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13 of 15 found the following review helpful:
 Awesome camera...Dec 09, 2006
By Larry F. Rogers
I just bought this and I love it. Great pictures, easy to use, and feels great. The size is a bit larger than some, but the optics are great and that is why. You are getting a 5x optical zoom. To do it right, you need to have a bigger lense and thus a bigger camera body.
Prior to this I had a Lumix I paid 500 for. The Lumix is much bigger than this camera!! About twice the size. You can get a tiny camera with tiny features or you can get a well designed camera that hs almost as small and delivers quality pics and professional features.
The Samsung is easier to use, takes better pictures (although the Lumix does take great pictures) and feels better. In addition, it has many more features, like a very well lit very large viewer display and HDMI interface.
24 of 30 found the following review helpful:
 Depends on your requirementsMay 22, 2006
By Eric E. Buschman
"DeathShade"
I bought this camera, tested it out over the weekend. I was coming from a Canon Powershot SD200. I found the camera larger then I would like and was not happy with that. For a point and shoot camera, in my opinion, having it compact is a great advantage. This camera felt bulky and you wouldn't want to toss it in a pocket to travel with.
The quality of the pictures were great, I thought they were highly superior to the Canon's.
The flash was annoying to the people I subjected it too. It did a red light for the red eye removal, then it did a preflash to get the blinks out of the way, then it did a longer flash for the actual picture taking. So in total it took around 2 seconds to take a picture which is way to slow for most point and shoot type actions.
I replaced this camera with the Panasonic Lumix FX01 and am loving this camera. It is very compact and light, and the pictures it takes are great. I have no complaints so far for this camera except that the speed of picture taking is still slightly slower then the Canon SD200.
6 of 6 found the following review helpful:
A Great Camera So FarFeb 07, 2007
By Roland
"Old Wolf"
The only complaints I have up to now are the difficulty of learning to use all of the features, there are quite a few. Also the display screen is hard to see in really bright sunlight.
The stop motion and video features are great and the standard photos seem to come out really sharp. The camera has a solid feel and is well made. Best one I've ever owned for the price.
6 of 7 found the following review helpful:
awesome cameraFeb 08, 2007
By Esther Vasquez
I love this camera! It's easy to use, takes beautiful pictures, feels great, looks great. This is the 3rd Samsung I've owned...the first uses 35mm, the second one was sadly lost at the park and finally the Digimax. I just wish I would have bought this one instead of going with the Cannon when I lost #2. Life's lessons.
3 of 4 found the following review helpful:
 Ruined by poor low-light sensitivityOct 17, 2007
By ChurchOfJesusChrist.Net
Although this camera has been discontinued by Samsung (they keep coming out with new cameras and discontinuing them soon after), as of this writing, many outlets still have them available. I got mine thru WM's website and am returning it tomorrow.
The potential for this camera is fantastic, but that can be said of many digital cameras which ultimately prove disappointing. In the L85's case, it's ruined by horrible low-light and indoor existing-light sensitivity. What I mean is that if you like to keep flash off, this isn't the camera for you. Or, if you like to take movies indoors or in any lighting conditions other than outdoor sunlight, the L85 isn't for you, either.
That being said, if you are a 'typical user' who doesn't mind using flash, and ignores the amazing potential for video most digital cameras now have (which, to me, rivals the amazing-ness of just being able to record stills), and you don't mind carrying a camera which is bigger than most any other digital camera on the market today, then I say go for it.
The L85 is larger overall than the Panasonic TZ3 to my eye, and it's larger than my 3 or 4 year-old digital camera which itself is chunky by today's standards. The movie mode, while a compact MP4 at half the size of my mjpeg-encoded previous digital camera, is still inferior. Granted, my older digicam, a Sanyo MZ3, takes almost the best video ever made available on a digital camera (as long as autofocus is off), however the MZ3, like most other digicams, disables optical zoom while recording movies, and I've been hunting ever since (unsuccessfully) for something superior overall to replace it.
