Getting creative with clarity

The impressive image quality can be credited to its very bright lens with f/1.4 aperture at the widest angle. The width of the aperture reduces to f/2.7 at the highest zoom level of 80mm in 35mm film equivalence, which is still bright. And the bright lens coupled with its 12.4 megapixel BSI (backside illuminated) CMOS sensor, allows the EX2F to capture good quality photos even in low-lit environments.

The EX2F features a Schneider-Kreuznach 3.3X Zoom Lens with 24-80mm focal length in 35mm film equivalence. The Amoled display is bright and has deeper blacks and vivid colours, allowing you to compose shots even under direct sunlight.

The camera is sturdy too with a magnesium alloy body and easy to use thanks to dual dial controls and a front wheel key. One dial is used for choosing shooting modes and another for selecting bursting types – single shot, high-speed (10fps, 5fps, 3fps), pre-capture, bracket (white balance and exposure) and timer (ranging from 10 seconds to 2 seconds).

Although a compact camera, it does provide professional advanced shooting modes – Program AE, Aperture Priority AE, Shutter Priority AE and Manual Exposure - allowing you to control various shooting parameters.

The EX2F allows even a novice to capture beautiful photos with its Smart Auto 2.0 mode. Smart Auto instantly analyses key elements of your composition then automatically adjusts to capture the perfect shot with a multitude of different photo modes. They include Portrait, Night Portrait, Backlight Portrait, Night, Backlight, Landscape, White, Natural Green, Blue Sky, Sunset, Macro and Macro text.

The smart camera also comes with a Magic Plus mode that provides several fun shooting modes – Scene, Panorama, Magic Frame, Split Shot, Picture in Picture, Artistic Brush and HDR.

The Scene mode lets you manually select from Beauty Shot, Night, Landscape, Text, Sunset, Dawn, Backlight, Beach & Snow, and 3D Photo.

Like its predecessor the EX1, EX2F’s Beauty Shot is fun to use and much in demand with the ladies, as it makes the skin look fair and smooth, making the subject appear young and more beautiful.

Magic Frame mode provides several frames on which you can superimpose your subjects, among them billboard, newspaper and magazine covers.

The Picture in Picture Shot is also fun, allowing you to insert one image within another to capture a full story that you can then share. For example, you can snap a picture of a friend bowling a strike, and then combine it with an image of everyone cheering the score.

Split Shot lets you merge up to three different images to create a picture of your imagination.

I got my hands on EX2F in time to take it to Phuket for the New Year holidays and was impressed by both its performance and image quality.

The EX2F started up and was ready for the first image in less than two seconds and I did not notice any shutter lag. 

In the 10fps burst mode, the camera captured about nine shots in a second then wrote the files to the memory card. The test was run on Sony U1 C10 94 mb/s 8 GB SD card.

The bright and fast lens with low-light sensitive CMOS sensor resulted in sharp and clean photos even in the evening of a rainy day. I managed to capture bright scenes of Naiharn beach at dusk despite the rain clouds.

The EX2F has a night shooting mode so you can capture the colourful lights of the night but you need to stabilise the camera on a tripod.

The built-in ND (neutral density) filter reduces the amount of light entering the camera without changing the colours in any way and this helps you achieve a wide variety of artistic effects, creating dimension in your pictures. 

The ND filter also produces a shallower depth of field even in direct sunlight, giving you better focus on the subject while effectively blurring out the background.

During the test, I used the ND filter to capture the beautiful blue sky in contrast with the emerald sea and the grasses at Sarasin Bridge.

I also found that the colours were accurately reproduced in all lighting conditions.

The built-in Wi-Fi connectivity makes it easy to share your shots direct from the EX2F, either mailing them to your friends or posting them to Facebook, Picasa, YouTube and Photo Bucket.

The first time you use the Wi-Fi function, the camera will prompt you to connect to a Wi-Fi hotspot. Then, it will remember username and password for that hotspot.

During the test, I managed to mail my shots very fast as well as posting them to my Facebook page. The camera created EX2 album on my Facebook account automatically and uploaded selected photos to the album.

If you have a Microsoft SkyDrive account, you can also back up your photos to the cloud storage wirelessly.

If you use an Android smart phone, you can download and install the MobileLink app and Remove Viewfinder app on the phone to link to the EX2F. 

The MobileLink allows you to send the shots from EX2F to your smart phone while the Remote Viewfinder lets you use your smart phone as a remote for composing shots on your EX2F.

The Samsung EX2F is in shops now and retailing for Bt15,990.

 

 

        Key specs

_ Image Sensor: 1/1.7-inch 12.4 Megapixels BSI CMOS

_ Lens: 24-80mm F1.4(W) - F2.7(T) Schneider-Kreuznach 3.3X Zoom Lens with ND filter

_ Focusing: TTL Auto Focus (Centre AF, Multi AF, Tracking AF, Face Detection AF, Face Recognition AF, Selection AF), Manual Focus

_ Exposure: Program AE, Aperture Priority AE, Shutter Priority AE, Manual Exposure

_ Metering: Multi, Spot, Centre-weighted, Face Detection AE

_ Display: 3-inch AmoledVGA (640 x 480 ) 614k dots (Pentile), Rotating

_ Shutter Speed: 30 - 1/4,000 seconds

_ Movie Clip: MP4 (H.264) (Max recording time: 20 minutes) in 1920 x 1080, 1280 x 720, 640 x 480, 320 x 240 resolutions

_ Interface: USB 2.0, Microphone: Stereo, Internal Speaker: Mono, A / V: NTSC, PAL (selectable), HDMI 1.4: NTSC, PAL (selectable)

_ Power: Lithium-ion Battery: SLB-10A (1,030mAh)

_ Dimensions (excluding the projection part: 112.10 x 62.40 x 27.55mm

_ Weight: 286g (without battery and memory card media)