1. Prologue
Smarter 24-240mm ultra wide high zoom compact digital camera ‘WB550’
The WB500 which started the Samsung digital imaging has come back with higher tuning such as high resolution and bigger LCD based on the smart auto. Certainly, they caused some kind of confusion, because it’s been such a short time delay after releasing the WB500, but the WB550 means the improved Samsung. After actually using it, I could see things getting better than the WB500 which are not in the specification. From 24mm wide angle to 240 tele photo zoom angle, the WB500 has the widest FOV among compact digital cameras having more than optical 10x zoom. Besides, additional functions and manual functions. Only with them, the value of the WB500 is enough.
Wide, wide, wide~~ Why are looking for wide angle? Some time ago, the standard of snap cameras became ultra wide angle, so 28mm is like a criteria of compact digital cameras.
Samsung has solved the distortion of wide angle, and released 3 cameras supporting 24mm ultra wide angle such as WB500/WB550/WB1000. Once including the IT100 supporting 28-1400mm, it’s like a strong wide angle group. It’s better than the Panasonic which are being popular with wide angle compact digital cameras in wide angle and various functions. Samsung Digital Imaging…it’s so threatening.
Specification is not enough to show all the changes.
The difference from the WB500 is 12M pixels, smart auto recognizing 11 scene modes automatically, optimizing portraits with AE/AF/AWB, and taking vivid scenery, internal HDMI port, and 3 inch large LCD. There’s no difference in appearance. The size is exactly the same, and the weight becomes 10g heavier due to the change of the LCD size. And users will prove the overall improvement of completion. Especially, I like the improved performance of the OIS. Beauty shot making face handsome, 720p HD video less loss of voice with supporting light on recording, Dual IS consisting of optical and electronic, simple manual mode, various face recognition functions, smart album, and ISO 3200 are supported as a representative compact digital camera of Samsung.
The revolution of Samsung digital imaging is going on.
Ultra wide angle, optical 10x zoom 24-240mm Schneider lens
Not just with the wide angle, Samsung has made users trust them with great pictures. I think only specification will disappear, because Samsung has tried to improve the performance endlessly. I feel so secured like the big lens tells everything about the WB550.
F value is F3.3(Wide)-F5.8(Tele). You don’t need to say F3.3 is not enough. The WB550 supports 24mm ultra wide angle. The wider, the stronger to shake. Besides, for IS, it supports OIS and the famous Advanced DIS. Especially, when taking outdoor scenery pictures, it doesn’t matter. On wide angle, the lens is coming in a little, and when zooming, the thick barrel comes out. The zooming is smooth and the speed is appropriate. However, on 100m, the F value becomes F5.0, so you need to be cautious of shake by checking the shutter speed on tele angle shot.
Powerful OIS
Same image quality on every FOV
There’s no big quality decrease by zooming due to anti-distortion. Especially, the image quality on middle range FOV is great. Getting to tele angle, the quality gets worse, but it’s hard to see the difference. The details getting rougher to the surroundings, chromatism, and noise in dark side are still not satisfactory, but resolution increase to 12.2M pixels with sustaining details needs to be praised. Especially, the quality of central parts on a sunny day is really good.
People taken by the 24mm ultra wide angle have long legs and arms, and their faces become small or bigger. Using tele angle together, there’s a slight background blur effect. Using this strength of the WB550, dynamic photos can be made.
5cm closeup shot, 1m closeup shot
The closest shot is 5cm on wide angle. It has really wide FOV, 5cm closeup shot takes relatively wide background. 3cm could have been much better, I think. Closeup shot on tele angle is also good. I feel a little distance on the max. Tele angle closeup shot, but it’s possible to take a shot in 1m close on max. tele angle.
There’s a high possibility to make shade on wide angle, I recommend optical 2~3 zoom closeup shot to take out useless background. Take a closeup shot with flipping the zoom dial 2 or 3 times.
