The functions of the Samsung ES55 and Review for functions

Special review of the Samsung ES55 focused on the functions

Following the previous preview, I’d like to write the review of the Samsung ES55. It’s good to introduce various functions at once, but because it has a lot of functions, and you know most of the functions, so I’m going to write the review based on the special functions of the ES55.

<<Name of parts>>

The names of each part are as below.

<< Specification of the ES55 >>

Image Sensor	Type	1/2.33″ (Approx. 1.09cm) CCD
	Effective Pixel	Approx. 10.2 Mega-pixels
	Total Pixel	Approx. 10.3 Mega-pixels
Lens	Focal Length	SAMSUNG Lens f = 6.3 ~ 18.9mm (35mm film equivalent : 35~105mm)
	F No.	F3.2(W) ~ F5.8(T)
	Digital Zoom	Still Image mode : 1.0X ~3.0X Play mode : 1.0X ~ 11.4X (depends on image size, Min. size is 320x240)
Image Stabilization	Image Stabilization	DIS (Digital Image Stabilization)
Display	Type	TFT LCD
	Feature	2.5" (6.4cm), QVGA (230,000 pixels)
Viewfinder	Viewfinder	N/A
Focusing	Type	TTL auto focus (Multi AF, Center AF, Face Detection AF)
	Range	Normal : 80cm ~ infinity Macro : 10cm~80cm (Wide), 50cm ~ 80cm (Tele) Auto Macro : 10cm~Infinity (Wide), 50cm~ Infinity (Tele)
Shutter Speed	Shutter Speed	Auto : 1/8 ~ 1/1,500 sec. Program : 1 ~ 1/1,500 sec. Night : 8 ~ 1/1,500 sec. Fireworks : 4 sec.
Exposure	Control	Program AE
	Metering	Multi, Spot, Center Weighted, Face Detection AE
	Compensation	±2EV (1/3EV steps)
	ISO Equivalent	Auto, 80, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600
Flash	Modes	Auto, Auto & Red-eye reduction, Fill-in flash, Slow sync, Flash off, Red Eye Fix
	Range	Wide : 0.2m ~ 3.75m, Tele : 0.5m ~ 2.0m (ISO AUTO)
	Recharging Time	Approx. 4 sec.
Sharpness	Sharpness	Soft+, Soft, Normal, Vivid, Vivid+
White Balance	White Balance	Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Fluorescent_H, Fluorescent_L, Tungsten, Custom
Still Image	Shooting	Mode: Auto, Program, DIS,Photo help Guide , Scene Scene : Beauty Shot, Portrait, Night scene, Children, Landscape, Text, Close-up, Sunset, Dawn, Backlight, Fireworks, Beach & Snow Continuous: Single, Continuous, Motion Capture, AEB Self-timer: 10sec.2sec., Double, Motion Timer
	Effect	Photo Style Selector :Soft, Vivid, Forest, Retro, Cool, Calm, Classic, Negative, Custom RGB Image Adjust : Sharpness, Contrast, Saturation (5 steps)
	Edit	Image Edit : Resize, Rotate, Trimming Photo Style Selector :Soft, Vivid, Forest, Retro, Cool, Calm, Classic, Negative, Custom RGB Image Adjust : Face Retouch, Red Eye Fix, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation
Image Play	Image Play	Single image, Thumbnails, Multi Slide show, Movie Clip * Slide show : Slide show with Effect & Music
Voice Recording	Voice Recording	Voice Recording (max. 10 hours) Voice Memo in Still Image (max. 10 sec.)
Date Imprinting	Date Imprinting	Date&Time, Date, Off (user selectable)
Movie Clip	Recording	With Audio or without Audio (user selectable, recording time : Max 2 hours) Size : 640x480, 320x240 (3X Optical Zoom, Mute during Zoom Operation) Frame rate : 30 fps, 15 fps
	Effect	Photo Style Selector :Soft, Vivid, Forest, Retro, Cool, Calm, Classic, Negative, Custom RGB
	Edit	Pause during recording, Still Image Capture
Storage	Media	Internal memory: Approx. 9MB flash memory External memory: SD Card(up to 2GB guaranteed) MMC plus(up to 1GB guaranteed) SDHC (up to 8GB guaranteed) * Internal memory capacity is subject to change without prior notice.
	File Format	Still Image : JPEG (DCF), EXIF 2.21, DPOF 1.1, PictBridge 1.0 Movie Clip : AVI (MJPEG) Audio : WAV
	Image Size	Normal Shooting Mode 10M : 3648x2736 pixles 7M : 3072x2304 pixels 5M : 2592x1944 pixels 3M : 2048x1536 pixels 1M: 1024x768 pixels - Wide Shooting Mode 7MW: 3648x2052 pixels - Print Shooting Mode 9MP: 3648x2432 pixels
Interface	Digital output connector	USB 2.0
	Audio	Microphone : Mono Internal Speaker : Mono
	Video Out	AV : NTSC, PAL (user selectable)
	DC power input	4.2V
	Cradle	N/A
Power Source	Power Source	Rechargeable battery : SLB-10A,3.7V(1050mAh) Charger: SAC-47 DC power input connector : 20pin * Included battery may vary depending on sales region.
Physical Specification	Dimensions (WxHxD)	90.4 x 59 x 21.6mm
	Weight	116g (without battery and card)
	Operating Temperature	0 ~ 40°C
	Operating Humidity	5 ~ 85%
Software	Software	Samsung Master, Adobe Reader
Special Features	Special Features	Self Portrait Intelligent LCD MJPEG VGA 30fps Face Detection Beauty Shot DIS(Digital Image Stabilization) Photo Help Guide
System Requirement	For Windows	PC with processor better than PentiumⅢ 500MHz (Pentiumlll 800MHz recommended) Windows 2000/XP/Vista 250 MB of available hard-disk space (Over 1GB recommend) Minimum 256MB RAM (Over 512MB recommended) USB port CD-ROM drive 1024×768 pixels, 16-bit color display compatible monitor (24-bit color display recommended) Microsoft DirectX 9.0 or later
	For Macintosh	Power Mac G3 or later Mac OS 10.3 or higher Minimum 256MB RAM 110MB of available hard-disk space USB port CD-ROM drive

