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  • Tour

  • Hardware

  • Design & Layout

  • Modes

  • Controls

  • Conclusion

  • Tour
  • Hardware
  • Design & Layout
  • Modes
  • Controls
  • Conclusion

Tour

The TL240 is your basic sleek black rectangle, with a silver ring around the lens and, when the lens is extended, a blue band for color accent.

A straightforward design

Back

Unlike some touch-screen camera designs, the SL240 is entirely devoid of button controls on the back. There's a 3.5-inch WVGA touch-screen display and, at the right, two raised ridges to help steady the camera, or warn you if your finger is wandering into touch-sensitive territory.

Button, button, who's got the button?

Sides

The left side trumpets the camera's 14.2-megapixel resolution, the right has a tight-fititng door shielding the USB and HDMI connectors and the loop for attaching a wrist strap..

Proud of its mega pixels.

Fingernails are essential for reaching the IO ports.

Top

The button on the left side switches the camera to playback mode. The power button is in the middle, and on the right are the shutter and a traditional left-right toggle to manage the zoom lens ( fortunately, that function is not relegated to the touch-screen).

Switching modes and zooming get traditional controls.

Bottom

The latched panel on the left contains the battery and microSD memory card. There's a tripod socket, hidden by the labeling here, centered below the lens.

Our pre-production camera came complete with serial number.

Hardware

Viewfinder

Like most compact cameras today, the TL240 doesn't have an optical viewfinder.

LCD

The 3.5-inch WVGA touch-screen LCD is a good-looking display, though of course constant finger contact leaves its greasy impression. And you can't wipe it off without turning the camera off, or risk accidentally changing a setting. You can shoot using the standard information display, or overlay a 9-box grid to help with lining up a shot.

The playback display, with touchable icons at left.

Flash

The camera supports slow sync and red-eye reduction.

The small built-in flash can be set to auto, auto with red-eye reduction, fill flash, slow sync (to capture both a foreground subject and a dark background) and red-eye fix, which is different from red-eye reduction. The former uses a pre-flash to help close the subject's pupils before taking the photo, the latter digitally edits a shot to remove red-eye if it appears.Samsung gives the flash range as 0.3m - 5.0 meters at the widest lens setting.

Lens

The TL240 offers a 7x zoom lens which Samsung's promotional material dubs 'wide angle' though, with a range equivalent to a 31-217mm in 35mm photography, we're not quite convinced of that label. Maximum aperture is f/3.3 at the widest setting, f/5.5 at maximum zoom. It's controlled with a switch that pivots around the shutter button and moves smoothly and precisely.

The Samsung blue band is visible here.

Jacks, Ports & Plugs

The camera uses a proprietary connector for its USB 2.0 data connection and standard-def video, and an HDMI jack for connecting to a high-def TV.

As usual, you'll have to buy an HDMI cable separately.

Battery

The small rectangular Lithium ion rechargeable battery is rated at 1100mAH.

The battery shares a compartment with the memory card.

Memory

The TL240 uses tiny microSD memory cards instead of the usual SD/SDHC variety and we're not quite sure why: it's a small camera, but not all that small, and other than size there's no advantage to using microSD, and the capacity is limited to 4 gigabytes..

A tiny microSD card fits in the slot above the battery.

Design & Layout

Design & Appearance

If modern and streamlined is your aesthetic of choice, then the TL240 could have powerful appeal. It's certainly a clean design, uncluttered by all those bothersome physical buttons we're used to seeing. There is a bit of visual flair around the lens, with its mirrored ring that reflects a blue band when the lens is extended.  

Size & Handling

The body is big enough to grip securely, but there isn't much assistance provided.

The TL240 measures 4.06 x 2.3 x 0.76 inches (103 x 58 x 19mm). It feels solidly constructed and comfortable in your hands, though you have to be a bit careful of wandering fingers tapping the LCD display: there isn't a whole lot of margin on the back of the left side of the camera back. Fortunately, that's the hand that ordinarily merely holds the camera steady, so once you have a hold on the body, it's not likely it will move much.

There's one small concession to the cause of a firm grip, with two raised ridges on the right side of the back. Their positioning, though, as shown in the photo below, isn't terribly useful.

The photo below shows off what we originally thought was a flaw, and learning is actually a feature. When you stand the TL240 on its bottom, it rests at a 7 degree angle instead of straight up and down. We're told that this is designed to make self-portrait photography easier, and interesting idea.

A flaw? No, a feature!

Menu

The TL240 features a dual menu system, with a quick-access system to adjust key settings quickly and a full menu system for less frequently changed items.

The quick menu includes icons along the left side of the screen that, when touched, bring up selections for flash mode, autofocus, self-timer and screen display. A panel pops up along the bottom edge of the screen when that section of the LCD is touched, which presents all the settings you'd ordinarily change while shooting, including exposure compensation, ISO settings, focus mode and so on. Finally, when you touch the right side of the screen,  another panel overlay appears. This includes a virtual button to call up the camera's main menu system at the bottom of the panel, and an icon that triggers what Samsung calls the Smart Gesture interface. When this is activated, tilting the top of the camera forward switches to program mode, tilting it back switches to smart auto mode, and tipping it to the left enters movie mode.

The quick menu system, shown with the optional grid line display enabled.

The main menu system is nicely designed and easy to navigate, touching up and down arrows to browse available options, a touch to bring up sub-menus, and a further touch to select the option you prefer. Using the wide screen to full advantage, the display is very legible and the areas you have to touch are large enough to virtually eliminate miistaken presses.

The legible, easy to use main menu.