Another odd thing about the L85 is that I couldn't take a screen shot in Windows of a still of the movie mode using the print screen button. The screen capture showed as black, as what happens when you try to screencap protected content. The encoder showed up as XviD, which is tantalizing, considering that a straight DVD-ROM of these videos would probably play on any DivX-capable DVD player without modification.
The movie samples I took using indoor light were grainy, and had a lot of splotchy noise and a good bit of digital artifacting (the artifacting not as big of a deal as the graininess/bad light sensitivity). The sound seemed to be very good, but the sounds gets muted during optical zoom--which is still superior to no optical zoom, of course. However, I want the option to optically zoom AND have audio through the whole video, EVEN if it introduces zoom motor noise (and it will, and that's OKAY), instead of having the speech of the person I'm recording cut out just because I choose to zoom in on their face.
I really wanted to like this camera. And I read so many reviews before purchasing. I desperately tried to find a sample video somewhere online, unsuccessfully. I did direct A/B comparisons to my MZ3 as a reality check on what I'm saying. The video on my MZ3 is so much smoother, even though darker (the L85 nicely gains up for video, UNlike/opposite of its still mode, but the result is still bad for any digicam video enthusiast).
The MOST irritating thing about the camera to me, though, was its insane shutter lengths when the flash was off. Contrary to one review I read, it's extremely easy to turn the flash off. It's just not good to do that. The L85 will readily go to 1 second and beyond for shutter lengths when flash is disabled, even in full Auto mode. It regularly went to 2 full seconds! 2 seconds! This was in a moderately (realistically) lit room, a small living room with one well-placed, 100W incandescent lamp (which is how I always have my living room lit.
Anyone smart enough to get a job desigining digital cameras should know to limit the shutter length to 1/2 second or less while in auto mode, or arguably even less. People just can't hold their hands still long enough to get an unblurry shot at 1/2 second or longer. At 1/4 second, it's still a challenge, but can be done if you know the exposure length in advance, and that brings me to my next point. Despite being bombarded with on-screen information, the L85 doesn't tell you what the shutter time will be (nor the aperture), until you midway-depress the shutter release button. My old MZ3 displays the shutter and F-stop changes real-time as you move the camera around, without touching the trigger. This makes sizing up an exposure, especially without flash, much easier. Hmmph... the live histogram didn't impress me (no wonder disabled by default), in light of absence of much more useful information appearing real-time in the window.
Some features I really LOVED, and got me to buy the camera, are of course the 5x optical zoom, enabled while recording video (again, audio gets muted while zooming to prevent ignorant people from complaining about zoom noise and possibly exchanging the cameras as defective [to which I counter, just keep the audio mute setting on by default, but let there be an option to manually enable zooming WITH audio]). I also love the ability to pause video recording--and audio recording with the 'Voice' feature--and be able to resume, still in one continugous file. There are reportedly basic movie editing features on-board, which I know from experience can be very handy, and tremendously easier to use in terms of learning curve and tools needed, than doing on a computer.
I can also say that the pics I took with zoom turned out excellent. I just believe that 'the best way to use flash is not to use flash', and I don't like becoming the center of attention when I am trying to put my attention on another situation without disrupting it. And remember, you can't use 'flash' while recording video. And I've found that the best measure of ANY camera--digital or not--is how well it works in low- and existing-light. Virtually any digital camera nowadays of decent brand name will take great photos in bright outdoor light. And even a disposable film camera will.
The camera has a very nice feel to it, metallic and smooth, a soft, buttery, metallic, well-engineered feel to it. I think the LCD is oversized, but most would like that. The control surfaces are adequate, I just think the function of the few dedicated buttons should've been redone before releasing the camera.
When plugged in directly via USB cable, the camera shows up as a mass storage device, so you can drag and drop without software and without a card reader if you want. Because it contains some built-in memory, you can be up and taking test photos and movies even if you haven't bought an SD card for it yet, and I imagine you could switch over to it if your SD card fills up.
