Quotes of the Day

Style Watch: Rattan Revolution Diversions: All Talk Food: Season to Taste Outdoors: Comfy Camping

Turns out you can have your fancy digital and the retro look of your old Leica, too: meet Samsung's Digimax L85, whose sturdy black shell conjures up the romance of 35 mm of yore. Samsung's eight-megapixel Digimax L85 is the world's first digital still camera to feature High Definition Multimedia Interface. Put simply, you can shoot still photos, plus video with audio, and watch it in all its high-resolution glory on your high-definition TV. Video compression is also featured, which gives four times the video storage of older digital cameras. The amateur needn't fret; a movie stabilizer helps reduce the dreaded vibrations of "camera shake." And Digimax Reader text-recognition software is in place for the James Bond type who needs to snap documents on the fly and then isolate and extract text from an image.

The more experienced shutterbug will rejoice in the detailed manual control settings offered by this camera. Aperture Priority allows more depth control, and Shutter Priority ensures that fast motion will be easily captured. Photographers of all abilities will appreciate the large viewing window. A satisfying click of the shutter is accompanied by a Continuous Shooting mode for consecutive shots. Is little Johnny bouncing a basketball for the first time? You'll have your choice of archiving the milestone in a movie version, or with accurate quick-motion still shots, cropped in to your liking with a zoom lens of up to 5x. The Samsung Digimax L85 costs around $500—feel free to supplement it with a roomier memory card.

• Rachel Aydt
• Samsung's throwback Digimax L85 features eight megapixels and an HD video interface