<<Specialty of the ES55 – Scene mode >>

The ES55 which is small, light, and has various functions has some special functions for user convenience. The special function is the various scene modes which you can enjoy without special knowledge about cameras. Let’s take a look at the various functions of the ES55.

Way to set the Scene mode for different situations

Beauty shot: Used to compensate skins and make them handsome.

Before After

The picture above is the comparison of auto mode and beauty shot. The original is not that bad, but applying the beauty shot, the whole picture becomes brighter and cleaner. I think the beauty fits well.

Portrait: Used to take a portrait.

Before After

The portrait mode is not much different from the auto mode, but looking at closely, it seems that the skin tone is brighter with this mode.

Kid: Used to take a moving object and children

Before After

My daughter ‘Si-Hyeon’ 7 months old keeps moving around lately for creeping on stomach. The former picture which the kid mode is not applied to was shaken, but the picture after the mode took the moment very well and the skin is so beautiful. This function is quite interesting.

Scenery: Used to take a mountain and sea

Cropped and resized

It’s was a very good day. It expressed the color of the sea and the green color of plain.

Macro: Used to take a macro shot

Cropped

It was a little shaken, but I think it expressed the color of flower well. On the macro mode, the AF changes to the macro mode, and the macro shot is possible.

Character: Used to take a text and paper without scanning

On the character mode, the AF changes to focus mode, and is set to take a text closely.

Sunset: Used to take sunset.

Cropped and resized

The red sun is beautiful. Due to the big difference in exposure, the tent in front is almost like a silhouette, but it makes the atmosphere better. For this mode, iris and shutter speed are adjusted appropriately.

Backlight: Used to take a shot to prevent dark faces when you are against the light

Before After

Resized and Cropped

After setting the center photometery, and getting closer to the lantern light, faces become black like the backlight. Setting the backlight mode, faces are alive like picture at the right side.

Beach and Snow: Used to take beach and snow

Before After

Beach and snow reflect sunlight, so pictures are so bright that the exposure is automatically decreased. It’s normally 1~2 stop, so pictures become a little dark. Applying the beach and snow mode, the exposure dropped almost becomes normal.

<< Special color feel of the ES55 – White Balance >>

The ES55 supports 7 types of white balance setting functions. When it comes to the white balance function, according to the condition, it’s a little different, and not good enough for high contrast and high exposure difference, but considering that it’s a compact digital camera, especially for those 6 situations, it shows satisfactory functions.

