Design and Handling
The P50 is a very traditional-looking compact camera. Whether you consider it to be utilitarian and functional or just a bit unimaginative will depend on your own perspective but it's a perfectly sensible shape for a camera to be. The use of materials is pretty good, though - they're not quite as impressive as the plastics used on the P5100 (which look and feel just like the magnesium alloy body panel on the same camera), but the combination of slightly textured plastic and rubber hand grip are above average for a camera of this price. It'll certainly do well in the all-important 'pick it up in a camera shop' test.
Handling
Key body elements
Controls & Menus
Unsurprisingly, the P50 uses a very similar interface to the one that appears on the higher-resolution P5100. However, without the P5100's control wheel, many of the interface's quirks and inconsistencies pretty much disappear, making the P50 rather more pleasant to use.
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In a tried-and-tested manner, the P50 gives you a choice of view during record mode. You can just choose to view the recording mode and the focus area, or you can add the shutter speed and aperture values... | ...or see the full shooting details, including shots remaining, image size, image quality and sensitivity settings. What you can't do is add composition gridlines - an unusual and disappointing omission (The P5100 has them). |
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The shooting menu contains the 11 options you're most likely to want access to. They're well selected but spread out over three pages, so require a lot of scrolling... | ...or they can be displayed as a grid of icons. Once you've learned what each symbol means, it's a quick and simple way to access the commonly changed settings. |
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The setup menu is accessed from a dial setting on the top of the camera and allows the underlying, less regularly changed settings to be altered, including the menu/icon option. | Adjusting the White Balance suddenly offers a view of the image being shot - allowing you to preview the effect of the change you're about to make. It's a nice touch. |
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Many menus options have a '?' icon at the bottom left of the screen. Pressing to zoom in brings up a brief, usually useful explanation of what the option does. | Rather than having to connect the camera to a computer to retrieve images from the internal memory (which fits around 8 full sized images), the camera lets you copy them off to a memory card. |
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Like all good modern point and shoots, the P50 has a lot of scene modes. It gets the balance about right between having a useful mode for the situation you're in and having so many that you can't remember them all and never use them. | The P50 has what seems a good selection of movie modes but, as we'll come to later, anyone wanting to use them may find themselves feeling a little let down. |
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