Samsung TL205 Review

The Samsung TL205 features a 12.2 megapixel CCD image sensor behind a Samsung-branded 3x optical zoom lens. The TL205's lens has 35mm-equivalent focal lengths from a rather tight 35mm wide angle to a moderate 105mm telephoto. Sadly, the TL205's lens lacks optical image stabilization, with only Digital Image Stabilization available. The Samsung TL205's DIS function combats blur using the camera's firmware, automatically raising the camera's ISO sensitivity (and noise levels) as needed.

There's no optical viewfinder, with images being framed on a 2.7-inch LCD display with 230,000 dots of resolution, which equates to around a 320 x 240 pixel array with three dots per color. A particularly unusual feature of the Samsung TL205 is that in addition to the main, rear-panel LCD display, it also includes a secondary color LCD on the camera's front surface adjacent to the lens. It serves as an alternative to the articulated displays found on some cameras, which can often be tilted and/or swiveled so as to allow them to be seen from in front of the lens - useful for self portraits and group shots using a timer. The dual-display approach offers an advantage over such designs in that there's no need for a potentially fragile tilt/swivel mechanism. On the other hand though, it doesn't allow the LCD screen to be protected from damage by folding it inwards as can be done with a tilt/swivel display - and indeed, there's now twice as many displays risking damage from a knock or scrape. The front-panel display is also significantly smaller and lower resolution, at just 1.5-inch diagonal. Samsung has retained the ability for the front-panel display to frame self-portraits using the timer, as well as for a countdown display during timer operation (ensuring everybody knows when to smile), and to show a brief animation when the camera is in Children mode, intended to catch your child's attention so they look directly at the camera while their photo is taken. In addition, it is now possible to frame videos using the front LCD, and the Children mode animation is now accompanied by a short musical clip to further grab a child's attention.

The Samsung TL205 has the ability to record standard definition movies with sound at 30 frames per second in AVI format, with a maximum resolution of VGA (640 x 480 pixels). The TL205 also includes face detection capability with both smile and blink detection functions, which can be used to automatically capture a photo when everyone's smiling, and then retake the image if anybody blinks. There's also a "Beauty Shot" mode which smooths skin tones on detected faces, and offers three user-selected levels of smoothing. The face detection is also used to offer a Red-Eye Fix function which automatically locates and corrects for this common image defect. The Samsung TL205 also has a selection of scene modes aimed at keeping things approachable for beginner photographers while still offering a degree of control over images, plus a Smart Auto mode which automatically selects a scene mode as appropriate.

The Samsung TL205 ships from Spring 2010. Pricing information was not available at press time.