Would you like to adopt PL10 as your cute pet?

Following is a user review about Samsung PL10 (CL5) digital camera.

Cute and pretty digital camera ‘PL10’ for women

Young women or students usually care most about design, fast operation, features, and convenience. They usually don’t care much about zoom, high resolution, or advanced functions. What’s important to them are how good the camera looks, how easy to use it, and how good their portrait shot looks with help of diverse functions.

PL10 is the prettiest, slimmest digital camera with various Smart functions that Samsung Digital Imaging has released in 2009. PL10 has many features that can appeal to women; it is an ultra-slim auto digital camera with splendid color, pretty body, small size, multimedia functions, and smart beauty functions.

Slim, Smart, Simple

PL10 has all the Smart functions that Samsung has. - Various Scene detections, Smart Auto mode that takes a clear shot under any circumstance, Samsung’s exclusive Smart Face detection that can register faces, Smile shot/ Blink detection/ Self Guide/ Frame Guide, etc.

Expensive digital camera with manual mode and high zoom is not always the best choice. PL10 is best for young people who used to enjoy taking pictures with a cell phone. With its 120g slim body and beautiful design will make it a diary that you can carry around everywhere like cell phone, make-up, or wallet. When you register faces, the camera takes pictures based on those, and it can also work as a MP3 player and PMP. It is the most reasonable NO.1 digital camera.

Beautiful five-color coordinator

Its rounded appearance and unique front side may not stand out on the photo, but it looks a lot prettier in real. It provides five colors- Titan Silver/ Black/ Arty Red/ Candy Pinky/ Purple. Black and silver will look good on men, and red, purple, and candy pink for women. PL10’s main theme is a variety of colors and ultra-slim design that appeal to your people. PL10 becomes a part of your fashion. Would you like to adopt this camera as your cute pet?

Arty Red

Its metallic body looks luxurious and smooth. Its glittering body and rounded edges look feminine and cute. Arty Red in this review is not a normal red but strong one with wine color. It appears in two-tone color according to lights.

Almost unnoticeable

19.4mm slim body of 92.8×59.7 fits right into one hand. You can carry it in the pocket of skinny jeans on summer days. It is that slim, like a card.

Its power button with blue ring lamp and shutter button are easy to operate. Mike and speaker are located on the top. Dark grey metallic line seems like it would protect its beautiful body with its strength.

Elegant flame, ‘La Fleur’ patter

Some patterns make cameras look bad, but its fierce flame engraved pattern looks very tasteful. It looks magnificent rather than looking antique. The grip part, which gracefully protrudes like women’s lips, supports the middles finger, and flash is on the center of the top so a finger never blocks the flash. AF assist light helps AF in darkness and is placed next to it. The surface material looks somewhat fragile, so you’d better be careful with coins or metals. When carrying PL10, you’d better protect it with a pouch.

3x inner zoom lens

The lens has auto cover which is in the same color as the body color. When you turn the power on, it operates very fast. So it protects the lens when you carry it around, and helps comfy shot. It has 3x optical zoom, 38-114mm in 35mm film equivalent, and F3.5-F4.5- fairly ok as an inner zoom lens.

Smart 2.7 inch LCD

The LCD part is 2.7 inch and made with 230,000 pixels. It looks very clear without noise. It displays colors vividly and expresses in detail. It detects dark or bright places and automatically adjusts the brightness of the LCD. Its LCD quality is as good as high-end products. Its left-right viewing angle is great, and low angle’s good in high-low angle. A panel protecting the LCD makes a level with the whole back side, harmonizing with overall design.

Simple operation

The buttons are quite ideal. Options for 4-directional buttons and upper-downward direction buttons can be widely used, very instinctive and simple. You can quickly set basic functions using Fn key, and set shooting mode using a separate Mode switch button. Zoom button is moved upward or downward, and this button also works as a volume controller for playing MP3.

1.Zoom out/ Volume control 2.MODE button 3.MENU button 4.Select button

5.4-directional button (DISP/ timer/ close-up/ flash) 6.Play button 7.Fn button

Mode menu

Full battery

Battery is stronger than expected. Its capacity is 3.7v 900mAh, but its performance is better. In CIPA standard, it can take 280 pictures, and play MP3 for 330 minutes and PMP for 250 minutes. Both PC USB charging and AC adapter charging are available. The battery capacity and charging is good, but the charging time is a bit long, 180 minutes. The charging jack is 24pin terminal on the side, and AV cable can also be used. Battery memory cover is on the bottom side.

‘Smart Face detection’ function that prioritizes the registered faces

Smart Face detection function is not just a simple face detection function. You can register faces using this function, and the camera sets AF and exposure according to these faces. When shooting with Smart Face detection, priority appears in three-color-graph next to a square box.

when the model is registered

brightens the face of model

When the doll is registered

brightens the white doll face, so the model looks darker

This function is useful because it always focus on you and your friends. This can be used only when the external memory is inserted, and you can register up to 10 faces. FYI, face detection graph may show up even when there’s no registered face, if face detection rate is high.

