"Picky Details" for the Samsung Digimax L50 Digital Camera
(Timing, Power, and Storage Info)

Timing

When you press the shutter release on a camera, there's usually a lag time or delay before the shutter actually fires. This corresponds to the time required for the autofocus and autoexposure mechanisms time to do their work, and can amount to a fairly long delay in some situations. Since this number is rarely reported on (and even more rarely reported accurately), and can significantly affect the picture taking experience, I routinely measure both shutter delay and shot to shot cycle times for all cameras I test, using a test system I designed and built for the purpose. (Crystal-controlled, with a resolution of 0.001 second.) Here are the numbers I collected for the Samsung Digimax L50:

Power

The Samsung Digimax L50 uses a custom rechargeable LiIon battery for power. Because it doesn't have a standard external power connector, I wasn't able to conduct my usual power consumption tests on it.

The Digimax L50 uses a custom rechargeable 3.7 volt Lithium Ion battery for power. According to the manual, the camera will shoot for 110 minutes, capturing 190 images. Conditions are roughly equivalent to CIPA standards, though Samsung calls it "Samsung Standard." "Using the fully charged battery, Auto mode, 5M image size, Fine image quality; shot-to-shot interval: 30 sec. Changing the zoom position between the Wide and the Tele ends every 1 shot, using the flash every two times."

Storage Capacity

The Samsung Digimax L50 stores its photos on SD / MMC memory cards or in approximately 26MB of internal memory, and no card is included with the camera. (I strongly recommend buying at least a 64 MB card, preferably a 128 MB one, to give yourself extra space for extended outings.) The chart below shows how many images can be stored in the internal memory at each size/quality setting.

Download Speed

The Samsung Digimax L50 connects to a host computer via a USB interface. Downloading files to my Sony desktop running Windows XP (Pentium IV, 2.4 GHz), I clocked it at 3196 KBytes/second. (Cameras with slow USB interfaces run as low as 300 KB/s, cameras with fast v1.1 interfaces run as high as 600 KB/s. Cameras with USB v2.0 interfaces run as fast as several megabytes/second.)