Olympus PEN E-PL3 – Wonderful Balance of Size and Features
Olympus PEN E-PL3 is a versatile, portable camera that offers tilting LCD screen, nicely implemented filters, solid performance, impressive raw image quality, fast autofocus system, in camera artistic filters, accessory port for optional EVF, fast burst mode, compact design, AF assist lamp and full high definition recording. The E-PL3 provides a unique combination of image quality, performance, features and size for the money. It is the same point and shoot camera like the expensive model known as E-P3. Like all consumer oriented cameras, the PEN E-PL3 generates JPEGs that display excessive smear in details from overzealous luminance noise reduction, where NR kicks in at ISO 800.
At low ISO sensitivities, you will find enough latitude to retouch underexposed images on Olympus PEN E-PL3. The exposure, autofocus, sharpness and color are excellent, and the camera automatically crops the image while shooting video effectively increasing focal length that makes quickly switching between videos and images. It is fast at shooting and focusing, talking about 0.6 second in dim lighting and 0.3 second in bright lighting. The metal body is well constructed, while the slippery front makes it difficult to shoot single handed. The mode dial on the top of the device serves up the typical auto and PASM modes along with access to the company’s well implemented Art filters, dedicated movie mode, where you get access to Art filters and full manual controls and usual set of scene program modes including manual 3D option and odd.
The Olympus PEN E-PL3 is available for the price of $699.99 and comes packed with 12.3 megapixel Live CMOS sensor, 2x focal length, ISO sensitivity range from ISO 200 to 12,800, 4.1 frames per second of continuous shooting, optional viewfinder, 35-area contrast autofocus, shutter speed of 60 – 1/14,000, 324 Area metering, optical image stabilization and three-inch touchscreen display that boasts 460,000 dots. The back provides a usual control layout, which will be familiar to anyone who has used the digital camera. The four-way navigation dial combo offers direct access to autofocus area, exposure compensation, drive mode and flash options, on the other hand, the OK button brings up interactive display of all frequently used settings. Those who are in the auto mode, the functions change to company’s Live Guide menus, basic slider driven options for saturation and brightness.
The Olympus PEN E-PL3 comes with expandable system, fast shutter response, accessory port, professional audio sound capture, easy photo & video playback on your HDTV, multiple exposure shooting, additional aspect ratios, proven dust reduction system, EPortrait, advanced shadow adjustment technology and live view magnification. Standard features on PEN E-PL3 include Interchangeable Lens Type Live View Digital Camera; SD Memory Card(SDHC, SDXC, UHS-I compatible); Effective Pixels number: 12.3 million pixels; High speed Live MOS Sensor; Supersonic Wave Filter; Recording format: DPOF compatible/Exif, DCF and PRINT Image Matching III; File format: JPEG, RAW (12-bit lossless compression), RAW+JPEG and MPO; File Size: RAW, Set1, Set2, Set3, Set4; Movie Mode: Full HD Fine, Full HD Normal, HD Fine, HD Normal; Maximum Recording Time: AVCHD Format: Max 29min.
Also standard on Olympus PEN E-PL3 are Motion-JPEG Format HD: 7min and SD: 14min; Display Mode: Normal, Grid Line, Histogram, Magnified View, Comparable View and OFF Mode; Monitor information: Shutter speed, Aperture value, AE Lock, Auto Bracket, IS, AF mode, Battery Check, Shooting Mode, Internal Temperature Warning, Myset, Histogram, Face / Eye Detection, Record mode, Number of storable still pictures, Self timer, ISO, Sequential shooting, Metering Mode, White Balance, Exposure Compensation Value, AF confirmation mark, Flash Mode, Spot metering Area, Flash intensity Control, Flash Status, Focusing length, Super FP Touch panel condition, Eye-Fi condition and Tone control.
The Olympus PEN E-PL3 is also equipped with Manual Function input focal length 10, 8, 16, 12, 24, 18, 30, 28, 40, 35, 50, 48, 65, 55, 75, 70, 85, 80, 100, 90, 120, 105, 150, 135, 200, 180, 250, 210, 350, 300, 500, 400, 800, 600 and 1000; Imager Contrast Detection AF system; 35-area multiple AF with the contrast detection system; TTL Image Sensor metering system; Digital ESP metering; Center weighted average metering; Spot metering; Exposure mode: iAuto, P: Program AE, A: Aperture priority AE, S: Shutter priority AE, M: Manual, Scene select AE, Art Filter, Underwater wide / Underwater macro; Scene select AE: ePortrait, Portrait, Landscape + Portrait, Landscape, Sport, Macro, Night + Portrait, Night Scene, HighKey, Children, DIS mode, Low Key, Candle, Nature Macro, Document, Sunset, Fireworks, Panorama, Fisheye Conv, Beach & Snow, Macro Conv, Wide Conv and 3D.
