deletes flaws on your face, you need Beauty shot of Samsung cameras. The PL55 also supports the Beauty shot function with 3 levels of intensity. Level 3 might be too much, so I recommend you to use up to level 2.

Without any editing work, retouching is made only by the camera. The PL55 has Beauty Shot in the mode dial, so you can easily set it. The intensity can be set with the Fn button, and Self Guide can also be applied to the Beauty Shot mode.

Perfect Portrait System

The Perfect Portrait function includes all the fun and smart functions such as Self guide, Smile shot, and Blink detection.

Smile Shot

Smile Shot catches the moment of smiling and takes an automatic shot without touching the shutter. This can also be used as an alternative to Self Timer. I think the smile detection is getting better. You’d better not use this function under a backlight condition, because backlight can degrade the smile detection. Macro mode is the best way to reduce the failure rate to set focus.

Face Recognition taking with the best exposure

Face Recognition is a system to set appropriate exposure on faces. It compensates exposure according to the light condition, so it allows the camera to set appropriate exposure under any circumstances.

Self Guide

Self Guide is a function to make a beep sound when a face is in the center. It helps users take a self shot without any help from others and also can be used for Beauty Shot. The closer the face is to the center, the higher the tone of the sound.

Preventing blink, Blink Detection

Let others take you ‘Frame Guide’

Frame Guide is used when asking someone to take a picture of you. It helps take a shot with the composition you like. It can be set from the Scene mode. Once you set the composition you want by taking a shot, then the other person can take a shot with looking at the background around the transparent frames.

Continuous shots with AEB

Strong Retouching function

It takes a little more time when using Beauty Shot, so it’s also good to use beauty or color retouching. By looking through pictures you have taken, you can make more perfect images.

Original

Skin fix (Level +2)

Original

Custom RGB

Brightness, Color, Saturation, and Contrast can be applied, so you can make disappointing pictures much better.

4. 12.2M & Shooting

High resolution 12.2 Mega pixels photo

The biggest advantage of the PL55 is the great resolution and high quality image. There’s slight quality degradation in certain spots, but the quality is better than the higher price models in some points. It also has stable balance with less noise at both high and low ISO.

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Maximum Wide angle

    Central                                         Surroundings

Medium angle

    Central                                         Surroundings

Maximum telephoto angle

    Central                                         Surroundings

Because it was a sample product, not an official model, it’s not easy to analyze detailed quality, but considering the 1/2,33” CCD 12.2M pixels, it’s quite great. Especially, the central resolution is the best among 12M pixels cameras I’ve been used recently. Detailed expression in the maximum telephoto angle is better than higher price digital cameras.

ISO 1600 is fully supported without size decrease, and ISO 3200 is possible with 3M size. Up to ISO 800 can be normally used. Thinking of poster size development, ISO 400 is the limit. Smoothing technology of Samsung is getting much better. Considering recent trends such as blog, it rather concentrates on smoothing images without noise than sustaining details. I think ISO 1600 is also good to use.

Photo Style Selector

Photo Style Selector from Samsung is always supported. I think Samsung provides the most various photo styles. The PL55 supports 9 photo styles and Custom RGB with contrast, saturation, and sharpness compensation.

The most suitable mode for Portrait is Normal and Calm. Classic offers strong black or white pictures. If you want more saturation, you can adjust the saturation. You can change color feeling by using Custom RGB.

Advance DIS (Digital Image Stabilization)

There’s no optical or mechanical image stabilization, but it supports Advanced DIS fixing hand blur. This function is not just securing more shutter speed by increasing ISO or combining short and long shutters, but taking 1 shot with a high speed shutter and eliminating noise. Therefore, it allows you less saturation decrease and less time to save. It takes a shot with relatively high ISO, but also with great image quality. It allows you both no hand blur and image quality.

Comfortable and Stable color Balance

Color of Samsung is so comfortable. Stability of White Balance is very good, and color of portrait shots also makes people happy. It’s so pretty. Probably, Samsung tries to make color feeling for Koreans.

The PL55 supports various White Balance modes. It even supports Custom white balance, so users can modify colors from different light sources.

Enjoy the moment! High speed continuous shots, ‘Motion Capture’

The PL55 takes high speed continuous shots with 648x480 size and users can make a GIF file with them. 6~30 shots per sec can be taken.

ACB for details of dark and bright spots

ACB (Auto Contrast Balance) of Samsung is for more smooth pictures when taking Scenery shots under high contrast or Portrait shots under a backlight condition. It’s good for beginners to turn it on all the time. Actually, we can see the scenery with ACB is smoother, because it makes the combination of dark and bright spots more natural.

Good quality Video

Videos can be recorded with SD quality 640x480 size 30 fps. The file format is Motion JPEG and the quality is good, but the size is rather big. However, optical 5x zoom can be used and continuous focusing is also good. When it comes to additional functions, it’s kind of better than other models which don’t support zooming while recording a video. But voice can’t be recorded while zooming and IS is not supported.

Video with zoom [DOWN]

Maximum telephoto zoom video [DOWN]

Spot Photometry

Photometry is to set proper exposure by considering scenery and colors in the box. Therefore, if a subject gets bright light while background is dark, the camera can’t express details due to over exposure. Spot Photometry can be used at this moment to make too dark spots bright or too bright spots alive.

Multi Pattern Photometry                            Spot Photometry      

The sample has a dark background with strong light. Let’s use the Spot Photometry. The Spot Photometry concentrates on the small subject on the center and makes the exposure for that spot.

Easy and Simple Korean standard auto compact digital camera

Considering the normal usage of cameras, I don’t think we need more functions than this. To be honest, I haven’t even used some functions. It’s good to have some necessary functions, not difficult and complicated functions. Smart Auto allowing clean and bright shots, 5x zoom lens, Beauty shot for women, good video recording. They are all I want and need as a compact digital camera.

We always talk about higher performance, ultra wide angle, and HD videos on the internet, but the PL series is unexpectedly quite popular. It means the PL series is recognized as a practical and reasonable digital camera. However, OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) should have included, I think, because it even has a 5x optical zoom lens.

As time goes by, Samsung have made better completion. Now, various functions from Samsung become quite important. Their cameras allows us satisfactory shots with Korean color style all the time. I hope Samsung’s passion keeps going and will be the same.