3. Style
It’s better, because it’s compact.
The WB550 and WB500 are two-egg twins. The WB550 has Larger LCD and simpler grip part. The gray color gets darker and HDMI port is on the side.
It comes in 2 colors such as black and gray. When getting light, the grey model has a little purple. Dark grey is rather correct, I think. People normally like the black more, but the dynamic gray is more mechanical and special.
It gives luxurious feeling with the power button adopting a blue lamp, fresh shutter and zoom lever, smoothly swiveling mode dial, and position of speaker. I wish the zoom dial was smoother, because the dialing sound might be recorded on a video. I wish the position of model dial was closer to the LCD. It’s not comfortable to adjust, because it’s located on the center.
The multi coated 3 inch LCD filling the back has high transmissivity and low reflective light. Metal buttons having good touch feel are impressive. Besides, the command lever used for manual operation and value adjustment are left-right click type, so it needs a little strength. This command lever adjusts iris and shutter speed value on manual mode, and is used to edit exposure. Through the internal menu, users can allocate functions. The strap ring designed for thumb control is also noticeable. Because the 4 way and Ok button have the same height and are small, it’s a little inconvenient for manual operation. The Fn buttons is to set primary options, and the E buttons is used for photo style selector function to express the color and effects.
Built-in HDMI port
On the side of the grip part, 20-pin port for charge, transfer, and output is located and the HDMI port which is newly installed on the WB550 is on the other side. By adopting the HDMI port, users can see much better and more vivid HD videos and pictures through connecting it to HDTV with HDMI cable or something.
The feature of the LCD on the WB550 is the brightness. Compared to other models, even though they have the same 3 inch panel, it’s brighter and warmer. It consists of multi coated panel with high transmissivity, and through automatic brightness adjustment system, the screen is vivid everywhere. Left-right viewing angle and low viewing angle are great, but when it comes to high angle, it shows reversion on more than 45 degree. Especially, when recording a video, the screen is very clear. There’s no much noise indoors.
Good Battery performance
The battery is 3.7V 1050mAh Li-Ion battery. The performance of the battery is 280 pictures on the CIPA reference. Even though it has a bigger LCD, but the battery time is longer than the WB500. It’s due to the OIS only activated on half shutter and LCD interface, I guess. It’s enough unless you take tons of pictures, but if you keep taking pictures, sometimes the battery consumption drastically increases. Therefore, you’d better have one more battery for spare. If the battery remains starts to decrease, the consumption gets faster, so users should keep this in mind.
4. Smart Auto
Just push the shutter!!
The Smart auto mode is one of the biggest differences between the WB500 and WB550. Setting the mode dial to the smart auto mode, the camera automatically recognizes 11 scene modes according to the situations and takes pictures on the optimized setting. Not only for the auto scene recognition, but also for portrait, it measures exposure according to the face and expresses the color of faces and scenery more vividly.
The Smart mode can automatically recognize various thing such as scenery, white, night scenery, night portrait, backlight, backlight portrait, portrait, macro, macro text, tripod, and action. When taking closeup shots, the icon change to the closeup and taking portraits, it changes to the portrait in real time. When it comes to backlight portrait and night portrait, the flash automatically lights, and on the tripod, the camera recognizes that there’s no shake, so it automatically takes a shot on low ISO (The lowest: 160) with slow shutter.
Options to set on the smart mode are picture ratio and flash auto/off. Flash needs to be on or off depending on the situations. When it comes to night scenery, it should be automatically turned off, I think. On the smart mode, 1/8 sec is the lowest speed and ISO800 is the highest, so there’s limit to express light in a very dark place.
The smart auto mode is not everything.
There’s no exposure compensation and nothing you can set. If you are not a beginner, you should use P mode or M mode to set options. Below picture was taken on P mode with exposure +1.0, because on the smart auto a picture was a little too dark.