The Olympus PEN E-PL3 comes packed with Exposure mode: P: Program AE, A: Aperture priority AE, S: Shutter speed priority AE and M:Manual, Art Filter; Picture Mode: Vivid, iEnhance, Portrait, Natural, Monotone, Muted and Art Filter; Filter effect: Yellow, Orange, Red or Green filter available for Monotone; 4 gradation levels (High key, Auto, Normal and Low key); Built-in flash; Color Temperature; Wireless Flash Control; External Flash control mode; Flash mode of External Flash: Red-eye reduction, Auto, Slow sync at 1st curtain, Red-eye reduction slow sync., Fill-in, Slow sync at 2nd curtain and Off; Shooting mode, Battery information, Aperture value, Shutter speed, ISO sensitivity, Exposure compensation value, Exposure indicator, Exposure compensation indicator, Date, Flash intensity compensation indicator, NR setting, Auto BKT setting, WB compensation value, WB, Flash Status, Record mode, Image size, Record mode, Flash intensity compensation value, Drive mode, Recordable still image number, Metering mode, AF frame, Focusing mode, Sharpness, Color space, Saturation, Contrast, Gradation, Internal Temperature Warning, Face detection, IS activating mode, Multi Exposure, My Mode, Super FP and Aspect Ratio; Setting Menu: Color image, Color saturation, Blur Background, Brightness, Shooting Tips and Express Motion.
The Olympus PEN E-PL3 gets Language: English, Japanese, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Korean, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Czech, Russian, Danish, Dutch, Portuguese, Polish, Norwegian, Swedish, Croat, Finnish, Slovenian, Greek, Hungarian, Turkish, Slovakian, Estonian, Latvian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Indonesian, Rumanian, Thai and Malay; Erasing function; Protect function; JPEG editing: Red-eye fix, Shadow adjustment, Aspect. Monotone, Cropping, Saturation, Sepia, resize and ePortrait; PC interface; TV interface; USB/Video connector and Box contents: Flash FL-LM1, Body, Li-ion battery charger BCS-1, Li-ion battery BLS-1, Shoulder strap, USB/Video Multi cable, Instruction manual, OLYMPUS Viewer 2/ib CD-ROM and a Warranty card. Overall, those who are looking for a point and shoot camera that offers excellent balance of design, features, performance and image quality, Olympus PEN E-PL3 is the best choice.
Pantech Breakout – A Fast and Straightforward Android handset
Pantech Breakout is a solid Android smartphone that offers Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system with handy custom user interface, excellent call quality and runs on 4G LTE network of Verizon. Those who don’t give a whit about video or camera, the Breakout is a straightforward and fast Android smartphone for Verizon. It was only in the month of June, the company revealed its first Android handset for United States markets, Pantech Crossover AT&T. Just after few months, it has unveiled a smartphone for Verizon. It is equipped with plethora of features such as five-megapixel camera, 1GHz processor, front facing VGA camera and 720p high definition video playback and capture.
Despite a plastic construction and budget price, the Pantech Breakout feels quite solid in the hand. The 1GHz single core processor, built in Swype keyboard, 5 megapixel camera with VGA front facing camera, Android operating system and 8GB microSD memory are some of the exclusive features found on Breakout. It will have trouble competing with other 4G LTE smartphones that offer a high end feel with higher prices – HTC Thunderbolt, Samsung Droid Charge and Amazon Wireless; all of which provide more external and internal storage capacity, more attractive and larger screens and will surely appeal to techie users.
The Pantech Breakout is available for the price of $99.99 with two-year service agreement. It is the first CDMA smartphone of the company featuring physical design with matte black plastic all around. The pair of metal accents – navigation half moon on camera lens and front surround on the back. It measures 5 inches tall, 0.5 inch thick and 2.5 inches wide and weighs 4.9 ounces, which means it is heavy for its size. The four-inch TFT touchscreen is quite responsive and boasts 480 x 800-pixel resolution with 262,000 colors. The Breakout is easier to navigate as compared to other Android smartphones and offers seven home screens. You can pull down notifications bar for accessing Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, data and GPS controls.
The Pantech Breakout can be easily unlocked with just a swipe or get more granular by dragging icons for either email inbox, dial pad or messages into the center of the device for unlocking it. Underneath the screen, you will find four hardware buttons for search, Menu, back and home. The voice control shortcut button, 3.5mm headphone and contoured volume rocker button are located on the left hand side of the device, while the camera shutter button, micro USB charging port and shared lock-screen and power button on the right. The five-megapixel camera is at the back with front facing VGA camera lens. The micro USB card slot is under the battery cover with 8GB card preinstalled.
