Innovation in digital photography doesn’t trickle down from professional DSLRs, it bubbles up from point and shoot cameras that are more interested in offering features than ultimate image quality. More’s the pity.
Samsung’s GALAXY Camera 2 (GC2) is a case in point. It’s got a list of brilliantly innovative features that goes on and on, starting with the use of the Android 4.3 Jelly Bean operating system which allows you to take advantage of Android apps and WiFi connectivity, and a beautiful 4.8 inch display, but its image quality is only pretty good. 16.3 mega pixel’s of pretty good image isn’t bad, and it comes with a 21x, f2.8-5.9 zoom and 100-3200 ISO equivalent sensitivity, though it doesn’t take a trained eye to see that image quality falls off rapidly above the lower ISO settings. Which is not to say it doesn’t take a decent picture, because it absolutely does, at least under the right circumstances. It also provides all the control you could want, letting you choose auto, a wide range of presets for different types of shots, shutter or aperture priority, or full manual. In fact, since you get to see the results of making changes on the screen while you’re doing it, the camera provides an excellent teaching opportunity for understanding how ISO, F stops, and shutter speed all work together.
Though the main thrust of the camera is to provide easy posting to social media, or cloud storage, including 50 GB of Dropbox space that comes with the camera, there are some little touches that make you wonder why nobody else thought of them. The pop up flash, for example. Everyone hates pop up flashes because they wash out the subject. Real photographers use flashes that they can bounce off the ceiling, or a reflector. The Galaxy 2’s flash is on a flexible mount, which lets you bend it back to do just that. Easy to do and very useful. Or using the touchscreen to set both focus and exposure points separately just by touching points in the image. It’s also handy that you don’t have to use the button on top of the camera to actually take your shot, though you can if you want. Most of the time I find it much more convenient to use just press the camera icon on the screen.
The Galaxy 2 isn’t small, with its 4.8 inch screen and hefty lens, but its not so big that you can’t fit into your pocket. It’s two or three times as bulky as a smartphone, but still manageable.
If you’ve been shooting with an Android Smart Phone, you already know how to use the GC2. The fundamental difference being that while the pictures don’t quite hold up to full DSLR standards, they’re significantly better than anything you’ll get out of a Smart Phone, and really quite good on their own merits. I’ve often thought that the fun of photography came more from looking through the optical viewfinder of a good SLR and seeing the world as if it was on a movie screen, but composing on the full HD display on the GS2, with 308 pixels per inch resolution and brilliantly glowing 16M colors is a real treat, especially since you get to see how tweaking the settings will help or hurt the picture right up to the instant you press the trigger.
The two things I’d like to have that aren’t included are a tilt up LCD, like the ones Sony is putting on their cameras, and an eye level viewfinder for those times when ambient light makes viewing the big screen difficult. It’s hard to fit all that into the camera and still make it pocket-able though, so I’ll settle for what this one offers. At least for now.
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