The Samsung TL34HD packs a whopping 14.7-megapixels into a compact case. Check out our exclusive first-look samples and hands-on impressions.
At an event in New York City this week, Samsung let us spend some time with their newest flagship digital camera, the Samsung TL34HD. It features Samsung's SmartTouch interface, which eschews menus in favor of placing most commonly used controls directly on the camera's touch sensitive screen. So, as you can see in our image gallery, the screen is lined with camera options, and you simply touch the one you want to adjust to open up a convenient sub-menu. It looked great, and we definitely like the idea. The touch interface didn't work perfectly on the pre-production unit Samsung was kind enough to let us try, but we're enthusiastic about this menu system, so hopefully all the kinks will be worked out by the time the Samsung TL34HD is released.
In step with the soaring pixel-counts of new compact cameras, the Samsung TL34HD boasts a whopping 14.7-megapixels of resolution. This is captured on the camera's 1/1.72-inch sensor, a ~25% increase in surface area over a standard 1/2.33-inch sensor, so in theory the Samsung TL34HD should be capable of good image-quality even with all those packed-in pixels. ISO goes up to 1600 at full-resolution and 3200 at 3-megapixels. Finally, the Samsung TL34HD features a 28mm wide-angle lens with 3.6x zoom, which is bolstered by both optical and digital stabilization. We hope the former is heavily favored over the latter.
We had an opportunity to take a couple samples with the Samsung TL34HD. First, we'd like to emphasize that these were taken with a pre-production model, and that we won't be able to provide definitive analysis until we've had time for a full review.
Rooftop scene
Dynamic range is quite good. We can see the outline of the clouds and the blue of the sky, whereas many compacts would have blown-out the sky into a solid white. That said, the image is fairly diffracted - note the blue fringes along the right side, the green fringe at the bottom, the purple fringe down the left side and the general loss of resolution in the bricks. Still, the jury is out until we've seen a final production model of the Samsung TL34HD.
Buddha head
We had similar results with this sample. Again the dynamic range is good, especially for such directional, overblown lighting. Diffraction is also less notable here, and overall detail is well-resolved. We look foward to testing the camera in more controlled conditions, after which we'll give our full review.
The camera was a very stylish compact, and Samsung is clearly trying to inject some color and cool into the silvery high-end point-and-shoot market. In addition to the sharp red model we tried, Samsung will also have a model with a glossy piano black streak. In addition to the high-megapixel count, the camera will also shoot video in 720p resolution, thus the "HD" at the end of its title.
The Samsung TL34HD will be available in September for $330. We'll have a complete review, with a proper analysis of the camera's image quality and features, as soon as a retail version is available.
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