Samsung Digimax L55W Introduced

Samsung Digimax L55W is unveiled. The Samsung Digimax L55W is a 5 megapixel digital camera with a 4.8x optical zoom lens equivalent to 28mm-135mm and a 2.8 inch wide LCD that allows you to view in 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratios.  The Samsung L55W uses the MPEG-4 video format and can record in VGA(640X480) mode at 30 fps. The Samsung L55W also has movie stabilization, which helps maintain steady recording of a subject. Price and availability of the Samsung Digimax L55W to be announced.

Samsung Press Release

Samsung Camera widens its range even further with the release of the Digimax L55W a 5 mega-pixel, 4.8X zoom digital camera with wide-angle capabilities

Samsung Camera has announced that the company will release a 5 mega-pixel, 4.8X optical zoom digital camera (model name: Digimax L55W) later this year marking Samsung’s entry into the market for compacts with a high zoom.

Most regular compact digital cameras have a 3Xoptical zoom, the Digimax L55W has a 4.8X optical zoom offering a focusing range of 28mm-135mm(35mm equivalent). The 28mm wide-angle lens provides a far wider field of vision than a regular camera, allowing you to capture sweeping landscapes or to fit a group of subjects into just one frame. The Digimax L55W is a unique advanced digital camera that supports both 28mm wide-angle and 4.8X telephoto zoom, extending the range of options available to the photographer.

For the first time ever, a 2.8” wide TMR LCD is adopted by Samsung Camera for the Digimax L55W, enhancing your photography with a wider and larger display. This 2.8” wide LCD allows you to view in 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratios. The LCD display of the Digimax L55W uses TMR(Transmissive with Micro Reflective) technology to maintain balanced light, even in bright outdoor environments. The 160 degrees of wide viewing angle LCD display delivered by the Digimax L55W provides a more comfortable image-viewing, and sharing, experience. With its high contrast ratio the TMR LCD display offers a clearer and brighter display image. Colours are represented better by the LCD’s ability to reproduce 16.7 million true colours.

With a faster response time, the Digimax L55W means you have more chance catching those spontaneous moments. With its booting and shot-to-shot time reduced to 1 second respectively, it also offers continuous shooting at 2.5 frames/sec.

The Digimax L55W, which has been developed based on high-density packaging design technology, not only offers the 4.8x optical zoom, but is also slim. Add to that, the fine metal ergonomic finish and you have an elegant camera design.

The powerful video capability of the Digimax L55W delivers a “camcorder like” experience. For a more enhanced movie shooting experience, the Digimax L55W uses MPEG-4, the high-compression high-quality video format, which can record for up to 3-4 times longer than the traditional video formats used in many other digital cameras. The Digimax L55W can even record more than 1 hour of high quality if you are using a 256MB memory card. With powerful video recording in VGA(640X480) at 30 fps, it provides a wider screen view and clearer video quality. These movies can even be viewed on the TV.

The Digimax L55W has movie stabilization, which helps maintain steady recording of a subject by means of automatic detection and correction of lateral and vertical camera movements of the camera. The continuous video recording feature of the Digimax L55W, which is based on exclusive Samsung technology, allows you to pause and resume video recording as desired and merge those multiple movie clips into a single file at a later time. You can press the Pause button to pause or resume recording.

For easier editing of movies, the Digimax L55W allows you to select and save only the desired part into a new file during playback, on the camera. The Digimax L55W also allows you to capture a still image during video playback.

With its Easy Charging System, the Digimax L55W recharges quickly and conveniently. A 24-pin portable charger comes with the camera, and an optional cradle can also be purchased for easier charging and data-transfer. Also, for the first time in digital cameras, an optional extra charger which uses the USB port in a PC can be bought by those who frequently use their PCs or notebooks during business travel.

With the Digimax L55W, the Macro function, an important feature of a digital camera, has been greatly improved. The Digimax L55W allows capturing of a subject as close as 2cm. The Auto macro mode means the camera will automatically detect the distance the user is trying to focus and will optimize the settings for Macro mode instantly.

