Link : http://www.cnet.com.au/samsung-st50-339295561.htm
Samsung ST50
Samsung's ST50 looks the part of a very compact digital point-and-shoot, but
the images it produces could be sharper.
Design
The ST50's main design selling point is its thin metallic body, which measures in at a
teeny 16.6mm wide. That makes it very pocket friendly, at least in theory, although
with a 2.7-inch LCD on the back, it would be unwise to have your car keys in the
same pocket at the same time. The one other consequence of the ST50's thin body
is that the lens itself protrudes out quite noticeably.
As with many compact digital cameras these days, the LCD is your only point of
interaction with the camera, as it lacks an optical viewfinder of any kind. The controls
along the top of the camera are the power, \"smart\" program button and zoom/shot
controls, and down the back are some very tiny buttons for menu and basic shooting
style selection. If you've used any recent compact digital camera, then basic
shooting with the ST50 should be well within your grasp.

Features
At a technical level, the ST50 sports a 12.2-megapixel sensor and a 35-105mm
equivalent lens with 3x optical zoom. Internal storage is an incredibly poky 31MB, but
it's SDHC compatible, with cards slotting in next to the battery at the base.
Samsung's big selling point in the ST50's feature set is the \"Smart Auto\" setting.
Simply put, the button on the top of the camera switches between two modes only —
\"Smart\" Auto (similar to everyone else's automatic shooting modes, at least in
theory) and program modes. In some ways it's a clever option to offer, as the market
for compact digital cameras is largely comprised of those who just want to take quick
happy snaps, rather than more complex photography, by and large. At the same time,
it does make some selections rather tiresome, which we'll deal with shortly.
Performance
Powering up time was acceptable but not great at around 1.2 seconds. Sadly, that's
the fastest this camera got, although we were often torn between working out
whether that was due to slow shutter speeds or rather difficult controls. In many
instances, we'd make a selection or pick a shot, only to have the ST50 sit there
twiddling whatever passes for thumbs in the digital compact world, largely because it
hadn't registered the button press properly.
The decision to allow users to turn the auto shooting mode on or off immediately
makes sense on paper, and if you always wanted the camera to pick the best
shooting parameters, it would probably make sense in the real world, too. There's
just two small problems with this. Firstly, its automatic selections are often odd, with
more than a few of our shots picking the wrong focal point, or badly overexposing
some images.
Secondly, when and if you do want to move beyond auto selection, it makes fast
switching of settings all but impossible. If you're already in smart auto mode, you're
at least four button presses away from some key functions. We did like the fact that
the camera display walks you through the differences that changing each setting will
make to your pictures, but if you wanted to make a swift change to take advantage of
a particular temporal shot — forget it.
As with most LCD-only compacts, the ST50 isn't at its best in bright sunlight, where
it's as much a matter of pointing and praying as it is of carefully choosing your best
shot.
Conclusion
Ultimately, the ST50 is an acceptable compact with a nice slim form factor, but in
such a competitive market segment, that's barely enough. You're essentially paying
a premium for the slim form factor, and it's not that much more portable than
anything else, and you're still hampered by some poor menu choices and overly
fiddly buttons.