Samsung L74 Wide

As you might have guessed from its name, this digicam is meant for taking group shots, panoramic landscapes, and photos for which you want to go wide without having to back up. The seven-megapixel L74 Wide includes a 3.6X optical zoom, Advanced Shake Reduction that increases ISO sensitivity and shutter speed, 14 scene modes, and a generous 450MB of internal memory.
 
The solid, metal L74 Wide measures 0.9 inches thick yet feels sturdy and well constructed. The matte-black finish looks attractive but scratches very easily (ours was marked up after only a few uses). On the back, you'll find a large three-inch touchscreen, and only two buttons and a zoom toggle to the right of the display. We prefer these streamlined controls to packing the back with a confusing array of buttons, as has been the case with other Samsung digicams. Although we easily located the settings we wanted to tweak, the touchscreen wasn't always responsive, and it took us several taps to access some of the controls. Also, many of the settings are small, and without a stylus, selecting certain features is difficult for those with larger fingers.
 
On our tests, the L74 Wide proved slow and provided mediocre to poor image quality. The digicam took almost five seconds to start up, and the time between shots was several seconds (even longer with the flash on). Images became increasingly noisy as we bumped the ISO from 200 to 800 and 1600. At ISO 200, photos had some apparent grain, but at 800 and 1600, images were completely unacceptable with lots of noise and fringing. Thankfully, landscape images captured with the L74 Wide weren't distorted, and we were able to get a good wide shot of Times Square.
 
We were equally disappointed with video clips produced by the L74 Wide. Although it records at 30 fps and has a stabilizer for video, our test footage was a blurry mess. What looked fine when viewed on the digicam's LCD was distorted on our PC. The Samsung L74 Wide sounds promising on paper, but after spending some time with this digicam, we can't recommend it.


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