Samsung ST50 digital camera

Why You Can Trust Pocket-lint

(Pocket-lint) - The Samsung ST50 has a smooth brushed aluminum front and a good solid feel with clean, crisp lines. It's perfectly pocketable, measuring 94.2 x 55.7 x 16.6mm; small, but perfectly formed, you might say. It features a 3x, 35-105mm (35mm equivalent) zoom lens, which has a good degree of barrel distortion at the wide end, but that's typical for this type of camera.

The rear is dominated by the 2.7-inch 230,000-dot screen - a good size, but that means there's no optical viewfinder It's not the sharpest screen around. market, bright, but not fantastic in direct sunlight where it suffers from the normal reflection issues.

The main controls are on the right of the screen, consisting of the common arrangement of a navigation button around a central ok button, which accesses the main shortcuts (display, flash, self-timer and macro). Otherwise, you will find hard buttons to access the menu system, view photos and delete them. A slider lets you switch between photo and video modes.

The top gives you the fairly normal layout of a shutter button surrounded by the zoom ring that controls the 3x zoom lens. You get a rather sleek Power and Smart button on the top, backlit in blue, which looks rather classy.

The camera takes a microSD/SDHC at the bottom, sharing the same compartment as the battery. The battery is interesting because the camera doesn't come with a battery charger. Instead, charging takes place in the camera itself.

There is only one connector on the ST50 and this single port handles both connecting the camera to your PC and charging the battery. A USB cable is provided, as well as an AC outlet which you can insert the cable into to handle charging. It certainly saves the hassle of removing batteries and carrying a separate charger.

The same connector will also work as the AV output, with a composite cable supplied for hooking up to your TV. It lacks the flair of the HD measures competitors take to give you a high definition connection. That said, video capture on the ST50 has a maximum resolution of 800 x 592, a step behind the more common 720p HD resolution that similarly sized competitor devices pack.

So let's talk about that smart button. Basically you have two modes on the ST50: programmable and smart. Smart mode will scan the scene and select the best settings based on what it can see. , namely megapixels and flash control.

Unlike most other cameras, you can't dive down and select a shooting mode, like Landscape for example. The only mode you can engage directly is macro, which works quite well. When Smart scanned the scene, an icon at the top right of the screen displays the selected mode.

It doesn't always match the scene, so it's a bit hit and miss, for example, giving you a landscape instead of a portrait. It's a bit of a miss, because if you're looking for a great portrait style with a blurred background, it's devilishly difficult to achieve. However, for general shooting, you'll be fine.

Disable Smart and you get a lot more options in the menus, including mandatory face detection, smile shot, blink detection and beauty shot found in some of the cell phone cameras from Samsung.These can help you get a better portrait.Beauty shot can give comical results, you can change the intensity - but it should be used with caution.

You get control over exposure compensation, ISO, white balance, metering, auto bracketing and focus area controls among others. One of the main features hidden in the menu is Frame Guide.

The Frame Guide allows you to frame your photo, take a photo, and then the edges of that photo are overlaid on the current view. This means you can hand the camera to someone else and they can line it up with your original frame and take a photo. So if you want to make sure it's a photo of you standing under the Eiffel Tower, rather than standing next to a beam miscellaneous metal, then this will fix the problem for you.

However, the focus is not so good. The ST50 sometimes has trouble focusing on the scene, especially at closer distances, like 50cm, which would normally be fine. Image details are good enough - it is a 12.2 megapixel camera after all - but exposure seems to be an issue. The ST50 often tended towards underexposure, although high contrast scenes often resulted in purple fringing and loss of detail in highlights.

The colors aren't particularly vibrant, but overall they're well represented, and you can change the colors in-camera if you want, as well as shoot in a particular color profile, to give your image a particular tint, including negative, which can yield some amusing results.

ISO ranges from Auto setting all the way up to 3200 (limited to 3MP resolution). Noise isn't an issue up to ISO400, but beyond that it jumps quickly. At least you can restrict the ISO to give you better control over your images.

The flash is reasonable, with a few advanced controls available once you turn Smart off, but we found we still put our finger on it while holding the camera.

Video capture, despite the lack of HD options, is pretty good, but beware of zooming - it works, but cuts out audio capture, making playback uneven. Mic is pretty exposed, so suffers from noise issues. ambient noise as soon as you enter public.

Battery life is also pretty good, we managed to get over 150 shots out of it without complaining, although it's harder to gauge the exact performance of this battery because as soon as you plug it into your PC , it recharges...

Verdict

So it's something of a mixed bag. The single connection, while giving you a neat in-camera charging option, means you need bespoke cables to use the camera wherever you go. .The lack of HD video is an obvious setback for those who have a big screen TV at home.

All in all, the smart shot is a bit of a catch-all and will happily sort out most day-to-day shoots, and given that this camera is also quite affordable, it's likely to be a regular on weddings and baptisms.

But at the end of the day, the Samsung ST50 is an attractive, easy-to-use camera at a reasonable price.

Written by Chris Hall. Originally published on

May 18, 2009

.