Samsung HZ15W review: Samsung HZ15W

As you'd expect from a camera with a long zoom, wide-angle lens, the HZ15W is neither small nor light. It's pretty amazing the camera is as compact as it is, though, and it'll comfortably fit in a small bag or jacket pocket or rather awkwardly in a pants pocket. From the front it's a nice-looking camera, too, as it's basically all lens and hand grip. On top is a standard simple arrangement of controls: power button, shutter release with zoom ring, and a shooting mode dial. On back things get a little weird. To the top right of the reasonably bright and sharp 3-inch LCD is a rocker switch sitting in the thumb rest. The Command Lever, as it's called, is primarily used for adjusting exposure compensation, though it can be programmed to adjust ISO or white-balance options instead. Its location, however, makes it open to accidental presses while doing things such as zooming the lens or, you know, taking a picture.

Below that sits a Function (Fn) button that brings up a context-sensitive shooting menu. If you choose to set the Command Lever to change ISO or white balance, a single press of the Fn button will then bring up exposure compensation, which you can then adjust with the command lever. A second press of Fn gives you the actual shooting controls.

Then there's a four-way directional pad for navigation and changing display information, setting a timer, entering macro and manual focus, or turning on the flash. At its center is a Menu/OK button for accessing basic shooting, sound, display, and system settings. At the bottom of the control panel is a Playback button as well as an Effects button. This is for selecting a color style, a photo filter, or tweaking sharpness, contrast, or color saturation. Why these needed their own menu with a dedicated button, I don't know, but three menu systems is really one too many to keep track of in a point-and-shoot camera.

What was nice to find was a miniHDMI jack on the left side of the camera in addition to Samsung's proprietary charging/AV/USB jack on the right side.

Shooting modes range from full auto to full manual. The Smart Auto mode automatically chooses the appropriate camera settings based on 11 scene types. Those who can actually ascertain what their subjects are can choose from 15 scene-shooting options including a Frame Guide option that lets you compose a shot, capture part of the precomposed scene on screen, and then hand the camera off to someone else to take the picture while you get in the shot. Those who don't want to touch any settings can put it in Auto, which locks most options from being changed. Then you get the other end of the shooting spectrum with a standard Program mode for changing everything except shutter speed and aperture as well as a full manual option with control of aperture (though there are only four stops to choose from) and shutter speeds from 16 seconds to 1/1,500 of a second. The Mode dial also has spots for shooting using both optical and electronic image stabilization, Samsung's face-smoothing Beauty Shot portrait mode, and a movie mode capable of HD-quality clips with use of the zoom while recording and the mic stays live. You will hear the lens motor but barely, and I'd rather have that than a dead mic.

Megazooms--compact or otherwise--are generally not fast performers. The HZ15W, follows suit, but is at least on par with the competition. The camera takes 2.8 seconds to go from off to first shot, but then just requires an average wait of 2.2 seconds between subsequent shots. Turning on the flash slows that time to 3.2 seconds. It takes a reasonable 0.5 second to focus and shoot in good light and only goes up to 0.7 second in dim conditions. The camera's standard continuous drive option is capable of 0.7 frames per second. There is a full-resolution high-speed continuous mode, but the LCD goes completely blank while it's in use. In our informal tests the mode nearly doubles the standard continuous frame rate.