Samsung L60 Review

The Samsung Digimax L60 combines a six megapixel CCD imager and a Samsung SHD-branded 3x optical zoom lens with a fairly standard 35 - 105mm equivalent focal range. For framing images, the L60 forgoes any form of optical viewfinder - increasingly rare on digicams these days - in favor of a large 2.4" LCD display. The lack of an optical viewfinder, while not unusual, is a shame since they add a good degree of versatility - letting you get the shot when you can't make out the LCD in bright sunlight, or save battery life by disabling the LCD when accurate framing isn't vital. Images are stored on Secure Digital / MultiMediaCards, or in 32MB of internal memory.

The Samsung L60 has eleven scene modes to help beginners achieve the results they're looking for without the need to understand subtleties like shutter speeds, apertures and the like. The L60 determines exposures with multi or spot metering, and offers 2.0EV of exposure compensation in 1/3EV increments. Eight white balance settings are available including an auto mode, six presets and the ability to measure a custom white balance. ISO sensitivity is controlled automatically or manually, ranging from 50 to 400. The Digimax L60 also offers a movie mode, capturing clips at up to VGA resolution with audio, at a framerate of up to 30 fps using MPEG4 compression - which offers higher quality and better compression than the MotionJPEG compression used in most cameras.

Images and movies captured on the Samsung L60 are transferred to your computer over a USB 2.0 Full Speed connection, rather slower than the USB 2.0 High Speed connections offered on many cameras these days. Power comes from a proprietary Lithium Ion rechargeable battery. List pricing for the Samsung Digimax L60 is set at $299.