AWB

Camera automatically sets the optimized white balance

Daylight

Used on a sunny day outside

Cloudy

Used on a cloudy, or rainy day

Fluorescent L

Used under white fluorescent light

Fluorescent H

Used under daylight fluorescent light or daylight fluorescent light type 3 wave lights

Tungsten

Used under halogen lamp or light bulb

User setting

Used when users set it using a grey card or white balance paper

<<ISO and Noise of the ES55>>

The ES55 supports 6 ISO such as 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, and Auto. Desiring high ISO with less noise is to want too much, but comparing to the Lumix LX-1 by P company, this is born with the noise reduction. Actually, up to ISO 400, it’s good for normal pictures, and from 800, noise drastically increases, but not that bad for web.

Please look at the pictures taken with different ISO under the same shot condition.

Please look at the pictures taken with different ISO under the same shot condition.

It’s good to 200.

Looking at the resized picture, 400 is not that bad.

From 800, the intensity of light gets lower, and the dark part increases with more noise.

We can see the big rough noise on 1600. Changing to black and white, it’s not so bad.

<< Exposure compensation function for dark or bright situations>>

What’s the way to compensate exposure of a camera? Trusting the exposure gauge of a camera is a kind of mistake to have too much trust on a small device. The reflex type exposure gauge is just truing to set the exposure to one standard. It’s the grey color having 18% of reflecting rate. If the object has lower reflecting rate, it makes it brighter, while if it has higher rate, it tends to make it dark. That’s why we sometimes get a photo too dark or too brighter.

Anyway, under this circumstance of high exposure difference, appropriate exposure compensation would be great, and even if you don’t know anything about exposure, you can compensate it as brighter or darker by seeing the LCD.

When taking shots, you can compensate the exposure through the Fn button on the back any time.

The exposure compensation is possible to +-2, and the above picture is +-1 set. Because the object is king of bright, when it’s normal, it’s a little dark, but through the +1 of exposure compensation, it’s like brighter and more splendid. On the other hand, -1 is too dark, isn’t it? Using it appropriately, it will reduce the time and try of retouching.

<< Style selection function – Taking by style>>

The style selection function is to make a picture which various effects are applied to without edit. I need to see more to find out how useful it is, and here, let’s see the different feeling of each style.

These are the explanation of 10 styles.

Normal : Style is not applied

Soft : Style of soft feeling

Vivid : Style of vivid feeling

Forest : Style of natural and clean feeling

Retro : Style of brown feeling

Cool : Style of cool feeling

Calm : Style of calm feeling

Negative : Image reversion

Custom RGB : Users adjust the RGB and find the color feel

Classic : Style of old pictures, and it’s kind of black and white mode.

<< Photometry selection – Using various photometry>>

By using the photometry appropriately, we can make a pretty picture. The Samsung ES55 supports 3 types of photometry modes. Spot is included!! I haven’t used a compact digital camera much recently. The advanced functions are amazing.

1 2 3

1. Multi photometry

As it said, this photometry is to measure light by dividing screen. It’s used mainly when the exposure situation is complicated. It decides the exposure by calculating the brightness based on the brightness information of each part with the central base.

2. Spot Photometry

It gets the exposure from the spot of the AF region, and is good for the situations which have the striking difference between light and darkness or need certain brightness. At that time, the photometry with the point reflecting appropriate exposure will give you the better result.

3. Center Spot

This ignores the surrounds, measures wider central spot than the spot photometry and calculates the average. This is what I use frequently.

<<Other functions>>

On top of that, it has a lot of functions such as Face recognition, Picture edit, face color compensation, Image stabilization, and so on. There will be another change to introduce them, right? I will do that later.

<<Pictures taken by the ES55 – Mainly scenery>>

<<Epilogue>>

Looking at recent cameras, the technology in the camera is getting much better. The better and advanced functions might be stressful to users, because they need to know what they are. Annoying, bothering…

At this time, how intuitive and simple the menu or function can be an important matter to select it. This camera is good at simplifying the menu, and the simplicity of functions is satisfactory, I think. However, the simplicity sometimes triggers the complexity. We need to push a button a lot of times, and get through some levels of menu. I think the developers of the UI have considered extremetly.

Expecting the better UI, I’m going to wrap up the review of the Samsung ES55 which has a reasonable price and great functions.