Samsung PL120

Secondary screen to compose the self-portraitsWide-angle 5 x zoom lensRelatively cheapSmall and shinyAverage performanceUnintuitive interfaceNo HDMI socket

The compact camera from Samsung PL120 stands out from its competitors with its wacky screen facing forward, that promises to let you snap self-portraits without having to submit your snapper to stranger - and we all know that most of foreigners are opportunistic thieves. But the additional view is really enough to justify the £ 110 your hard-earned money?

We were all there. Rather than trusting a foreign pass with your camera when you want a photo of yourself, you flip the camera autour, hold the arm and shoot blindly, in the hope that you catch something more than the top of your head.

Rarely is this satisfactory performance results of tip, which is probably why some cleverdicks in the Samsung design team came up with the wheeze in assistant for including a secondary screen on the front of the PL120. Point the lens to yourself and you can use the view facing forward to compose your shot. Suddenly, self-portraits are not quite as successful and there are so many that they were.

The second screen is very large - in fact, it is only 1.5 inches across, with a resolution of just 61 000 pixels. But he did not need to be huge, just to be enough to let you align kicked yourself who really understand your face. There is a much larger screen, 2.7 inches at the usual place on the back of the camera to use standard, non-narcissistic.

In our standard test shot, the PL120 is fairly well, even if we would not say that the colours are particularly natural (click on image to enlarge).

In a blow of eye, the camera does not appear actually to have a screen facing forward at all. When the front display is disabled, you can barely notice that it is. However, press a button of some on the top of the unit, and it will depend on after a few seconds.

The screen has a secondary use too. Select the "children" and the front screen displays a funny clown cartoon designed to achieve the kiddiewinks looking at the camera - a sort of "watch" the birdie for the digital age.

Aside from its characteristic of two screens, the PL120 is fairly typical of the current culture of mid range compact cameras. It has an image sensor 14.2 megapixels and a 5 x optical zoom with a good wide angle - the equivalent of 26 mm, which is very convenient when you take photos of yourself, because it means that you can fit more in the framework. You'll notice a variety of distortion of the lens around the edges of your photos, even if.

The PL120 picture quality is acceptable for a camera in its price, but relatively harmless. Outside, in the right light, colors are well reproduced, although strong tones can cross also slightly too dynamic for the tastes of some people. Edges are sharp and contrast is good, but don't be surprised to find a little more noise image in your shots. Purple fringe can affect some edges too, especially when there is a black object on a light background.

There is the secondary monitor, making his choice.

Indoor and low light camera performance is most disappointing. Despite the availability of some parameters of high sensitivity, the PL120 is not all that well without resort to its built-in flash. Testing the camera in a fairly bright indoor environment, the PL120 has produced some very grainy shots at 400 ISO.

You can record 720 p videos, but the quality is not very impressive, very visible retained compression artifacts and feel unpleasantly are motion, despite the 30 frames per second rate. The sound that accompanies it is mono only and there is no HDMI connector to connect the camera to an HD-ready TV.

There are a ton of grain in the well-lit indoor shooting. Taken at ISO 400, color usually the camera had a success too (click on image to enlarge).

The PL120 is not as intuitive as some cameras that we played with recently. The zoom command, for example, includes a strange lever you press up and down. The rest of the buttons are more traditional, but the menu of the camera screens are boring ploughing through and, depending on the mode you are shooting in, you can finish by numerous icons and reading data cluttering the screen that you try to compose a shot.

That said, there are many tools to make and edit your photos in a creative manner. Fish-eye and the vignetting filter are among them and feature "magic framework" of the camera can be used to add graphical illustrations to your photos after the fact. Alternatively, you can put your trust in smart auto mode of the camera and simply point and shoot.

If the Samsung PL120 is that the camera for you really boils down to a question - how often do you take photos of yourself, naked or otherwise? If the answer is "often", it could be a punt. Just, don't expect to be overthrown by the quality of the image.