Like all Android Gingerbread-based smartphones, the Pantech Breakout comes with bottomless address book capacity, GPS, Wi-Fi, multimedia and text messaging and direct hook to Google Services like YouTube and turn by turn navigation system. You will also find a typical Android music player. It comes packed with Amazon Kindle, Let’s Golf 2, Blockbuster, Handy Memo, CityID, Guided Tours, Converter and DocViewer; along with Mobile IM, Nuance Voice Control, NFL Mobile, TuneWiki, NSF Shift, Tip Calculator, Rhapsody and Slacker Radio. However, it doesn’t cover applications of Verizon such as VZ Navigator, suite of V Cast applications for ringtones, music and videos and other Verizon account management applications.
The five-megapixel camera of Pantech Breakout fares better, though it definitely falls short of best in class. Standard features on Breakout include Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system skinned with Pantech user interface; Compass; four-inch capacitive touchscreen display with 400 X 800 pixels resolution; Twitter; 1GHz processor with 512MB RAM; YouTube; 5-megapixel rear facing camera with 2592×1944 Pixels, Geo-tagging, Auto Focus and Face detection; Picasa integration and additional front facing VGA camera.
The Pantech Breakout also offers DLNA Capability Via Allshare; 8GB microSD card pre-installed with extendable memory up to 32GB; Voice Navigator Capable; 4G LTE connectivity; Google Search, Maps, Android Market, Gmail, Google Talk, Blockbuster App, V CAST Music with Rhapsody and V CAST Video; Bluetooth; Mobile Hotspot Up to 10 Devices; micro USB 2.0; Amazon Kindle Reader; 802.11 Wi-Fi b/g/n connectivity; Adobe Flash Player 10.2; DLNA functionality; Music Format: MP3, WAV, AAC+, AAC, AMR-NB, eAAC+, WMA, EVRC, AMR-WB, MIDI, QCELP and SP-MIDI and 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot up to 10 devices with 4G LTE connection and up to 5 devices with 3G connection.
On Pantech Breakout, you will find Stereo FM with RDS; Google & Verizon services including all regular features of Android phone; Data: UMTS/ LTE/ HSDPA/ HSUPA; 2G Network: CDMA 800, 1900 MHz; Browser & Messaging: WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML, MMS, HTML 5 support, IM, SMS, Push Email and Email; 3G Network: CDMA2000 1xEV-DO; Light sensor; 4G Network: LTE 700MHz; Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate; Multi-Touch Proximity Sensor for Auto Turn On or Off; Multiple numbers per contact; Caller groups; Picture ID; Search by both first and last name; Ring ID; Alarm; Calculator; Calendar; To-Do List and Voice Memo. The estimated battery life of Breakout is five hours in talktime mode and 12.6 days in standby mode. Overall, it is an Android OS powered midrange 4G LTE Verizon bounded handset, which is having an up-to-date hardware on the board.
Samsung SH100 – Offers Exciting Wireless Sharing Features
Good
Sharp images; can use screen on Samsung Galaxy phone as remote viewfinder; robust wireless transfer features.
Bad
Wireless video transfers to YouTube are limited to QVGA resolution; poor low light performance; sluggish recycle and boot times.
Samsung SH100 is a high performance point and shoot digital camera that offers great image quality, fun to use shooting modes and wireless sharing and remote control features. It comes with all those features that are tailor made for people who are in the market looking for a functionality of a smartphone camera in a point and shoot. Those who like all the image application for your smartphone camera, however miss having optical zoom, SH100 is the best option. Samsung is the only manufacturing company, which is actually pushing forward with Wi-Fi in its digital cameras, and one of the examples is SH100.
The Samsung SH100 comes with built in Wi-Fi, which can be used for connecting to Wi-Fi network for viewing on DLNA compliant gadgets or automatic backups; connect to Android 2.2 powered Galaxy smartphone, iPhone 4 or seven-inch Galaxy Tab with iOS 4.3; connect to Samsung Wi-Fi point and shoots; and connect to hot spots including those offered by Boingo. The screen turns into a viewfinder, and allows you to move the zoom lens of the camera as well as hit the shutter release. Apart from wireless features, it performs like all ultracompact cameras using 14-megapixel CCD sensor, 26mm equivalent wide angle lens with 5x optical zoom and three-inch LCD screen with automatic shooting modes. The SH100 is available for the price of $199.99 and comes with 14-megapixel image sensor, three-inch LCD display, 5x zoom lens, JPEG/H.264 AAC file format, highest resolution of 4320 x 3240, digital image stabilization, storage media of microSDHC/microSD and bundled software of Intelli-Studio, PC Auto Backup.
