Sort and browse

In browse mode, the Samsung PL 70 has an interesting “Smart Album” filtering system to make it easier to find your shots.
Not only can you sort your pictures by date (in the usual way), but also by type, theme, and even colour

In the “entry-level” category, the little Samsung PL 70 has some eye-catching stats – 28 mm wide-angle and 5x optical zoom, HDTV (720p) video, face detection, scene recognition, a 7.6 cm (3") LCD display, and more. The numbers are good, but is the PL 70 worth looking into? Answer in the test.

Handling

We liked the first shots we took with the Samsung PL 70  – fairly fast startup and very responsive wide-angle focusing, and there’s a focus-assist light for the auto-focus system if ambient light drops too low. In telephoto, focusing was a little slower, but still quite acceptable.

The 7.6 cm (3”) LCD display is nice and fluid, even in half-light, despite slightly low resolution (230,000 dpi). However viewing angles are a little narrow and the display is overly reflective in full sunlight – but this, unfortunately, is a problem with all too many compacts. The zoom is comfortable and relatively precise.

The Samsung PL 70 is fairly simple to get the hang of, with a well-designed, simple, fairly intuitive interface. A Smart mode automatically determines the scene mode that suits best. In actual use, Smart mode was quite responsive and tended to make the right calls in most common shooting situations. Moving on to connectivity, the PL 70 has a proprietary cable for both data and recharging the battery (no charger is supplied with the camera). Another cable, available as an option, connects the compact to an HDMI port so you get the most out of the 720p HDTV video. Build quality is more than respectable, but it looks fairly run-of-the-mill, too ordinary to stand out from the crowd in a camera section where competition is pretty intense.

Image quality

So the Samsung PL 70 is quite nice and easy to use. But does it deliver good photos? Let’s start by looking at what is a recurring problem with Samsung compacts – electronic noise. Unfortunately the situation hasn’t really improved. The quality of the PL 70’s images starts to slip from 400 ISO on. Purple fringes are also quite visible in transition areas, and the phenomenon is even more visible at 400 and 800 ISO. The lens also leaves something to be desired. While the centre of the shots is sharp, the image periphery lacks precision, both in wide-angle and telephoto shots.

The macro mode is nothing to write home about, either. Focusing distance is limited to 5 cm (2"). The flash is a little powerful, but in general the PL 70 exposes shots correctly. The colour rendering is amazingly soft for a consumer-oriented camera (a point in its favour!), with a fairly neutral white balance.

See photos taken with the Samsung PL 70 in our face-off.

The optical stabilization worked reasonably well, with acceptable shots at 1/6 second. Not bad at all.

Video

As for video, the little PL 70 has a 720p HDTV mode that’s really quite good. 30 frames per second, 10 Mbits/s data rate, stereo sound, and it’s possible to zoom while shooting (by default, the sound is muted when the zoom is operating, but you can disable that function). The video quality is quite good for a mid-range model