Samsung PL210 14 Megapixel Digital Camera

Amazon has over 3500 results in their point and shoot digital camera section. It’s hard to make waves in a market flooded with competitors. It comes down to three factors when looking at point and shoot cameras : Mega-pixels, optical zoom, and screen size. We are taking a look at Samsung’s PL-210 let’s see what the manufacturer has to say:

“A powerful zoom in a slim case delivers winning style and performance. The PL210’s 10x Long zoom and 27mm lens let you capture previously hard-to-get images. Now you can record all the action on the far side of the field or get a wide shot of the entire team’s victory celebration. The 0.8″-slim case is easy to hold; the large 3″ LCD screen lets you see everything and change settings with ease for detailed 14.2 Megapixel stills or HD-quality video captured in 720p.”

Samsung’s blurb has answered the three big questions, and provided us some mouth watering details about what this compact beauty can do. I’m interested to see how it performs, often these point and shoots fail to deliver where it counts. As a former SLR user I expect a lot out of my cameras. Lets take a look.

Packaging:

The packaging is very straightforward, boxes like this typically don’t see the light of day in most retail stores. These small electronics are kept in locked counters or the back room due to high theft. The box is simple and pleasing, it even highlights some of the features.

Highlights:

The camera has some weight to it (this usually denotes quality)
The charger cable is also the USB cable, and can plug into any standard USB outlet (VERY HELPFUL)
The Charging cable has an LED, this simple LED makes a world of difference and lets me know that Samsung out some thought into this.

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Specifications:

For anyone who is interested Samsung has a list of specifications to satisfy even the most technical of us here, but here is the important info

Design: Compact Long Zoom

Image sensor: 14.2 Effective Megapixels

Image sensor: 1/2.33″ (Approx 7.76mm) CCD
Lens: 27mm Samsung Lens
Lens: 10x Long Zoom Lens
Video: 720p HD Video Recording

Features:

Dual Image Stabilization

The only motion in your videos should be intentional – not from shaky hands. Dual Image Stabilization automatically compensates for unwanted movement by realigning each electronic image, frame by frame, with beautifully steady results.

HD Movie Recording

Record HD movies in the palm of your hand. With HD Movie recording you can capture video in 1280 x 720p resolution at 30 frames per second.

Smart Auto 2.0

Captures the perfect shot by first analyzing key composition elements and then selecting from 15 different photo and 4 different movie modes: Portrait, Night Portrait, Backlight Portrait, Night, Backlight, Landscape, White, Natural Green, Blue Sky, Sunset, Macro, Macro Text, Macro Color, Tripod, Action.

This is a pretty impressive list for a pocket size camera. Lets take a look at how the camera performs though.

A Closer Look:

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Testing:

The camera came with a charge on it and I was able to take pictures right out of the box. I was surprised that this camera takes microSD memory. This is convenient because I have a few cards laying around from old phones, but it’s worth noting if you are upgrading from an older camera, your pile of SD cards won’t be of use.

Setting the time and date on the camera gives you a feel for how to navigate the menu, its pretty straight forward to move around if you want to access the more advanced features, or change the picture quality settings.

I’m excited to put this camera through its paces, particularly the smart auto function. I don’t think that the camera can adequately switch between the shooting modes, in the past I have used Sony, Nikon, Cannon, and Kodak point and shoots and sometimes navigating through the shooting modes can be the biggest hassle.

I have some pictures here from a few different places.

The camera handled the transition between macro and outside really well. To get the best quality possible, I only used the full 14 Mega Pixels. At the 14 megapixel size I could fit 938 photos on a 4Gb card.

Please don’t judge the quality on this alone, these images are optimized thoroughly for web. For comparison I have included some side by side images between three cameras. All three of these pictures have been optimized using Irfan viewer, they have been cropped to a maximum resolution of 2000 x 1500.

Kodak – East Share Z915 10Mp 10x Optical zoom

Nikon – S203 10MP 3x optical zoom

Samsung – PL210 14MP 10X optical zoom

One of the Key features of this camera aside from the 14 Mp image size, is the 10x optical zoom. The Kodak we compared the Samsung to above also has a 10x optical zoom but take a look at the form factor difference, the Kodak is about twice the camera to carry around, not to mention that it takes AA batteries. For that I am impressed with the Samsung. As far a usage goes the camera lets you know when you are utilizing the dreaded “Digital Zoom” with a convenient slider.

Smart Auto:

To test the smart Auto I simply took a wide range of photos with near blatant disregard to the composition. In the upper right hand corner, upon focusing the camera seemed to flawlessly interpret the composition of the image. Even at night this function did not fail. I was surprised to see the camera switch so easily between macro to action and then to landscapes. Almost all of the shots I took in virtually no light came out without fail.

Dual Image Stabilization:

I am proud to report that, I take perfect photos every time. Anyone who has ever used a camera knows this cannot be true. The fact that I can keep a straight face while writing this is a testament to Samsung’s technology. I let my five year old nephew take some pictures with this camera, and even they came out clear. The dual image stabilization gets two arthritic thumbs up.

HD Video:

I don’t typically use point and shoot digital cameras for my video needs but it’s nice to know that the Samsung Pl210 is designed to deliver high quality video should I need it. I took two videos with this camera and here is what I found:

The Video mode has to be accessed through the menu, this isn’t hard to do but it will slow you down and your chances of catching that “awesome spontaneous moment” are slightly diminished.
The first video I took was in perfect lighting afternoon sun at my back, with a slight breeze. The Video quality was just what you would expect, much higher than most phones produce, and very useable. I even uploaded it to Facebook.
The second video was at night, on a back porch, with almost no lighting. The video was also what you would expect, low visibility, and mostly useless. This is not a knock on the camera, most pocket based devices take awful low lighting video. The Samsung performed quite well for a Digital camera.

Battery Life:

With a three inch screen I expected this camera to EAT battery time while on. To the contrary, at factory default settings I took nearly two hundred photos over a weekend, most involving some flash, and the camera battery has not gone down a tick.

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Final Thoughts:

In my life I have owned 1 DSLR, and 8 point and shoots digital cameras ranging in brand from HP to Olympus. This is by far the best Point and shoot I have used. The Smart Auto mode is truly smart, seamlessly switching from landscape to macro to action shots of the fly. The Dual image stabilization performed surprisingly well in both the HD video and the still photos. Samsung really put their best foot forward with this one the attention to detail shows with features like the charge light on the USB cable, high image quality, and great battery life. Looking at the entire package coupled with the fact that I saw this camera on sale for $169 makes it AWESOME hardware if your in the market for a compact point and shoot digital camera.

Awesome Hardware Award