I’d heard mixed reviews about Samsung’s new 14.2 megapixel TL240 point-and-shoot camera. One friend told me it was slow. You know, the dreaded shutter delay? Depress the shutter and two weeks later it fires off.
Expectation is a mighty powerful sense. I hate going to movies that are highly recommended. I tend to expect too much, and in most cases the movie never lives up to my expectations. That is why my brother always recommends movies to me by saying, “It was a piece of CRAP, don’t miss it.”
But when it comes to the TL240, my lowered-expectations didn’t pan out. This is a nifty little camera that takes good pictures. It has a nice big touchscreen, and some suprisingly-useful shooting modes like “blink,” which is perfect for shooting relatives who always have their eyes closed.
At First Sight
First thing you will notice is the sleek 3.5-inch WVGA TFT display, which is a full touch screen. It takes up most of the camera back – you’ll find no buttons here. Apart from the display there’s just enough room on the back for you to hold the camera with a small ridged space for your thumb (If you’re right-handed).
On the top of the camera you’ll find the shutter, which incorporates the zoom control, the power button, as well as a dedicated play button towards the left. Every other function on this camera is controlled by the touch screen.
The menus and settings are easy enough for anyone to understand. Samsung did a good job with these. Down the left-hand side of the screen you have the most-frequent settings. If you need to go deeper, you can touch the bottom- or right-hand side tabs to bring into view more choices to select from. You can see the menu button on the bottom right – this will take you even deeper.
Shooting Modes
The TL240 has a plethora of shooting modes to keep you entertained. Choose the Smart Auto mode and the camera automatically decides among 17 camera settings based on the scene it detects. If you want a little control over the settings, use the Scene mode; where you can choose from all the available scenes. With the TL240 you get all the usual options like face detection and red-eye prevention, plus a couple of interesting — if not practical — choices.
For self-portraits, Motion Timer allows you to trigger the shutter timer by making a motion, like waving your arms. My Star registers your favorite faces – this way the camera prioritizes focus and exposure on your very own Diva.
Styles and Filter Effects give you some creative options to play with. Soft to vivid colors and digital lens effects like fish-eye and vignetting.
You’ve probably heard of Smile detection, how about blink detection? It actually works. I have a brother-in-law that always blinks when we snap his photo; thank you Samsung.
The 3.5-inch screen incorporates Samsung’s Smart Gesture user interface, a gimmicky way to control a couple of camera functions by tilting the camera. You can also make a swipe to move to the next picture when playing back photos. Oh yes, you can swipe an X over the picture to delete it and swipe a circle to rotate it.
Touch Me
You can use the touch screen to decide what to shoot. Smart Touch AF allows you to focus by touching the screen. Even better, One Touch Shooting will focus and shoot the picture when you touch and hold your finger on the screen. Too bad these will not work when shooting movies, HELLO.
Movies in H.264
The camera will record HD video at 1280×720 resolution and will also do standard resolution 640×480 and 320×240 for web. Video shooting is pretty basic. You can’t use any of the digital lens filters like fish-eye on HD video, but you can use them on the lower resolutions. Same with some of the Styles, defog and sketch will not work in HD. Worst of all, face detection will not work in movie mode.
Good Glass
The TL240 has an Schneider Kreuznach X7 zoom lens. Ever heard of them? Schneider lenses are very popular among large-format photographers. Schneider Kreuznach has been around since 1913 and they have been working with Samsung since 1995. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again “good glass makes good pictures.”
Lets Shoot Something
Using the TL240 was a breeze; it felt good in my hands. I didn’t notice any unusual shutter lag. Like all autofocus cameras, you depress the shutter half way and the autofocus does its thing. If everything is OK the TL240 responds by giving you a green focus square, otherwise the focus square turns red. The camera will let you shoot the picture even with the red indicator.
I did notice that the minimum focus distance, when zoomed into the maximum telephoto range, is 150 cm. That’s almost five feet. At the widest range the minimum focusing distance is 80 cm, a little over two and a half feet. If you are used to shooting zoomed in close-ups you may be able to use the macro setting instead.
The TL240 will not save your AF or Flash selection if you turn the camera off. Resetting from macro-focus to standard auto-focus and from no flash to auto-flash may be a good thing.
Conclusions
I liked the TL240. It’s small, sleek and shoots pretty pictures. As point-and-shoot cameras go there’s nothing to brag about. The touch screen, although not as nice as the AMOLED screen of the Samsung CL80, is quite good.
Shutter lag seemed normal. Autofocus is sometimes hit and miss with point-and-shoot cameras. If you want accurate multi-point focus you need to spend more money. If the scene you are shooting is extremely back-lit or if the contrast is low the focus may fail, move the camera and try again. The TL240 focused well when shooting in various lighting situations, and quite fast I might add.
Samsung’s TL240 is a good pocket camera for those who want to carry a small camera everywhere they go. 14.2 Megapixels is nothing to laugh about. If I was going to get a camera for my 14-year-old budding photographer daughter, I’d definitely consider the TL240.
