First pics from TL500

Nevada-is-HOME wrote:

I am a new owner of an used Samsung EX1/TL500 -- purchased from E-Bay for $250 just prior to learning the price for a new one at Amazon dropped to $300.

The camera built is impressive. The LCD is beautiful.. It is a keeper for sure.

I bought the camera for the purposes of shooting indoor sports (ie no DSLR cameras allowed at many college / professional sports venues).

I must admit I never do this type of shooting, I am one of those that would much sooner shoot a beautiful scene.

After two outings at two different HS school gyms, my excitement from my first try (WOW, Amazing, How does it do that?) to my second outing (hmm.. realistically.. how much is the Samsung fast lens better than my old Canon G6 lens at the same setting, say f/2.0 and ISO 400?)

I would never knock the G6, it was very well thought of when it was introduced.

There is still much to learn and to like about the camera -- but as a P&S for sports, just average.

If you are going to use as high as ISO800, then why not try DUAL IS mode, it usually created images as sharp as a tack, and it has a default upper ISO limit of 800.

So far, here are the shortcomings that are noticeable to me ..

1) slow continuous burst mode. I knew going in it was slightly less than 2fps.. but come on..it was more like 1fps.

2) noticeable shutter leg even after prefocus comparatively to the Canon G6 and the Fujifilm E550. My shutter finger can tell -- believe or not.

I am not sure why you wouldn't set the manual focus to approximately mid field and rely on the wide DOF.

3) cannot figure out how to switch off digital zoom -- if that is possible at all.

Don't think you can.

4) shooting exclusively in jpg.. the write speed to a class 6 SD card seems annoyingly slow.. compound that with slow continuous burst mode -- the kiss of death in sports shooting.

I have found that all cards of the same class are not created equal, I went through and tested my 4GB cars two of which were class 4 and 2 were class 6, and found the class 4 to be noticably faster, so that is the pair I use.

5) the in camera battery charging and the proprietary cable required with it bugs me more than it should. That same cable is used to transfer pics from camera to computer.

I find this excellent, I have owned my EX1 for 18 months and still have not had the need to buy a second battery, it runs all day and it can be charged between sessions of use.

As for the other camera attributes.. so far the EX-1 is good. I like it enough to be happy with purchase. No regrets.

I've owned many P&S throughout the years (my dpreview gallery / albums are categorized by the camera used). I'll let you decide how the EX-1 stacks up with my other P&S cameras. Take a look

Brian