Version: 2008
  • On GameFAQs: What causes the Red Ring of Death?
advertisement

Samsung Digimax L85

camera on palm sides back

See all Samsung products

  • Quick specs
  • Resolution: 8.1 megapixels
  • Optical zoom: 5 x
  • Display type: 2.5 in LCD display
  • See full specifications

Add to my list Product summary

The good: Decent images; lots of manual features.

The bad: Heavy fringing; slow burst mode; no image stabilization or high ISO support for low-light shooting.

The bottom line: The Samsung Digimax L85 offers a lot of flexibility and produces very good pictures, but watch out for fringing.

Read full review

Compare this digital camera to:

CNET editors' review

  • CNET editors' rating: 3.5 stars Very good
    Detailed editors' rating
      Design : 7.0
      Features : 7.0
      Performance : 7.0
      Image quality : 7.0
      Overall score: 7.0 (3.5 stars)
  • Reviewed on: 06/12/2006
  • Released on: 04/30/2006
The Samsung Digimax L85 is a surprisingly functional 8-megapixel digital camera. Its chunky, retro design belies its very flexible, high-end feature set, including the unique ability to output HDMI . Granted, HDMI in a digital camera is more novel than utilitarian, but the wealth of manual settings and image features will be appreciated by anyone who wants to take solid photos. As long as you don't mind its propensity for fringing on edges and the lack of a fast burst mode, you'll find the Samsung Digimax L85 a versatile, quality shooter.In a market filled with credit card-size, ultrathin, chrome snapshooters, the Samsung Digimax L85's grippable, rubberized black body with matte-silver accents feels like an homage to yesterday's camera designs. Nevertheless, its chunky, 7.9-ounce, slightly-too-big-to-pocket chassis hosts a fairly standard control layout.

 Samsung Digimax L85
The bulk of the camera's controls sit on the back panel of the camera--the zoom rocker, a four-way-plus-OK control pad, and four additional buttons for Aperture/Shutter/Manual, Effects, EV Compensation/Trash, and Playback/Print-- alongside a bright 2.5-inch LCD.

The top panel of the camera holds the power button, the shutter release, and a mode dial. The control pad works double duty, both navigating the camera's menu system and directly controlling the flash, the macro, the timer, and the voice annotation.Samsung couples the Digimax L85's 8-megapixel sensor with a 38mm-to-190mm (35mm equivalent) Schneider-Kreuznach lens that can focus as close as 3.9 inches in its Auto Macro mode or down to 0.4 inch in Super Macro mode. It's the first digital camera with HDMI compatibility, so you can plug it into a high-end television to show off your photos or your 30fps, VGA-resolution MPEG-4 videos (which it can record up to the capacity of the SD card). Unfortunately, you have to get the optional dock for the actual HDMI connector. The dock also comes with an IR remote for the camera and can act as a standard USB cable and charger, so it's a practical accessory, even if you don't have a high-end television.

More mundane but useful, the L85 offers several handy shooting features and settings. These include aperture-priority, shutter-priority, and manual exposure modes, as well as automatic, program, and several scene preset modes for hassle-free operation. A Motion Capture mode quickly snaps 30 VGA-resolution photos for motion analysis, such as when you need to overthink your golf swing, and the camera offers a 16:9 wide-screen mode. Unfortunately, the latter works only in automatic, and it simply letterboxes the normal 4:3 image, resulting in a top resolution of 5 megapixels. The program mode offers a few extra tricks, such as the handy Highlight, which displays guides for framing portraits; composition shooting, which combines multiple exposures so that you can be in the picture; and a handful of hideous photo-frame effects. Except for motion capture, all still-image modes can write TIFF as well as JPEG formats. You probably won't want to use all of the L85's features, but the different options grant the camera an appreciable flexibility.

Continue reading

Most helpful user reviews

Submit your review

Log in or create an account to submit your review for:

Samsung Digimax L85

ORLog in with your Facebook account
1. Rate this product:
(Mouse over the stars to rate this product and click to set your rating.)
2. One-line summary:(Summarize your review in one line. 10 characters minimum; required.)
0 of 55 characters
3. Pros:(Tell us what you like about this product. 10 characters minimum; required.)
0 of 250 characters
4. Cons:(Tell us what you don't like about this product. 10 characters minimum; required.)
0 of 250 characters
Bottom-line summary:(Explain to us in detail why you like or dislike the product, focusing your comments on the product's features and functionality, and your experience using the product. This field is optional.)
0 of 5000 characters

The posting of advertisements, profanity, or personal attacks are prohibited.
Click here to review our site terms of use.

Submit

Compare prices for Samsung Digimax L85

Price: $154.99
Amazon.com Marketplace $154.99
advertisement

Recent user reviews

Submit your review

Log in or create an account to submit your review for:

Samsung Digimax L85

ORLog in with your Facebook account
1. Rate this product:
(Mouse over the stars to rate this product and click to set your rating.)
2. One-line summary:(Summarize your review in one line. 10 characters minimum; required.)
0 of 55 characters
3. Pros:(Tell us what you like about this product. 10 characters minimum; required.)
0 of 250 characters
4. Cons:(Tell us what you don't like about this product. 10 characters minimum; required.)
0 of 250 characters
Bottom-line summary:(Explain to us in detail why you like or dislike the product, focusing your comments on the product's features and functionality, and your experience using the product. This field is optional.)
0 of 5000 characters

The posting of advertisements, profanity, or personal attacks are prohibited.
Click here to review our site terms of use.

Submit

Special sponsor stores

advertisement

Reviews from around the WebPowered by alaTest

  • alaTest.com

    Editors' rating: 88

    Summary: alaTest has collected and analyzed 149 reviews of Samsung Digimax L85 from international magazines and websites. Experts rate this product 75/100 and users 89/100. Comparing these reviews to 540866 other Digital Compact Cameras reviews gives this product an overall alaScore™ 88/100 = Very Good.

    Read full review

  • techradar.com

    Editors' rating: 90

    Summary: Here, it's backed up by a larger-than-life 2.5-inch LCD screen with an impressive 230,000 pixel count. However good that sounds though, in action the screen isn't as sharp as we'd like, and is a damn nuisance to use in bright light, where framing ...

    Read full review

  • pcworld.com

    Editors' rating: 74

    Summary: The L85 can store just four of its highest-quality JPEG images in its 23MB internal memory, so buying a high-capacity SD Card is essential, especially considering that the camera can also record images as lossless TIFF files, which are many times ...

    Read full review

  • t3.com

    Editors' rating: 60

    Summary: A decent camera, but why does HD picture-viewing - its USP - cost extra?!

    Read full review

  • pcmag.com

    Editors' rating: 30

    Read full review

  • thinkcamera.com

    Editors' rating: 70

    Summary: The Samsung L85 is well worth consideration by anyone looking for a quality 8MP compact that will turn in solid, reliable results. There's nothing really to fall in love with about the camera but nothing to put you off either. If you like the styling ...

    Read full review

Samsung Digimax L85