Even if you take your photography seriously, it's not always convenient to carry a bulky DSLR, no matter how much you love accessing full manual controls and shooting in RAW file formats.
If you need something more portable, the Samsung EX2F is one of the few compact-zoom point-and-shoot cameras that should appeal. It has plenty of hardware controls, a fold-out screen, and delivers some great-looking results.
The Samsung EX2F can be bought online for around 350 euros.
Professional degree
It is a professional compact in the truest sense of the word. The normal mode dial is complemented by a second dial that controls the shooting speed, with options for single shot, low, medium and high speed burst, exposure bracketing and 2 and 10 second timer.
These three burst mode options mean 10, 5, and 3 frames per second, each at full resolution. They're complemented by an intelligent pre-capture mode that captures 10 frames in the time it takes you to go from halfway to to switch to fully pressing the shutter button. By using this mode, you can easily anticipate the action you want to capture and still have a very good chance of capturing it successfully.
The EX2F's highest-speed burst setting captures 10 frames per second.
exposure
In normal use, shutter speeds range from 1/8 to 1/2,000 second in smart auto mode, but you can push the longest exposure to a full 30 seconds in manual mode.
This is adjusted along with the aperture in aperture priority mode with a small wheel in the handgrip. Pressing it toggles between the primary mode setting - shutter, aperture, etc. - and exposure compensation. Compensation gives you just two stops of stops in each direction in 1/3 stop increments , but is complemented by an excellent built-in neutral density filter to improve the balance of your shots.
This is a physical filter, not a digital workaround, and you can hear it click into place when you activate it.
Using the neutral density filter improved the balance of this shot and helped preserve lots of detail in the overcast sky (click image to enlarge).
Sensitivity ranges from ISO 80 to ISO 3,200 in normal use and can be increased to ISO 12,800 with ISO expansion.
Low-light performance is good. Raising the sensitivity introduces some noise into the results, of course, but even at settings up to ISO 1,600 it's well controlled and is similar to what you might expect from some half-sensitivity competitors.
Increasing the sensitivity does result in increased image noise, but it's well controlled and not so pronounced that it spoils the shot unless you zoom in properly. This image was captured at ISO 1,600 sensitivity (click image to enlarge).
The lens itself is extremely versatile due to its fast maximum aperture of f/1.4. Even at full telephoto, which is 80mm on a standard 35mm camera (at the other end of the scale it's a moderate 24mm), it's included f/2.7, which many competing compact cameras struggle to match at wide-angle.
This means it's easy to get some very short focused shots where the subject is well removed from its surroundings to draw the eye.
Shot at f/2, this temperature gauge is drawn cleanly forward of the car's bodywork, which has been gently defocused (click image to enlarge).
The minimum focusing distance is 40cm at wide-angle and 100cm at telephoto, although wide-angle macro shots can be captured with the lens up to 1cm from the subject.
color and details
Colors are reproduced very accurately in all lighting conditions. I ran my tests under mostly cloudy skies with the white balance set appropriately and the results were expressive and very satisfying.
The nose of this aircraft below is bright and the colors are rich from the paintwork and the reflection on the propeller. The sky, which could easily have been a faint gray in comparison, has plenty of texture in its various levels of brightness.
Despite shooting under overcast skies, the EX2F maintained excellent, realistic color in my test results (click on the image for a larger view).
The EX2F has a 12-megapixel back-illuminated sensor that produces 4,000 x 3,000 pixel images. That's enough for printing at A2 size and above when using an online commercial printer. It also allows for a moderate, though not particularly tight cropping.
However, the digital zoom, which supports the lens' physical 3.3x range, is pretty good. When used carefully, cropping and enhancing the central part of the image doesn't significantly detract from the result.