The smart album is to sort image files by files, date, or color, and manage them. Using the zoom lever, you can set the type of thumbnail to 3, 9, and 20 divisions.
The management by colors seems so special to me. It judges the overall color of pictures, analyze them to red, yellow, green, blue, etc, and play them.
It has fast play, magnification, and move. Using the zoom dial, you can magnify them and cut them out with the OK button..
‘Recycling function’ restoring mistakenly deleted pictures
Like we take out things in a trash bin, it can restore mistakenly deleted pictures. If you have an experience to delete wrong pictures, you like the function much.
‘Beauty shot’ making handsome faces
The best thing is the post-processing. The beauty mode shot take a little more time, so you might miss the important moment. You can also set the intensity for the post-processing, and you can adjust image brightness, color feeling, and ACB together, so the post-processing is much more effective.
Not only for the beauty shot, but also for the smart auto mode, auto face recognition function is applied. The face recognition function helps set exposure focusing on faces not only on the AF, but also on backlight or on frontal light. Strong sunshine might make people hard, it’s good to use the face recognition function and flash on backlight. Other than the face recognition, it supports various face recognition functions such blink detection, smile shot, and self guide.
Incomparable Self shot ‘Self guide’
The self guide function helps people take a self shot by making beep sounds when their face is on the center. When the face is inclined to one side, the interval of sound is kind of long, and it’s out of the angle, the sound stops beeping. When the face is on the center, it makes beep sound with a short delay to help get the right position.
Smiling, taken. ‘Smile shot’
The smile shot is to take a shot if the person smiles. It doesn’t forget the happy moment by quickly capturing the smiling moment. When the smile shot is set, the smile shutter is continuously applied, so every time you smile, it keeps taking shots of your smile. However, the intensity of smile is kind of different, so I wish it could set the intensity of the smile and become more sensitive.
The blink detection function takes consecutive shots if the person blinks, and you can pick up a picture without blinking. It’s not unconditionally taking 3 shots. If you blink for the first shot, it doesn’t take more shots. It’s a so intelligent function.
‘Frame guide’ the composition I want
The frame guid is useful to ask someone to take a shot of you. Giving a camera setting the composition you want, the person can take a picture with that composition. It can prevent wrong composition, or other mistakes. Especially, the WB550 has so wide angle, it will be used more. This function doesn’t belong to the face recognition, but on the scen mode, but because it’s about the portrait, so it’s good to include this in the face recognition function.
Fast booting, Good AF speed
The time between pushing a power button and ready is a little more than 1 sec. It’s so fast. Zooming time from wide to tele is about 2 sec. Indoor AF is also good. AF rate gets better than the WB500, but I think it has to be even better on tele angle. When taking shots at night with insufficient light, the AF has a little problem. If so, you can use the MF unlimited shots. The AF performance is not bad for normal shots, but if it’s more improved in some parts, hign-end users will select this more.
Satisfactory UI menu
In the shot menu, various compositon grids and real time histogram are supported, and by the Fn menu from right to left side, you can set most of the shot modes simply.
Composition grids and histogram
Fn menu
The E button takes a role of the photo style selector function. For the command lever, you can set one among the exposure compensation, ISO and white balance. The screen brightness can be set to auto, normal, bright, and dark, but when it comes to auto, the basic brightness is much brighter than real pictures, so sometimes setting to normal or dark is better. And, the color of the picture is deeper than the color of the LCD.
Command lever setting
Free from the shake with the Dual IS
Applying the OIS and Advanced DIS, it prevents the shake of objects. From the tele angle, it has much less minor shake compared with the WB500. Especially, the improvement of the OIS is remarkable. The OIS is not applied normally, but with a half shutter, lens shift is activated. It’s more effective for tele angle than wide angle, and the capacity of the IS is similar to 3 levels of the shutter speed.
The Advanced DIS is very useful where the light is insufficient or indoors. As a electronic type, it’s the strongest system. It takes at a high speed, goes through double noise reduction effect, and completed. The level of noise or chroma degration is incomparable to former DIS. Applying the OIS and Advanced DIS together, it becomes the best IS.
