Sending a freshly taken photo to your friends, and including yourself in the shot. Such common needs of consumer photographers are primary features of several new cameras from Samsung.
On Thursday, the company announced two new DualView Cameras, the TL225 and TL220. Both feature a pair of LCD screens — one on the back and, so you can see yourself in the picture, a smaller one on the front.
A third new camera, the CL65, provides what the company described as “unprecedented connectivity” with geo-tagging and easy ways to share photos via e-mail and social-networking sites.
‘Very First of Its Kind’
Sang Jin Park, head of the Samsung Digital Imaging Company, said the DualView cameras “are the very first of their kind,” adding that “we are offering functionality and capabilities that no other digital-camera manufacturer has yet addressed.”
The front LCD on the TL225 and TL220 is 1.5 inches. On the TL225, the screen on the back is 3.5 inches, and three inches on the TL220. On both, haptic-vibration feedback is featured on the back screen, so the user can feel the camera is registering his or her choices.
There is also a Child Mode, with an animation of clowns playing on the front LCD to capture a small child’s attention before a picture is taken.
The cameras feature a 12.2-megapixel CCD, and a 27mm wide-angle Schneider-KREUZNACH lens with 4.6x optical zoom. And both record 720p high-definition video at 30 fps in H.264 format.
In the DualView cameras, a built-in gravity sensor means that a tap to the front LCD activates the switched-on camera, and automatically sets it for self-portrait mode with smile detection. “This means,” the company said, “that if users want to take a self-portrait, they only need to tap and smile, and the picture will be taken automatically without pressing the shutter button.”
‘Almost…