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Details at a glance
Megapixels: 8.1
Optical Zoom: 5x
Digital Zoom: 8x
LCD: 2.5 inches
Storage: SD/MMC
We clicked with
Value for money, 8MP, manual mode, logical and easy to use controls.
Shots in the dark
Tendency to underexpose, slightly bulky by today's standards, styling you either love or hate.
Links
More Samsung information
www.samsung.co.uk
Price Comparison:
Samsung L85
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The Samsung L85 is a small (though not tiny) zoom compact boasting 8 million pixels a 5X optical zoom and a couple of features you won't find anywhere else such as HDMI interface. On paper we placed it as the second best value in our £250 camera roundup. Let's see how it performs in the real world.
Features
All the articles on the L85 talk about its HDMI interface. If you want to show pictures on a high definition TV screen then currently the L85 is the one for you. There are also a couple of other features that deserve a mention.
HDMI interface
Drop the L85 into the supplied cradle and you can hook it up either to your computer, or to a regular TV like most cradles. However, if you have one of the latest HDTVs then you can also attach the L85 directly to it and enjoy extremely high quality playback - or so I'm told. I wasn't able to locate an HDTV during this review so we'll just take Samsung's word for it.
It's also worth pointing out here that the camera has a “wide” mode which sets the camera to take pictures in a wide aspect ratio. Coupled with the HDMI interface you might expect this to match a widescreen TV format. You'd be wrong - it takes pictures in a 2:1 ratio which makes for great panoramics but they won't fit on your TV.
Scenes
There is the usual bunch of scene modes. If you are used to the excesses of, say, Casios with 30+ scene modes the you might find the L85 a little lacking but the 11 modes cover most scenarios you can think of including separate modes for sunset and dawn and the increasingly popular children mode.
There is also a slightly unusual motion capture mode. This allows you to take a burst of 30 images spread over 1, 2 or 3 seconds. The images are limited to VGA size (640 X 480 pixels) and I remained slightly unsure about the benefit of this mode over shooting a movie. It's designed for very high speed subjects (the example shown is a golf swing) but after trying it I thought it would be easier just to shoot a movie and pull out the frame that you want. The film clip mode however saves in mpeg-4 compression allowing over 40 minutes of filming on a 1GB SD card.
In camera editing
This is a feature that is gradually growing in compact cameras and the L85 is no exception. As well as the rather garish photo frames and a whole bunch of other “special effects” there are some genuinely useful option. These include shooting composites of a number of shots, a black and white mode (as well as rather less useful blue, red or green toning and negative) and the ability to “downsample” pictures in the camera. This could be very useful if you shoot a lot of pictures at 8MP and then realise you are running out of memory. You can convert less important pictures to 7MP or less. You can also rotate pictures but unfortunately there's no option to crop them after you have taken the shot.
Bundled accessories
It's worth mentioning just how much you get for your money. The L85 was one of the cheapest cameras in our £250 test and as such you'd expect some corners to be cut. I was therefore pleasantly surprised to find not only a cradle in the box but a variety of cables for connecting it - including an HDMI lead.
There's also a rather cool little remote control. This allows you both to take self-portraits and control a slideshow of pictures on playback. This would be very useful if you had hooked he camera up to your plasma screen and wanted to sit more than arm's length from it to view your masterpieces.
Handling
Let's get over this one straight away. Our reviewer called the L85 “ugly” (in fact he compared it to a Trabant). Pictures of the Samsung L85 really don't do it justice. It is bigger and bulkier than many of the compacts we see here at ThinkCamera but it has a very tactile rubberised finish that sets it apart from other cameras. Depending on your viewpoint this makes it “distinctive” or “retro”. Having lived with one for a couple of weeks I found the L85 growing on me.
It's as tall as a credit card and about 30% longer. The thickness of the camera stops you thinking of credit cards though - it's about an inch thick plus a bulge on the front for the lens. This would be fine in a jacket pocket but slip it in a jeans pocket and you aren't going to walk very far.