OK in one shutter! ‘Smart Auto’

Smart auto mode is becoming one of the essential features in Samsung Digital Imaging. When you use Smart auto, it provides smarter functions than the separate Auto mode, so you can take satisfying pictures under any circumstances.

When you take a shot with Smart Auto mode, it automatically detects shooting circumstances and select an optical scene; there’re 11 scenes like Landscape, White, Night Scene, Night Portrait, Backlight, Backlight portrait, Macro, Macro text, Tripod, and Action. In Smart auto mode, Menu option becomes simple and green Smart icon appears on the upper side, and this icon changes according to shooting scenes.

The basic theme of Smart auto mode is allowing all the photos without a tripod. It just automatically applies tripod mode when you shoot at night. In this case, the sensitivity is set to ISO160, and the shutter speed is adjusted for optimal exposure. If you want to shoot with long-time exposure, you can use Night scene mode in Scene mode, which automatically sets longest exposure of 16 seconds. Night scene mode in Smart auto is taken by short shutter in high sensitivity.

There’re few things that can be set in Smart auto mode. There’re only image size and flash setting. Besides, there’re only two options- Smart auto and off. Especially, if you’re indoors with lots of people, you’d better turn the flash auto off because it may disturb people next to you. I think it would have been better if it automatically turns on and off the flash in Night portrait or Night scene.

Smart Album which enables convenient image sorting

Smart Album sorts photos under various categories, and you may enjoy looking at them through this system. Images and video clips can be categorized into file type (photo, video, voice), date (day), date (week) or color. Categorizing by colors is pretty unique. Sometimes Smart Album takes some time. So when there’re too many image files, you’d better turn off the Smart Album function for fast operation.

Play categories Play according to dates Play 9 shots in colors Play 20 shots in colors Categorizes according to registered faces Play according to colors

Restore files, deleted by accident, from recycle bin.

When you turn on the recycle bin function, deleted files are temporarily stored in internal memory. That is a recycle bin. You may restore deleted photos through this menu. But you can’t use it when the internal memory is full or when you’ve formatted internal memory. It’ll be useful when you have to bring back your precious images.

‘Beauty shot,’ looking better than real

The most natural photo must be the most realistic one, but women are usually afraid of let their skin exposed as it is. Most of women, even with good skin, ask for editing. Especially, if you’re accustomed to cell phone camera which produces blur pictures, you really need Beauty shot. Now Beauty shot is included as a basic function like face detection. PL10 also has Beauty shot function, which can adjust face brightness and retouch in three levels.

AUTO mode Beauty shot (Retouch+1,Brightness+1)

Beauty shot (Retouch+2,Brightness+2) Beauty shotRetouch+3,Brightness+3)

Beauty shot expresses clear skin like a doll without using Photoshop. In PL10, it is the first one on Scene mode, and its level can be set by Fn button. Especially, you can also use Smile shot or Self guide in beauty shot, so you can automatically capture smiley face and edit skin condition at the same time.

Beauty MENU

Powerful face retouch makes you more beautiful.

original Brightness and Face retouch

But Beauty shot takes some time, so it’s also good to edit images after taking pictures. When you select portrait shot that you want to edit, you can apply the almost same effect using the internal editing function. In addition, brightness, color, saturation, and contrast can also be adjusted. If faces look too dark or red, you may change color and brightens as well as apply Beauty editing.

original Color and beauty editing

Total face detection

Face detection function includes Face setection/ Self Guide/ Smile shot/ Blink detection. It also has Smart Face detection function, which can be used for face registeration shooting mentioned earlier.

Face detection is a system that brightens faces both in back light and normal light by adjusting exposure. Especially in backlight, beginners usually don’t recognized this and end up taking dark shots. But if you use Face detection function in this case, it adjusts AF and exposure on faces so helps take better pictures. One more thing I’m hoping for is higher detection rate in completely dark backlight.

Blink detection

When detecting blinking, it takes one more shot

Blink detection detects face first and if it notices blinking in initial shot, it takes two successive shots. So you can sort out the one with blinking. If there’s no blinking detected in the initial shot, it only takes one shot.

3x optical inner zoom lens

Samsung’s inner zoom lens provides quite good image quality. As I knew it in NV3 before, its clarity and detail expressions are extraordinary. As in ST10, adopting inner zoom lens and 9,000,000-pixel sensor seems to be the best choice. Since it didn’t select too high pixels to small sensor, it shows good quality high-sensitivity images. And overall quality is appropriate to slim concept camera. Although its 38-114mm (F3.5-F4.5) lens is about average level, it has no problem for daily shooting. Close-up shot can be done as close as 1cm through Super Macro.

