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Digicams arrived as a boon for those who might not have the moolah to invest in or want to deal with the complicated controls of a professional DSLR camera, like yours truly. A couple of group hug shots from a party, a set of beautiful landscapes taken during the yearly vacation and some narcissistic self-portraits for the customary social network-profile pics are the basic needs that a pocket digicam these days absolutely has to fulfil for most people. Offering to do this and more, the 14.2-megger Samsung PL210 was part of our backpack for a couple of days.
Design
In a pocket-fit size, the Samsung PL210 looks like any other digicam you'll find in the market. On closer inspection, the body seems sturdy and well-designed with a matte silver finish at the front and a matte plastic panel encasing the 3-inch TFT display at the rear. All controls except the Power and the Zoom toggle button were nestled in the back panel with easy thumb access when I operated the digicam.
Playing around
With three buttons dedicated to Mode, Menu and Functions, you have more permutations and combinations to dabble in than you'd expect in an entry-level digicam. The usual options – photo resolution, white balance, display settings – are all easily accessible.
You can access the various Scene modes with a single button, making it easy to quickly change modes in a hurry. The Smart Auto gave mixed results under varying ambient light although it always got the exposure levels right and the colours vivid. Shooting portraits was a lot of fun with the ‘Beauty Shot' option. The camera automatically touched-up the skin tone and made the subjects look prettier than they usually do. However, self-portraits might not give you the best results as there were issues with ‘Face Recognition'.
The ‘Object Highlight' option looked promising but failed to give decent results. Even after fixing objects at a recommended distance of about 30 cm, all objects in the frame turned out equally in focus. Not too impressive, as the mode is supposed to blur the subject's surrounding.
The ‘Backlight' option reduced a brightly lit ambience in the pictures but sometimes the flash turned out to be too strong spoiling the results. Other modes that I tried out included Magic Frame, Night, Text, Sunset and the like.
Move in closer
The Samsung PL210 comes with a 10x optical zoom lens which gave sharp images even at full zoom, provided I had the Dual Image Stabilisation on. The dual image stabilisation option includes an optical as well as a digital image stabiliser. This not only seemed to work with minor shakes, as might be the case with unsteady hands, but also effectively reduced camera shake which usually occurs when the camera is being used on full zoom.
After taking a shot, the PL210 takes considerable time processing the image before you can have a quick look at what you captured. The colour saturation on almost all the pictures shot was rich.
The camera seemed to work best with the ISO on Auto. In Manual mode, images started looking slightly grainy at ISO 400 but the colours were still quite close to the original. At ISO 800, images showed a lot of noise, and colour reproduction was affected, with results getting progressively worse at ISO 1,600 and beyond.
Life in motion
Apart from the still camera, the PL210 also offers a compact HD video cam letting you shoot videos at 720p (30 frames per second). The video cam gave great results both indoors and outdoors. I used the 10x zoom in this mode as well and was pretty impressed with the results. All videos are recorded in the H.264 format.
Verdict
With more than a handful of options to keep you entertained in a compact body, a powerful 14.2 megapixel sensor, 10x zoom and a pretty efficient image stabiliser, the Samsung PL210 is one of the best value-for-money digicams in the market right now. For those who are just beginning to dabble in photography, this is an affordable and efficient pocket digicam to opt for.
Love: Excellent colour reproduction, efficient image stabiliser, good VFM
Hate: Slow processing, mixed results in Auto mode
Rs 11,990
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