The flash appeared to be very well-balanced and, if using flash, just leaving things on 'Auto' mode is normally sufficient. But foray into other modes (i.e. in hopes of getting a decent no-flash shot lower than 1 second of exposure time), and... the unfun begins. On Priority mode where you can choose between F-stop or shutter speed priority, the F-stop only went down into the low 3's, or upper 2's, and strangely, the limit would change. Contrary to what I've seen some reviewers say, I thought that the interface was a bit frustrating, especially in the sense that you have very easy access to menu items you probably won't be using, however navigating through more useful/apropos tools (such as choosing manual exposure and ISO settings, which themselves are redundant, yet lumped together in one buried window area) is not intuitive--however, you can get through it. There are many mediocre digicam interfaces, and this is one of the 'average' ones in my opinion. My years-old Sanyo MZ3 is much easier to use with a much more intuitive interface and more useful options while still managing to be easier to use, actually takes better PHOTOGRAPHS, despite being only a 2 megapixel camera, vs the Samsung L85's eight megapixels. Those megapixels are pretty much worthless if what gets recorded in such high resolution is pretty much crap to start with.
I still wonder if digicam mfrs collectively, and consciously, impair the video functions of their digital cameras in order to keep a market for camcorders. Camcorders and digital cameras are really now starting to converge, as camcorders are heading more and more into solid state territory. And I know that there's no reason a digital camera can't get close to matching DV camcorders if the mfr wants them to, even with small size--case in point: the old Panasonic TZ1 (5MP, 10x optical zoom, enabled during video recording, with sound, and slightly smaller than the L85). The TZ1 is replaced by the TZ3, which improves on the TZ1 in virtually all areas, EXCEPT that it now disables optical zooming while recording movies (taking away half the reason of having a 10x zoom). Other famous but not as appropriate examples due to being mini-SLR type cameras are the Canon S[x]-IS series (i.e. S1, S3, S5, S8--matching the megapixels of the model). Find and download an original video from any of these above cameras, and you can see what kind of video can come from a digital camera. And, you will note, that despite being 640x480 resolution at 30 frames per second like most other digital cameras on the market, the difference is as if numbers don't matter (and it becomes obvious they don't, when you see the differences). The above cameras running at VGA make other cams' VGA modes seem like QVGA (quarter VGA, or 320x240).
So as yet, every single digital camera I've come acrost--and I've studied nearly all of them--has some kind of fatal flaw for the power user. I wish the TZ1 were still available, but then again, it was reported to have poor low-light capability. The Fuji F30 has great low-light ability, but uses xD cards and can't optically zoom on movies. Basically all of the Samsung line today (bucking the trend) can optically zoom on movies, record movies in MP4, and have pause and in-camera editing, BUT their cameras are consistently noted to have poor still & video quality, especially in low or existing light. Canons are generally great, but currently only allow optical zoom in movie mode on their SLR style cams, probably as to not compete with their own camcorder line. Sanyo "C"-series hybrid camcorder/cameras are a harbinger of the future, but are still noted for their poor stills, awkward ergonomics (try standing one up to take a photo on self-timer, or to put yourself in a movie), and big cost. The Casio "V" series (V7, V8) is out now out with stereo and allowing optical movie zoom with no sound cutout, but the stills and video I've seen of the V7 are too soft (even at highest quality video), and the focus is apparently locked in movie mode--which isn't necessarily a bad thing considering how bad digicam AF can be on movie modes, but with 7x optical zoom, you're going to want to actually use that zoom, and your subject will become blurry (as if they didn't know this would happen. And Casio doesn't allow manual focus during movie recording--just before). However, the Casio V-series movie mode WILL satisfy most users, and really impress beginners. (In European cameras, btw, Casio has reportedly put a stupid 10-minute cap on movie mode.)
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based on 13 reviews