Buttons are well laid out and east to find though locating the flash near the shutter button means that it is very easy to cover it with your finger. There's rather a nice menu system on the L85. Menus options rotate and animate onto the screen as you turn the mode dial. Obviously there's no real point to this but it adds to the impression that you are holding a quality camera.
Image quality
The Schneider-Kreuznach lens delivers plenty of detail and the 8 million pixels of the sensor are capable of great results. As we often find with high MP compacts, there's a tendency for the out of focus areas of the shot to look a little plasticky or smeary. It's interesting that this is particularly apparent on compact Kodaks which also use Schneider-Kreuznach lenses but the L85 is a lot more restrained in its processing. Results are generally very pleasant and you should have no problem getting decent A3 prints with a little care.
Overall, the L85 seems to have a tendency to slightly underexpose shots. On general scenes that I would expect the camera to pretty much meter accurately I found it was often necessary to add up to a stop of exposure compensation. This is relatively easy to do and the live histogram makes it easy to see when it is necessary but I found myself turning up the exposure more often than I expected to.
The Samsung L85 was one of three cameras I used to test the Lastolite ePhotomaker and it gave some of the best results. Full manual settings allowed me to meter the light myself (or guess!) and the display gave me good feedback on what the shot would look like.
Shooting
There's no official start up time for the Samsung L85 but from cold it takes around 4 seconds for it to be ready for a shot. This is a little on the slow side by current standards and makes it frustrating if the camera powers down just when you want to take a shot - power down and up can take around 7 seconds. Shutter lag is respectable and for most purposes you won't notice it. Shot to shot time is a little sluggish at about 2 seconds.
The camera offers 11 scene modes for different shooting scenarios such as beach, night landscape and sunset. There are also manual, aperture priority, shutter priority and program modes as well as a fully automatic setting. It's great to see a full manual control on a camera at this level since this allows ultimate flexibility and control. That might seem a relatively mode list but really I didn't miss any of the options that weren't there.
The screen can show your choice of information from “full” to minimalist. There's a handy option to have an on screen histogram. The screen is fine for indoor shooting and works well enough outside. Bright sun makes it a little difficult to read but you can see most of what you need to. It's by no means the worst screen we've seen though it isn't as good as the very best.
I couldn't find a tested figure for battery life though it was fine for a hard day's testing. I'd guess at somewhere around 2 - 300 shots per charge - obviously less if you use the flash a lot or want to look at every single shot you take.
What's not to like
Really not very much. I'd class the Samsung L85 as a very solid performer, my biggest criticism is probably that is doesn't really excel at anything. It's not quite as small as I'd like or as light or as fast as some people might expect but it does very well.
The camera never really seems to focus as close as you expect. Taking sample shots at my desk I found I was constantly having to lean back to get it to focus though there's always a close focus mode that let's you focus to within about 3 inches.
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The Samsung L85 is well worth consideration by anyone looking for a quality 8MP compact that will turn in solid, reliable results. There's nothing really to fall in love with about the camera but nothing to put you off either. If you like the styling and are looking for a camera that gives quality results without breaking the bank then the L85 should be on your short list.
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Samsung L85 specification
| Mega-pixels: | 8.1 |
Photo: | JPEG |
| Optical Zoom: | 3x |
RAW: | No |
| Digital Zoom: | 8x |
Aperture: | f/2.8-4.4 |
| LCD: | 2.5 inch |
Focal Length: | equiv. 38-190mm |
| Dimensions: | 109.2 x 64 x 29 mm |
Shutter: | 15 sec to 1/2000 |
| Weight: | 190g |
Exposure: | ISO 50 to 400 |
| Storage: | SD/MMC |
Movie: | 640X480@30fps |
| Int. Mem: | 23mb |
Battery: | Li-ion |
| Interface: | USB 2.0, AV, HDMI |
PictBridge: | Yes |