The Digimax L55W has Special Effect functions that help take picture taking a stage further. The special effect functions offered by the Digimax L55W are Colour Effect, Highlight, Photo Frame and Composite shot.
Colour Effects include B/W, Sepia, Blue, Red, Green.
Highlight enables you to emphasis a subject by putting it’s surroundings into soft focus.
Composite shot allows you to divide a shooting scene into 2-4 segments and save them into a single file.
Photo Frame allows you choose from 9 different types of fun photo frame.

The Digimax L55W has various scene modes to help you obtain the best picture results in a variety of settings. The eleven scene modes supported by the Digimax L55W are Night Scene, Portrait, Children, Landscape, Closeup, Sunset, Dawn, Backlight, Fireworks, Beach & Snow and Text. In particular, Text Recognition is a feature that allows you to shoot documents such as books, papers and magazines and then extract text from the image taken using the “Digimax Reader” text recognition software in the box.

The PictBridge feature of the Digimax L55W allows pictures taken with the camera to be directly printed without a PC, so you can instantly obtain clear 5 mega-pixel prints just by connecting the camera to a compatible printer. You can use the “Quick Print” button to print a desired photo immediately.

This coupled with the editing features in the camera means that you really can go from picture to print without the need for a PC.

In addition, it provides a substantially faster transfer rate with USB 2.0 as compared to the existing USB 1.1. The Digimax L55W is equipped with a built-in memory(32MB), allowing you to save pictures taken, even without a memory card. It also provides various useful functions such as My Set Shot mode for snapshot, voice recording for up to 1 hour, voice memo for adding a short voice message to a picture, and “One-touch Playback” for instant playback of a picture, even without power.

Furthermore, the Graphic User Interface(GUI) of the Digimax L55W has been improved to ensure a faster and more seamless menu operation and menu setting can be done quickly using the Move and Set functions.

Published: Saturday, June 04, 2005

Reader Comments

1. Can anyone say "Ricoh R series ripoff"?

   James at 12:27am on Monday, June 06, 2005

2. If you are talking about the Ricoh R2 (to my knowledge, Ricoh's latest R-series camera), that hardly seems like a fair comment. Granted, the Samsung L55W has the same lens as the R2, but that is where the similarity ends. The L55W also has a 2.8" wide TMR LCD, a 640 x 480 MPEG-4 movie mode with image stabilization and single image capture, as well as numerous scene modes and special effect functions compared to the R2. If you labeled all cameras that use the same lens as another camera "rip-offs", you would have a long list. To the contrary, Samsung is one of the few companies that has attempted to push the boundaries of innovation with respect to digital cameras.

   GARY POGODA at 06:30pm on Monday, June 27, 2005

3. Hi,
   
   I have some questions. Thanks in advance for clarification.
   1. Can L55W be powered by AA batteries?
   2. After upload a recorded Video in MPEG-4 format, do I need to have any special software to view the recorded video from PC?
   3. How about the "release time leg" in L55W? It is about 0.1 second in Ricoh Caplio R2.
   4. How clear are pictures took by L55w compare with Ricoh Caplio R2?
   
   Thanks,
   
   Steve

   Steve Kuo at 09:39pm on Saturday, November 26, 2005

4. Does anyone know when this camera will be available to the "mortal" consumer. All I can find are reviews so far, and not much about price range either.

   George at 10:51pm on Monday, November 28, 2005

5. Heidrun and Gary
   
   Don't know where the previous posts have gone to - cyber space I suppose. Whatever, just a short update. Did take some photos last weekend but don't know how to up load them to this site - sorry, I am such a dimbo. In any case, they were mostly examples of how not to take pictures in bright sunshine, ie, shadows etc etc. I am going away for a week, tomorrow and am taking the manual with me so hopefully, I will make some progress and can report again in the New Year.
   Xmas Greetings
   
   Ginny

   Ginny at 07:07pm on Friday, December 23, 2005

6. Ginny, there's another L55W thread with more comments here:
   
   http://www.photographyblog.com/index.php/weblog/comments/samsung_digimax_l55w_review_at_index_digicam/

   Mark Goldstein at 11:27am on Saturday, December 24, 2005