Samsung EX2F review

Smarter than the average compact camera

Samsung EX2F review
The Samsung EX2F has an extremely large aperture

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In most daylight situations, the Samsung EX2F produces very nice images, with natural colours, plenty of detail and relatively little in the way of noise at the lower sensitivity settings.

The multi-purpose metering system performs well on the whole, delivering correctly exposed images in a fairly wide range of conditions.

It does an especially good job when confronted with brighter than average scenes, delivering images that look right straight from the camera with little in the way of underexposure.

Samsung EX2F review

However, it struggles a little more with dark and high contrast scenes.

Exposure compensation is available to +/-2EV, so it is usually possible to adjust the exposure to get a correct looking image (or manual exposure can be used), but in bright light, exposure can be hard to assess on the screen.

Fortunately, there is a histogram view, which can be accessed via the Disp button. However, this is a bit distracting to use for everyday shooting.

Samsung EX2F review

Although it's not infallible, the autofocus system performs well in most situations, locking onto the subject and getting it sharp in most cases. The macro focusing function needs to be turned on with subjects closer than 40cm.

Images taken at ISO 80-200 have plenty of detail and little sign of noise, but the level of detail starts to drop off quite steeply once ISO 800 is reached.

The JPEG files don't suffer from noise, more the impact of its removal at the higher sensitivity settings.