My Best Toys

Hands on the ?279 camera

We nearly assigned these photos to the Recycle Bin/Trash, because we’ve seen this camera, or a version of it, already. But to clear up the issue, we thought we’d fill in the gaps, and let you at the photos anyway.

This is the Samsung ST5000, the lesser spec version of the ST5500. The confusion comes about because in the US this is called the TL240, whilst the bigger brother is called the CL80, which we bought you photos of here from CES?back in?January.

If you are looking for wireless sharing (Bluetooth and Wi-Fi) and a 3.7-inch AMOLED screen, you’ll be wanting the ST5500/CL80. All clear?

Back to the here and now, and the ST5000 offers you a 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen display that handles all the control of the camera. We had a good dig though the menus and found it intuitive and responsive, with added guide notes to tell you what you are selecting - which helps demystify some of those technical terms.

You get a 14.2-megapixel sensor, with an F/3.3 Schneider Kreuznach lens offering a range of 31-217mm (in 35mm terms), so reasonably wide. It’s fairly compact too, given its 7x offering. The neat thing is that the lens details are upside down on the lens, reflecting the right way up on the housing when the lens is extended.

Video capture offers you 720p at 30fps as MPEG4 and you get all the normal bells and whistles of image stabilisation and scene modes. It takes microSD as the memory card of choice.

The Samsung ST5000 will be hitting stores in the UK at the end of March/beginning of April and will cost you ?279. The ST5500 will set you back ?349, although both are up for preorder with discounts on Play.com already.

Tags:
Cameras Compact cameras Digital cameras Samsung 14 megapixels Samsung ST5000 Samsung ST5500 Samsung CL80 Samsung TL240

PHOTOS: Samsung ST5000 shot and priced originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:52:36 +0000