Strong image stabilization function, ‘Advanced DIS’

There’s no optical image stabilization, but it supports Advanced DIS. This function is not just increasing sensitivity to secure shutter speed or combining short shutter and long shutter in high sensitivity. But it takes a shot with high-speed shutter and removes noise in two steps. This is a new Advanced DIS way. It prevents the decrease of saturation and shortens saving time. Of all things, it uses a bit higher sensitivity, but its image quality is pretty great. With only Advanced DIS, it stabilizes images quite efficiently.

Sufficient 800×592, MPEG4 video

It supports three types of video specifications- 800×592 (20fps), 640×480/320×240(30fps). Frame number is a little low in 800×592, but still ok. It uses MPEG format and saves as AVI files. Plus, it can record for two hours. If it’s 1GB, you can take video clips in 800×592 or 640×480 for about 35 minutes. Is quality is pretty good, so you may use it for web or daily use. Also, it supports optical zoom function while recording. But during zooming, the sound isn’t recorded and the focus may get blur. So you’d better do that before starting recording.

Editing dark area ACB

Samsung’s ACB function pursues naturalness rather than strong modification. In the field, its effect may not be noticeable, but when you take a look at it when you get home, you’ll see the image with ACB looks more natural. I think it’s ok to apply ACB every time since it naturally makes a balance between dark and bright area.

Exposure variation success shot AEB

It is a useful function that looks for the suitable exposure in various situations. It takes successive shots in three different exposure value so that a user can select the one best image.

High-speed successive shot, ‘Motion Capture’

It takes speedy continuous shots in 640×480, so if you link them as GIF, you can make fun image that looks like a subject moving fast. Continuous shot can be taken 6 per second, and up to 30 shots.

MP3 Player + PMP + Text Viewer

PL10 also has multimedia functions like ST10, so you can enjoy them in your free time. It has PMP and Text viewer as well as MP3 Player. If you want to use these functions, you need to make folders like MP3/PMP/TEXT in your memory, and then insert files in them. Its capacity is the same as ST10 or former models.

Multimedia menu

MP3PlayerText Viewer Outstanding image quality and high-sensitivity image processing

PL10 has 1/2.5 inch 2,000,000-pixel sensor like ST10. Their image quality is about the same. It may show low resolution compared to recent compact digital cameras with 10,000,000-12,000,000 pixels, but its high-sensitivity image processing is better. And its image quality is great both in the central and peripheral area. Especially, no color noise was noticed in high-sensitivity shot, and it supports up to ISO3200 without size drop. It means that it gives you more freedom even in poor lighting.

ISO80~ISO3200, good image quality in all sensitivity

As you can see from the image quality for each sensitivity, image processing over ISO400 is very impressive. It’s better than many high-end products which have too high pixels for small sensor, resulting in color noise and poor details. Not only ISO800, ISO1600 is also ok to use. In ISO3200, the saturation drops a little, but still not bad.

PL10’s concept is not for high quality. So its strengths in indoor shooting and excellent high-sensitivity quality will compensate brightness of the inner zoom lens. Plus, it has highly useful Advanced DIS.

Natural and sentimental color tone

Samsung is a brand that expresses the most natural color tone. It’s lively and warm pattern at the same time. And its excellent balance is absolutely trustworthy. There’re more and more people who choose Samsung just because of color expression, so I wish they would keep their strength for long.

Like other models, PL10 supports nine different types of color style. And contrast and saturation can also be set in 5 levels, plus RGB custom. In fact, its color is ok when shooting with basic setting, so you may use after-shot editing.

White balance offers 7 settings including Custom. Color expression in Auto white balance is pretty accurate, and it picks out white under yellow light pretty well. Personally, Fluorescent L white balance seems unique.

Sometimes, if red casting appears due to red light, it would be ok to take cold shot with Custom white balance. Also, you may remove red in afterwards-editing since the color may differ according to various light sources or background indoor. In the image below, I used Custom white balance to deal with reddish background as a result of warm color lighting on the left.

Perfect three factors- design, function, and image quality

PL10 is the Samsung digital camera with best efficiency. Its unique and slim design and artistic pattern show its best identity as women’s. Above all, various functions, high image quality, and stable color expression are the most attractive factors of PL10. It looks much better if you see it in real than from the photo, so I strongly recommend it to female users. It video functions are good enough to enjoy on web, and its Perfect Portrait System helps to make better image shot of you and your friends.

Slim digital camera satisfying in every aspect

Its AF is a little inaccurate at night, and Smart Auto in dark places needs to be improved, but other than that, I can’t find other weaknesses for PL10. It has good additional features and offers nice image quality. Considering its slim design, its lens and image stabilization functions are understandable, and Advanced DIS compensates for it quite nicely. Also, its multimedia functions like MP3 Player or PMP can get high credits. PL10 is not only attractive to women but also to young students and adults who prefer design that is antique but cute at the same time.

　

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