Because the FOV is so wide, when taking closeup shots, sometimes this function is necessary. If setting the focus and moving it, fint can be dislocated with the major object. Of course, by the multi AF, it’s possible to set a focus on the object you want, but the success rate isn’t that high. I wish the moving region was wider, but it will be enough to be used.
Useful MF shots
The MF is set by the 4 way closeup function button. It’s displayed from 10cm to infinity with a division, and according to zoom, the region of MF becomes different. It’s useful when the AF fails, sets a focus on a fence across, or objects for closeup shot. Taking on the MF, it’s better users can set the spot not just the center.
MF on short distance objets / MF on middle distance objects / MF on long distance objects
There are people saying the manual mode is the best thing of the WB550. Of course, it’s not full manual function. Only 2 iris values can be set, and control and exposure information are kind of inconvenient for manual operation. However, once it has the manual mode, it will deliver valuable fun and memories that other compact cameras can’t for indoor shots or night scenery pictures. On wide angle, the F valus can be F3.3 or 7.5 and on the tele angle, it’s F5.8 or 13.1. The shutter speed is from 1/1500 ~ 16 sec.
The manual operation for night scenery is made by the command lever and 4 way button. Iris and shutter speed activation can be made by the Fn button, change of them is through left-right button, and the value adjustment is by the command lever. Then, with a half shutter, the exposure information comes out. It’s slightly inconvenient, but it doesn’t really matter, if you take your time for shots. The exposure information is displayed in numbers, and for night scenery, it should be adjusted to -. When it comes to LCD brightness, it’s much brighter than real, so it’s better to take with a slightly bright feeling.
The photo style selector is set by the E button on the back to Normal, vivid, soft, forest, retro, cool, calm, and classic. Normal and calm is good for human and has great gradation . If you want strong colors, vivid and forest would be cool. The classic reminds me of rough grey film and so charming.
For the normal, setting contrast, chroma, and sharpness with 5 levels, you can make more unique pictures adjusing more dynamically. Also you can set the color more detailed such as black or white, sepia, red, gree, blue, reversion, and custom. For the custom, you can adjust RGB separately, so more various effects can be made.
The Auto white balance is quite satisfactory. It’s the greatest thing of Samsung with the color feature. It used to make some different color feel at the same place, but it’s not that much, but kind of equal. The Auto white balance reacting to various sources of lights is also very stable. It less expresses skin too redish than the WB500, so it becomes calmer.
The post-processing function is quite strong. The reserved usersof the WB550 need to make the most of camera’s post-processing feature. You can restore wrong color feel by dark or mistakenly touch of white balance. It has various functions such as RGB adjustment, contrast, chroma, and noise effects. The below picture was taken on the custom white balance, it was recovered by the post-processing function with color, brightness, and beauty function from strong green tone picture. You can see the noise of fases disappears after the beauty compensation. Due to continuous compensations or brightness compensation, the gradation might be slightly degraded, but beautiful pictures are more important…^^
8. HD-VIDEO & Add-ons
1280×720p HD video recording
One thing you should remember is when fixed zoom or zooming out, the continuous AF is not made. And only zooming in, it is made. That’s why users have to use zooming in while recording. This isn’t exactly normal system, but definitely improved from a former model. I hope the next model can set continuous AF even when zooming out, and then without zooming, continous AF will be made.
Using various options, you will find becoming more intelligent. For example, on the backlight, setting the exposure to +0.7, you can get much more bright scenes. (Using the command lever)
Not only white balance, but also various colors of the photy style selector can be used, so it allows you to record various videos. Moreover, using the OK button while recording, you can pause a video and record it again on one file successively.