The image quality of Samsung SH100 is good at ISO 400, and like other point and shoot digital cameras, you might want to use without flash in indoors or low light conditions. The colors generated by SH100 are good, and below ISO 400, they are pleasing, bright and vivid. The auto balance is good, which is quite important since this camera really is all about shooting automatically. The video quality is on the par with standard high definition point and shoot camera, making it best suited for casual television viewing or web use.
The ISO sensitivity of Samsung SH100 ranges from Auto, 3200, 80, 1600, 100, 800, 400 and 200, while some of the white balance modes include Auto WB, Custom Set, Daylight, Tungsten, Cloudy, Fluorescent L and Fluorescent H. The recording modes are Smart Auto (Movie and Photo), Movie, Program, Movie Filter, Scene, Photo Filter, Simple Shot, Vignetting, Magic Frame Shot, Close Up, Beauty Shot, Night Shot and Object Highlight. Some of the recording modes include Multi autofocus, One Touch Shooting, Center Autofocus, Smart Touch AF, Smart Face Recognition AF and Face Detection AF. The metering modes are Multi, Face Detection, Spot and Center Weighted, while the color effects are Custom RGB and multiple movie and image filters.
The Samsung SH100 is surely a camera for you with its standard point and shoot auto modes along with plethora of automatic shooting options beyond simple scene modes. It features a smartphone-like user interface with pages of huge icons for taping on and easy scrolling through menus. The remote viewfinder is pretty cool, and is good for setting up group shots or self portraits. The application can control shutter release, flash, resolution and timer. Standard features on Samsung SH100 include TTL Auto Focus (Center AF, Multi AF, Smart Touch AF, Face Detection AF, Object Tracking AF, One Touch Shooting AF and Smart Face Recognition AF); ISO Equivalent: 80, Auto, 200, 100, 800, 400, 3200 and 1600 and Metering: Spot, Multi, Face Detection AE and Center Weighted.
The Samsung SH100 also gets Flash Modes: Auto & Red-eye reduction, Auto, Slow sync, Fill-in flash, Red-eye fix and Flash Off; Internal memory: 10MB; External memory: Micro SD Card; Image Size: 16M: 4608 x 3456, 14MP: 4608 x 3072, 10M: 3648 x 2736, 5M: 2592 x 1944, 3M: 1984 x 1488, 12MW: 4608 x 2592 and 2MW: 1920 x 1080 with 1M: 1024 x 768; White Balance: Daylight, Auto WB, Fluorescent H, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent L and Custom Set; Recording Mode: Movie, Smart Movie, Movie Filter, Vignetting and Palette Effect; Smart Movie: Landscape, Blue Sky, Natural Green, Sunset; Size: High Quality – 1280 x 720 (30fps, 15fps) and Shooting: Smart Access UI: Program, Smart Auto, Simple shot, Scene, Beauty shot, Vignetting Filter, Photo Filter, Magic Frame, Close-up, Night, Dual IS and Object Highlight.
On Samsung SH100, you will also find Smart Auto: Night Portrait, Portrait, Night, Backlight Portrait, Landscape, Backlight, Natural Green, White, Sunset, Blue Sky, Macro Text (with Smart Guide), Macro, Tripod, Action, Macro Color and Fireworks; Scene: Text, Landscape, Dawn, Sunset, Beach & Snow and Backlight; Drive: Continuous, Single, Motion Capture and AEB; Photo Filter (Smart Filter): Miniature, Soft Focus, Vignetting, Old film 2, Old film 1, Sketch, Half Tone Dot, Defog, Fish Eye, Retro, Classic and Negative, (Custom RGB); Smart Settings: Smart Auto 2.0, Smart Filter 2.0, Smart Album, Smart Face Recognition, Smart Crop and Smart Movie; Still Image Shooting Mode: Program, Smart Auto, Simple Shot, Scene, Beauty Shot, app Magic Frame Shot, Night Shot, Object Highlight, Vignetting, Close-up, Movie, Photo Filter; Still: DCF, JPEG, DPOF 1.1, EXIF 2.21; Movie Clip: MP4; PictBridge: 1.0; Audio: AAC and Video: H.264 File Formats; System Requirements: Intel Pentium 4, Windows 2000/XP/Vista , 3.2GHz or later and AMD Athelon 64FX 2.6GHz or later; minimum 512MB RAM (1GB); Windows XP/ VISTA 7, 250 MB (over 1GB recommended); CD-ROM Drive, USB 2.0, Microsoft 9.0c or later, more than 1024×768 pixels, Microsoft 9.0c or later. Overall, it is an excellent point and shoot camera with plethora of features.
