Body and Handling
Samsung TL32 has a sleek, compact body. The lens is fully collapsible when camera is off. The size is relatively small compare to other advance compact cameras and it is very pocket-able.
TL320 is about twice thicker than gum package but has a narrower body
Samsung also has rotating / round dial, which is use to navigate menu and changing aperture, shutter speed or other setting. I personally like it because I’ve used Canon EOS 40D and Canon G series before, and they have the same concept.
Build quality is relatively good. Its outer casing is made by metal which exudes confidence. However, the round dial (Samsung calls it smart dial) is a bit flimsy. Ironically, the tripod mount is made by plastic instead of metal. But it won’t bother me because I won’t use tripod when shooting with this camera 99% most of the time.
The body design is cool, especially the top part of the camera. It has two analog indicators of battery and memory card capacity. Some people might thing it is redundant, but I feel it is very informative. The color of the top plate is black, but in the body is primarily dark brown.
Back view of TL320 - image from Samsung Imaging
Operation and Autofocus
Overall, this compact camera is very responsive. Start up time is about 1 second. Auto focus is fast. The whole camera operation is almost silent.There are three kinds of AF system you can choose: Full automatic, multiple focus points and user selector.
Changing basic settings of the camera such as AWB, ISO, photo style, face detection and exposure compensation are very easy and relatively fast. You only need to press Fn (Function) button, and then do the adjustments.
The camera also have macro focusing capability (focusing very close to fill small object to the frame). Unfortunately, the macro focusing is limited to 5 cm. So you can’t get really close to the subject. It also affect depth of field. You can’t really blur everything out of sight in macro mode. It is partly because of the limitation of macro focusing and also the because of the tiny sensor size.
In macro mode, we can't focus very close, and because the sensor size is tiny, we can't blur out out of focus area.
Like other compact cameras, locking focus on fast moving subjects remain a challenge. If you are planning to shoot that kind of photography, I will suggest to get digital SLR camera instead of compact camera.
It is hard to lock focus on fast moving subjects, like birds and kids running
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