Digital Home Thoughts: Luminous Landscape Examines the Samsung TL500/EX1

"Every now and then a camera comes along that simply feels right from the moment that you pick it up. It's a curious combination of design attributes, build materials and ergonomics that makes this so. The Samsung EX1 (TL500 in some markets) is one such camera. Given how new to camera making Samsung is, it's a bit surprising that they got so much right. But maybe not."

Michael Reichmann of Luminous Landscape takes the Samsung TL500 (EX-1 in Europe and parts of Asia) through one of this usual hands-on reviews, and came away pretty impressed with it, lamenting only on the low resolution of the video mode, and the proprietary RAW format used by the camera. I'm a little surprised with the outcome of the review - Samsung's cameras have to date, been plagued with image quality issues like poor noise control and overall lack of sharpness due to de-mosiacing algorithms. I'm also a little surprised by the lack of image quality tests in the review. While Michael generally doesn't do the bench testing sites like dpreview.com do, he generally runs through an ISO comparison test and maybe a colour checker test before posting. I'm now curious to see how the camera fared at higher ISOs, beyond the one lone 100% crop shown!