H.264 forman, various resolution
It records a video in H.264(MPEG4.AVC) format as an MP4 file. There are 5 compression rates such as 1280×720(30fps) high or standard, 640×480(30fps or 15fps), and 320×240(60fps, 30fps). The size difference between high and standard resolution is not that big. Below is the recording time with 8GB SDHC memory.
29 min of maximum recording time is not satisfactory, but considering that as a compact body, it has a great resolution like a camcorder, it’s really wonderful.
The advantage of the OIS is also noticeable. Because the shake on tele angle recording is much less, the optical type is much better in movies than sensor shift type using electronic compensation. Using the zoom well, there’s a background blur effect when taking objects or insects.
6 pictures / sec of Motion catprue
As a high continuous shot function, the motion capture function can take 6 pictures per sec up to 30 pictures. Due to 640×480 size, we can’t expect high quality, but for GIF animation, the small size might be better. It’s good for blog for fun. When it comes to the best resolution continuous shot, it’s taken 1.5 pictures / sec, and the speed gets slower after taking some pictures.
The ACB function is used to take scenery and useful when the objects got shaded or darker, because cloud hides the sun or something. This function compensates those dark parts. It’s more effective for scenery than human. With appropriate compensation, it doesn’t make the picture unnatural.
The motion timer included in the self timer detects moving of objects after 6 sec, and if there’s no movement, it automatically takes a shot. It’s used for group pictures or kids, and the detection performance gets better than former models.
9. Quality
12.2M pixels great resolution, unsatisfactory surrounding resolution on wide angle
This feature will be a weakness for those who are sensitive to resolution. However, this is not a big problem in compact digital cameras. The detail expression in surroundings should be improved, but it has more plane and cooler feeling and it can’t be recognized after resizing.
Chromatism on surroundings
Up to ISO 3200, high ISO resolution on average
It supports ISO from 80 to 3200, and on ISO 3200, the 3M size is maximum. Because there’s a slight noise on low ISO in a dark part, it’s not very clean detail. It shows moderate resolution according to the ISO increase, and up to ISO 400 can be comfortably used.
To ISO 400, the details remain as it was. From ISO 800, I could notice the noise elimination process, and this is the limit line for normal use. On more than ISO 1600, the details are degraded noticeably, and the noise affects the whole color feel, so this has to be used for special occations. The resolution is moderate as a compact digital camera, but low resolution on dark parts and high ISO details are not satisfactory.
10. Epilogue
The best compact digital camera for traveling and sub from Samsung.
The advantage of ultra wide angle compact digital cameras is the portability and it provides the performance of snap shots. When traveling for snap shots, the preparation of heavy and big cameras is so bothering. Appropriate size and 24-240mm WB550 is the optimized model for travel. Compared to ultra zoom cameras, it has less lens and grip projection, and the 1 sec booting time allows users enjoyable shots anywhere. Even though it’s not that slim, but with appropriate thickness, it provides stablility of shots, and the portability is also very good. It supports simple manual mode and can take great night scenery and using wide and tele angle, various expression of portraits is possible. On top of that, HD video recording. As I mentioned, there’s no compact camera like this for main, sub, travel, and normal life.
There’re a lot of things upgraded such as remarkably upgraded Optical IS function, AF for video recording, and smart auto mode. I like the internal upgrade rather than upgraded pixels and LCD size. Beauty mode, face recognition, and various additional functions. Nothing seems impossible with the WB550 to me.
Like the former model. There are thing to care such as resolution on high ISO and image details. If it’s hard to change the size of the sensor, they can just concentrate on the improvement of image sustaing the present pixel numbers and upgrade the compeletion of additional functions. It has the best FOV, but with the sharpness of the IT100 and process on high ISO of the PL50, it will be the best. Of course, the lens and other functions will cover those weaknesses, but to be better..
On top of that, as common comments, the mechanical sound of HD videos when zooming, 29 min limit, high capacity SDHC, bigger battery capacity, and better control for manual operation should be considered.
.
댓글 없음:
댓글 쓰기