Ease of Use

This is probably more a matter of personal taste than absolute right or wrong. For a touch-screen camera, the TL240 provides a straightforward interface with a sensitive panel that responds instantly to the touch. Where this becomes tricky is a screen with multiple icons that you'd like to browse through. Touching the icon brings up a text label defining its function, but removing your finger selects that option. To see what the other on-screen options mean you have to slide your finger across before lifting it. And if you don't want to select any of the options displayed, you have to slide your finger off to a patch of neutral screen territory before lifting your finger. Yes, you can get used to it, but it takes some getting used to.

Some of us have a personal preference for buttons, in part because we can find and press a physical button faster and more reliably than hunting for a picture of a control on a screen and aiming for it accurately. Of course, that iPhone thing seems pretty popular with its touch-screen controls, and banishing the buttons does let you fit a big screen on a small camera.

Modes

Auto Mode


There are two versions of auto mode for still shooting, and two for video. The standard version adjusts camera settings based strictly on lighting conditions, while the 'smart' auto version uses scene recognition to tailor settings to the subject at hand, scolor, brightness, subject and motion. There is an additional auto mode that Dual IS that uses both the optical stabilization system and digital processing to minimize the effect of camera shake.

Movie Mode


The TL240 supports 720p video recording at 15 or 30 frames per second., with and without mono audio. There is an HDMI connector for direct video playback to a high-def TV.

Drive/Burst Mode


There are several self-timer options, including the standard 2 or 10 second delay, a mode that waits 10 seconds and then takes a shot when movement in the frame stops (handy when you're running around to join a group portrait) and another that delays for 10 seconds, takes a shot, then waits 2 seconds and takes another.

Playback Mode


In addition to viewing a single photo on screen, you can have a screenful of thumbnail images displayed and touch the one you want to see enlarged. You can sort your photos using the Smart Album capability, which uses date, image color, presence of a face or a Favorite status you can use as an image tag.

The slideshow capability is fairly sophisitcated, including multiple transition effects and background music if you're so inclined.

Image editing capabilities include resizing, rotating and trimming, along with color filter effects, brightness and contrast adjustment and face retouching.

Custom Image Presets


There are plenty of scene modes at your disposal, including Portrait, Night Portrait, Backlight Portrait, Backlight, Landscape, White, Motion, Tripod, Night, Macro, Macro Text, Blue Sky, Sunset Sky, Macro Portrait, Natural Green, Children, and Cloud.

Other Features


Voice Recording: The TL240 lets you add 10-second audio tags to your still images. You can even use the camera as a voice recorder if the need arises.

Controls

Manual Controls


The TL240 is generous with its manual control options for a compact camera, including program autoexposure, shutter-priority, aperture-priority and full manual exposure modes. You can also manually adjust sharpness, color and saturation using a sliding scale.And manual exposure compensation is available in a ±@ EV range.

Focus


The focus system can be set for multipoint or center autofocus. Face detection is available, including a 'smart': option that lets you store important faces in memory and prioritize them while shooting. Object tracking is also available, and even in the prototype it did a good job of following a moving subject after latching on. Additional face detection functions include smile shutter, which waits to take a photo until it recognizes a smiling face, and blink detection, which lets you know if somebody shut their eyes when you hit the shutter.

While manual focus in the traditional sense isn't available, there is a cool use of the touch-screen here: by touching a subject on the screen, you can tell the camera to focus on it.

The TL240 is a good choice if you're interested in getting up close and personal with your subjects (say coins in a collection, or small stuff destined for eBay). Normal macro mode focuses down to 10cm, and Super macro lets you get a cozy 1cm away.

ISO


Full-resolution ISO settings range from ISO 80-4800, with ISO 6400 available at a reduced 3 megapixel resolution. You can set the ISO manually or let the camera do it in Auto ISO mode.

White Balance


Available white balance settings include Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, FluorescentH, FluorescentL, and Tungsten. You can also take a custom white balance reading.

Metering


Multisegment, center-weighted and spot metering are supported. If using face detection, the camera will meter for a face if it finds one.

Shutter Speed


When setting the shutter speed manually, your choices range from 16 seconds to 1/2000 second. The autoexposure system will go down to 1/8 second unless you're shooting in the Night or iFreworks scene mode, in which case it can hit 8 and 16 seconds respectively.

Aperture


The 7x zoom lens has a maximum aperture of f/3.3 at its widest setting and f/5.5 at maximum telephoto.

Image Stabilization


The camera offers optical image stabilization, plus a variant of auto mode that adds electronic stabilization for particularly rocky shooting situations, presumably at the expense of additional image noise (though we could not test this on our preproducton sample.

Picture Quality & Size Options


There is a wide selection of available shooting size options: 14M (4344 x 3256), 12M (4240 x 2826), 10M (4240 x 2385), 8M (3264 x 2448), 5M (2592 x 1944), 3M (2048 x 1536), 2M (1920 x 1080) and 1M (1024 x 768). RAW shooting is not supported.

Picture Effects


There is a nice variety of color shooting effects, including Soft, Vivid, Forest, Retro, Cool, Calm, Classic, Negative, Custom and Pencil Drawing (some effects listed in the camera specs weren't implemented in our pre-production camera, some were). There are also a few 'Smart Effects' which make a photo subject look like a toy-sized miniature, produce a vintage effect, or product two levels of fish-eye distortion.

Conclusion

Meet the tester

Steve Morgenstern

Steve Morgenstern

Editor

Steve Morgenstern is a valued contributor to the Reviewed.com family of sites.

See all of Steve Morgenstern's reviews

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