The ST550 is one of Samsung's latest launches and the Korean giant reckons the camera's ‘robust features ensure a perfect picture with every click. Or touch.'
Samsung designed this camera to be a touch-based model and as a result there are only four physical controls; power, capture, zoom control and playback. Using the camera involves spending a lot of time swiping and clicking away on the massive 3.5-inch touchscreen LCD and we're happy to say that we had no issues at all.
The LCD is very responsive to even minor touches so you don't have to focus on making a pronounced stab to get the camera to react. The LCD also gives haptic feedback and this helps to boost confidence further. The menu system itself is intuitively designed and thus is very easy-to-use. That said you will be forced to use two hands to use some of the camera's features. The 3.5-inch LCD isn't the only LCD on the ST550 however; there's also another 1.5-inch LCD sitting near the camera's lens. This enables you to take self portraits and we found it works quite well. That said a detachable swivel LCD is far more flexible than a stationary one.
The camera features a 12.2-megapixel CCD image sensor which grabs pixels via a 27mm Schneider-Kreuznach wide angle lens. The lens offers 4.6x optical zoom and using the ST550, we found it returned brilliant photographs. It captured skin tones accurately, grabbed even minute details and offers a number of manual mode options that allows you take good low-light photos.