Digital Camera Review: Samsung ST550

Shooting self-portraits can be challenging but not if you have a Samsung ST550.

A compact camera’s resolution can only do so much to attract buyers. Users are looking for more than insanely high megapixels and want more features such as wireless connectivity or built-in projector.

The Samsung ST550’s main attraction is its dual screens — a smaller second one located in front allows users to frame themselves better when taking self-portrait shots.

Plus, this model ships with other attractive features such as 720p HD video recording, haptic feedback for the touchscreen, smart gesture capability and a 12.2-megapixel sensor.

These features should make the ST550 an appealing buy for most users.

INTUITIVE: All you need is to touch the screen
to access some of the camera’s features.

The design

The sturdy ST550 has a black glossy finish with purple trimmings. The pocketable camera has only four physical buttons — power, shutter, tiny zoom lever and playback switch — as most of its functions are only accessible via the 3.5in touchscreen.

The Smart Gesture function allows users to swipe or draw patterns on the screen to access most of its other features.

Also, there is a built-in accelerometer so users can simply tilt the camera to execute the selected function.

Plus, the display’s haptic feedback provides physical confirmation when users tap on the screen.

All images are saved in either the camera’s built-in 55MB memory or on a microSD card. If you tend to keep a lot of photos on the storage card, it can be a problem to look for a particular image.

Thankfully, the camera’s Smart Album function categorises photos by favourites, face, timeline, week, colour and content. This makes it easier to locate a particular shot.

Easy self-portraits

A simple tap is all it takes to switch on the secondary front screen. The screen can be unresponsive at times and takes more than one tap to turn it on.

Even thought the display appears a little washed out but it performs its function well for taking self- portraits.

SIMPLE: The camera only has four buttons:
power, shutter, zoom, and playback.

You can also enable the smile detection feature so that the camera will take a shot as soon as you smile.

Holding the ST550 at arm’s length is enough to squeeze up to four people within the screen’s frame.

The front LCD also supports other features including Children mode, Shutter Info, Function Info and self-timer.

In Children mode, it plays a fun clown animation to capture a child’s attention so that the child would look directly at the camera.

Shutter Info displays a “smiley face” on the screen to signal to the subjects that you’re ready to take their photo.

Function Info provides a visual read out of key camera settings such as the flash and macro modes that are being used.

Finally, when taking a group photo using the self-timer, it will show a preview of the shot as well as a visual countdown timer so that everyone knows exactly when the photo will be snapped.

Overall, most of the features worked really great for taking self-portraits.

Like any other compact camera this model also has a lot of features to help you get a better shot when you are behind the camera.

It comes with built-in Advanced Dual Image Stabilisation technology which combines both the optical and digital image stabilisers.

Based on our experience, this feature really make a difference as it helps capture much sharper images.

Speedy shooter

The ST550 offers a fast startup time of less than two seconds so you can start snapping pictures really fast.

You don’t even have to tweak the settings as the camera’s Auto mode was pretty good, and you can spice up your photos with Scene modes too.

The still photos turned out sharp with good colour saturation and minimal chromatic aberration.

The camera has an ISO range of 80 to 3,200 but we recommend ISO 400 or lower because the image becomes progressively noisy at higher levels.

At ISO 400 the noise is hardly noticeable but once you hit ISO 1,600 or 3,200 the images become very grainy.

Also, the camera has a normal macro (less than 80cm) and Super Macro (between 3 and 8cm) mode.

Again, the macro shots turned out pretty good as long as the ISO was set at 100 or 80.

The ST550 shoots HD movies in 720p using the H.264 (MPEG4.AVC) format. If you storage is an issue, you could lower the resolution to 640 × 480-pixels or 320 × 240-pixels.

The camera doesn’t disappoint when shooting HD videos. The recordings turned out clear and crisp.

Plus, you can pause the video recording at any time. Also, if zooming is used the camera stops recording sound temporarily.

The camera can be easily be hooked up to a HDTV so that you enjoy your HD recordings. In terms of battery life, the camera fared well.

Even when shooting at the max resolution and with the flash turned on, we were able to shoot more than 300 images before the power ran out.

Switching on the secondary screen simultaneously will reduce the battery life further.

Conclusion

If you are the type that takes a lot of self-portraits then the you’ll love the secondary screen on the Samsung ST550. Plus, the ST550 has a lot of handy features which make it easy and fun to take pictures.

We are also happy with the camera’s picture and video quality.

The Samsung ST550’s asking price of RM1,299 is reasonable considering that it’s feature packed.

Overall, this camera is a recommended buy especially if you are looking to take a lot of self-portrait shots.

Pros: Two screens; friendly interface; good image and video quality; supports HD

Cons: Only minor issues.

Samsung ST550

Compact camera

Sensor: 12.2-megapixels

Lens: Schneider Kreuznach lens with f/4.9 - 22.5mm (35mm film equivalent: 27 - 124.2mm)

ISO range: 80 – 3,200

Displays: 3.5in touchscreen, 1.5in secondary screen

Internal storage: 55MB

External storage: MicroSDHC up to 8GB

Interface: USB 2.0, HDMI out (via shared proprietary port)

Other features: Multi autofocus mode, face detection, smart touch, smart face recognition

Dimensions (w x h x d): 99.8 x 59.8 x 18.6mm

Weight: 166g