Samsung ST50 review

We find out if this attractive compact comes with any bite

There's always a fine balance between looks and technology, and for the ST50 Samsung has focused more on design.

Samsung has made a camera that doesn't break any boundaries, but the ST50 has a metallic finish and feels like a good quality compact. The compact is slim and comes in four colours: red, blue, black, and silver. Its 3x optical zoom lens is 35-105mm equivalent, which misses out on both the wide-angle and the long tele-photo ends of its focal range. When taking this camera out the comfort zone of everyday photography, the small range quickly becomes restricting, especially when experimenting with landscape and Macro photography. At times it's tempting to use its 5x digital zoom, but the disadvantage then is a dramatic loss of image quality.

The ST50 captures 12.2-megapixel images, and has a good range of ISO settings, from ISO 80 to 3200. Not only does it have a variety settings but also a Photo Style Selector and three other image adjustments (sharpness, saturation and contrast). The Photo Style Selector offers the creative photographers something extra with the ability to shoot various colour styles, including Calm, Cool, Soft, Vivid and Retro. These styles place a colour cast over an image to achieve the desired effect, though in everyday situations they can soon take a back seat.

The body of the camera fits comfortably in your hand, and even though it's slimmer than most (37 mm) you can easily work your way around its buttons without the fear of it slipping out of your hands. The ST50 has two exposure modes, which are controlled by an illuminated button on the top of its body. The two modes, Smart Auto and Program, disable the majority of the menu, but Smart Auto takes complete control of everything for you, so you can just sit back and enjoy shooting. The options you are left with adjust image size, flash settings, and the Timer control for the shutter.

The ST50 isn't the fastest compact you'll come across for its price, and its playback menu shows a clear sign of this. The cycling speed from one picture to another is slow, and you’re made to wait until a blinking LED turns off. This is a minor fault, but it soon becomes unbearable when shooting in Continuous mode and you want to then view the series on shots in quick succession.

The quality of the results from the ST50 stumble in the ISO department. At ISO 80 the camera succumbs to noise, although subtle as it is this is where you would expect nothing less than crisp results. As the ISO settings rise, there's no real hope of the camera improving in this area. It uses Digital Image Stabilisation (DIS) to steady any movement shaking the lens, but this is as basic as an image stabilisation system comes. Having noise at ISO 80 is a good sign that Samsung's processor is still underdeveloped, especially on the company's compact models below the £200 mark. We were taken back, however, by the camera's ability to hold onto a good dynamic range. Minus these negatives about the camera's slow speed and high noise in low ISOs, the colours look individually strong in each image.

The manual controls exclude shutter and aperture adjustments, and the exposure settings available are only open when shooting in Program mode, which lets you take control of the camera's ISO, white balance, image quality, Face Detection, Drive and Focus Area. The main exposure control is the EV slider for fine-tuning a particular shot.

The speed of the ST50 isn't one of its strongest points either. Continuous shoot mode is sluggish and almost pointless at such a slow rate. This mode lets you capture at full 12.2-megapixel quality, and there are other Continuous modes, which are much faster at five frames per second. There's a downfall to this, as image quality is significantly reduced to less than 1-megapixel, a resolution not worth printing with.

If you're looking for a simple point-and-shoot that slides in a pocket then the ST50 is the ideal option. Though if you're critical about your compacts and looking for something new we recommend saving your pennies.