Product Tour
The SL620 is an average-looking point-and-shoot. It's a small, credit card-sized camera, its lens retracts when not in use, it has an LCD screen in lieu of a true viewfinder, and basic controls. This particular camera was a metallic pink.
Front
The front of the SL620 is pretty unremarkable. You have the branding next to the autofocus assist, the extending lens, and a flash. It has some of its finer points branded on its lower left and right corners. All in all, the SL620 adheres to the classic point-and-shoot design.
Back
The back of the SL620 again has, standard point-and-shoot all over the place. The LCD takes up the bulk of the real estate, with the controls lining the right side. That switch-looking control on top is actually a zoom toggle, below which is the control dial. Typically point-and-shoots have a zoom ring around their shutter button and the control dial is also an top of the device. The rest of the controls are regulars, however: menu button, four-way controller, playback button, and function button.
Sides
The left side of the SL620 doens't have any interesting features. The right has the camera's proprietary USB port and a lanyard loop.
Top
The top of the camera has the power and shutter buttons. Those three circles between them is the camera's microphone.
**
Bottom**
The bottom of the SL620 has two main features: the battery and memory card cavity, and the tripod socket. There's also a little diagram to remind you not to throw the camera away.
Hardware
LCD
The SL620's LCD screen does double duty as it serves as the camera's only viewfinder. It measures 3 inches diagonally, and takes up the majority of the camera's back. The screen can automatically adjust its brightness.
Flash
The flash is located in the top right of the camera's face. It's a standard flash for a point-and-shoot, meaning it's right on top of the lens. The lower the flash is in relation to the lens, the greater the risk of red-eye.
Lens
The SL60's lens, as you can see mentioned twice in the picture below, has 5x optical zoom. It also has a focal length of 6.3-31.5mm and an aperture range of f/3.5-5.5.
Jacks, Ports & Plugs
The SL620 uses a proprietary port for its USB connection. It's located under a panel on the top of its right side.
Battery
The port where the battery and memory card are located is on the camera's underside. The camera uses a Lithium-ion battery and accepts SD cards.
Memory
The SL60 accepts SDHC cards and also supports SD cards.
Design & Layout
Design & Appearance
The SL620 has a classic point-and-shoot design.
Size & Handling
If you've handled a point-and-shoot, you've handled the SL620. It's small, so you'll have to hold it with your thumb and index fingertips. The one handling issue is the shutter button location. It's a bit further away from the edge than usual. Otherwise, we liked the way the SL620 handled. It was strange to have the zoom on the back of the camera, but because the toggle didn't require too much pressure to activate, using it won't necessitate shifting your grip. You will have to shift your grip to use the control dial, but you'd have to do that even if it was on top of the camera.
Menu
The SL620 has a few different menus. The main menu, quite naturally, is accessed by pressing the menu button. It uses a basic structure: main headings are listed on the left, the first page of their contents is listed on the right. Selecting a heading will display the entirety of its contents.
The camera also has a nice rotary phone-style display of all the control dial's options.
The last menu is the quick menu, which is accessed by pressing the Fn key. This will let you easily fix the exposure compensation, white balance, ISO setting, facial detection, metering, enable burst mode, or add a color effect.
Ease of Use
The SL620 is fairly easy to use. There are multiple venues to different options and each menu is laid out in an intuitive way. On a point-and-shoot, ease of use is the primary directive, and the SL620 does a great job with that. If you get confused, there's also a help mode, complete with demonstrations.
Modes
Auto Mode
Point-and-shoot cameras are all about automatic modes, and the SL620 is no exception. The camera has Smart Auto mode, which is a scene recognition mode. It also has a good array of face detection modes: normal, self-portrait, smile shot, and blink detection. Smile shot will automatically snap a photo when it detects a smile, and blink detection will automatically take another shot if the subject blinked. There's also a Beauty Mode, which will smooth out skin tones and remove blemishes.
Movie Mode
The SL620 has a basic movie mode. You can fiddle with EV settings, choose 640x480 resolution or 320x240, 30 or 15fps, adjust the metering, add a color effect, or enable image stabilization.
Drive/Burst Mode
The SL620 has a basic burst mode (you can choose either single or continuous). You can also turn on AEB mode (auto exposure bracketing), which will take three pictures at varying exposure levels.
Playback Mode
Keeping with this intelligensia theme, the camera also has a Smart Album program, which is an advanced search program.
Custom Image Presets
There are 11 scene modes on the SL620, which haven't changed from the previous model, the SL420. The modes are: frame guide, night, portrait, children, landscape, close-up text, sunset, dawn, backlight, fireworks and beach & snow.
Controls
Manual Controls
The SL620 doesn't have many manual controls. You can set the ISO settings, customize white balance, and set the metering.
Focus
The SL620 doesn't have manual focus. It does, however, has two autofocus modes: multi auto and center auto.
ISO
The SL620 will let you alter the ISO setting. You can choose from an ISO of 80, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, and 3200.
White Balance
There are a few white balance presets and also a custom white balance mode. The presets are daylight, cloudy, fluorescent-H, fluorescent-L, and tungsten.
Metering
You can set your metering to multi, spot, or center.
Shutter Speed
The information on this model's shutter speed has not yet been released. If it's anything like the previous model in the series, it ranges between 1 second and 1/2,000 seconds. The previous model could also slow the shutter speed down to 16 seconds in night mode.
Aperture
The SL620 has a focal length of 6.3-31.5mm and an aperture range of f/3.5-5.5.
Image Stabilization
The SL620 uses dual image stabilization, meaning is utilizes both a mechanical image stabilizer and software to smooth out any jitters.
Picture Quality & Size Options
Your picture quality can be set to normal, fine, or super fine. The size options offered are: 12MP (4000x 3000), 10MP (3984x2656), 9MP (3968x2232), 8MP (3264x2248), 5MP (2592x1944), 3MP (2048x1536), and 1MP (1024x768).
Picture Effects
The SL620 offers a handful of color effects: soft, vivid, forest, sepia, cool, calm, black&white, and negative. You can also define your own color effect by using RGB sliders.
Conclusion
Meet the tester
Mark Brezinski works on the Home Team, reviewing refrigerators, minifridges, dishwashers, washing machines, dryers, air conditioners, air purifiers, and fans.
Checking our work.
Our team is here for one purpose: to help you buy the best stuff and love what you own. Our writers, editors, and lab technicians obsess over the products we cover to make sure you're confident and satisfied. Have a different opinion about something we recommend? Email us and we'll compare notes.
Shoot us an email