by Miserere

  

⇐ Part 1: First Impressions

Note: The camera and accessories tested in this review were loaned to EtL by B&H Photo & Video store. To thank them for their generosity and allow us to receive more products for review, please consider purchasing your camera equipment through our affiliate B&H link (also found on the right sidebar). Thanks!

  

Samsung NX10 New Firmware: v1.15

On May 20^th, when I was nearly finished with writing this article, Samsung released an update to the original firmware. You can find it here, under the ‘DOWNLOAD’ tab, then scroll down to ‘FIRMWARE’. You’ll have to enter your camera’s serial number before you can download it. Instructions in English of how to update the firmware are given here.

  

The Shooting Experience

While the Olympus E-PL1 forced me to think ahead and plan what settings I would be shooting with, the Samsung NX10 is the complete opposite. Thanks to its many direct access buttons I can quickly change many parameters almost on the fly. The finger wheel also makes adjusting the aperture (in Av) or shutter speed (in Tv) easy as pie. Manual mode requires holding down the EV comp. button and moving the wheel to change aperture; the wheel by itself controls shutter speed. It’s also very comfortable to hold and carry around; I haven’t attached a shoulder strap to it as it’s easier and more convenient to just use a wrist strap borrowed from my P&S.

I thought I’d mention this comfort issue upfront and get it off my chest. The Olympus E-PL1 was much more comfortable to carry around than my DSLR, but I lost some functionality. With the NX10 I have the same ease of transport as with the E-PL1, while losing practically no DSLR features.

  

Is That a Mini DSLR in My Pocket, or Am I Just Happy to Be Taking Photos?

One thing that separates the expensive cameras from the cheaper entry-level ones is the number of functions accessible without menu diving. Following is a table of the main camera settings one is likely to play with on a regular basis, indicating in each case how they are accessed on the NX10:

As you can tell from this table, you have direct and easy access to many parameters, just like you would on most DSLRs. To end this section I’ll mention the ON/OFF switch, which is located as a ring around the shutter release button, making it accessible and quick to use. It’s got a solid detent and I’ve yet to turn the camera on or off by accident; it’s much better than the button found on most P&S’s (or the inconveniently placed lever on some DSLRs—yes Canon, I’m looking at you).

  

Speed in Usage

The camera is very responsive while shooting, it is less so while playing back what you just shot. If you have autoreview enabled, the photo you just took will show up immediately; if you don’t have it enabled, and hit the review button after you’ve taken the shot, you’ll have to wait until the camera has finished copying the data to card before it will show it. And like I said in Part 1, the camera is slow writing to card and/or has a small buffer. This will be less of a problem if you shoot JPEGs, but can be annoying if you shoot RAW or RAW+JPEG. Either way, you’re only going to get 3fps for the first second, then it slows down to tortoise pace. Not a problem for me because I never shoot at maximum fps, but the number-crunching photographers out have been warned.

Other than these issues caused by the small buffer, the camera is responsive and moves through menus and options as fast as you can press buttons. And because of all the external buttons, it’s fast to change most immediately needed settings like EV Comp., aperture, shutter speed, AF point position, etc.

  

The Strange Case of the Shutter Lag that Wasn’t, Part 2

In Part 1 I mentioned how I thought there was some shutter lag because of the sound the shutter made, but after some testing I found there wasn’t. Well, it turns out I was wrong, and right. Bear with me. After some weeks of shooting I found myself confused because I could swear I had missed certain shots due to shutter lag. Let me explain that I am very aware of when I release the shutter when doing street photography, waiting for the perfect moment to do so. Capturing a brief, fleeting instant is very important to me. With my DSLR I am generally on the money, but I found some photographs taken with the NX10 were off; to be more precise, they were late, never early.

Instead of using a stopwatch, I decided to run a test on the street. I positioned myself perpendicular to a road where cars pass by at around 30mph. In front of me on the opposite side of the street was a sign, whose pole I used for this test. First I used the screen to take a photo of a few cars just as they passed in front of the pole, then I held the camera at waist level and did the same but looking directly at the cars. Browsing through the pictures cleared everything up.

This is what’s happening, as far as I can tell: Light is hitting the sensor all the time, forming an image; the image you see on the screen is the product of processing the electrical signals detected by the sensor, and this processing takes time. How long? I don’t know for sure, but I do know we want it to be very, very short, of the order of milliseconds, because we want as little delay as possible between real life, and life on the rear screen. When you press the shutter release on the Samsung NX10, you don’t record the image that’s on the screen at that moment, but rather the image that’s hitting the sensor at that moment. If the image processing time is short, there will be practically no difference between the two, but the processing time on the NX10 is long enough that there is a difference. Not much, but enough for me to have lost some photos because I took them an instant too late when judging the moment by the screen. The reason I was getting some photos right on time was because I do a lot of shooting from the hip, judging the moment to release the shutter with my own eyes, not using the camera’s screen.

How will this affect you? I don’t know. For still subjects, it’s no big deal; even for moving people it’s generally not a problem, and I’ve captured plenty of smiles and facial expressions without any issues. But when I know I have a split second to take a shot, I look directly at my subject, not at the screen. Hopefully Samsung will speed up image processing in the next iteration of this camera, and might even be able to do it via a firmware upgrade. For a real-world case study, see the photo on the right (click for larger); I knew the dog would be jumping off the pier and was ready with the camera prefocused and the shot framed. When the dog jumped I was watching the scene on the rear screen and still managed to get him in mid air. I should have followed my own advice and looked past the camera at the scene directly, but the outcome was still what I wanted: The dog in mid-air trying to grab the frisbee.

  

EVF Blackout

After taking a photograph the image has to be transferred from the sensor to the camera buffer, then written to the card. During the readout process the sensor cannot also capture a new image (at least not at full resolution, which is why video is relatively low definition). During this time when the sensor isn’t capturing anything the EVF (and rear screen) will be black, hence the term ‘blackout’. The quicker the camera and sensor are to read out images, the shorter the blackout. In the case of the NX10, the blackout is rather long, like 1.5s long. If you tend to take photos in groups of one, like I do, this isn’t such a big deal, but it does bring the apparent performance of the camera down.

  

AMOLED Screen

Coming off the Olympus E-PL1 (review) this is like a breath of fresh air. The AMOLED is big, bright and beautiful, not to mention crisp. This type of display (Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Liode) has several advantages over traditional LCDs: Thinner, lighter, stronger, much lower power consumption, faster refresh rates, and offering better image quality. They’re even cheaper! At least in small sizes, but the next few years will see the appearance of AMOLED TVs, which will be even thinner than the thinnest flat TVs around today. AMOLED screens can even be flexible, so the applications are limitless. Before you doze off, I’ll finish this section by pointing out that Samsung is heavily invested in the development of AMOLED technology, which it began using on its mobile phones, and plans to use on tablet PCs (now that there are touch-sensitive AMOLED surfaces) and TVs.

Now to the part you’re interested in: performance. The AMOLED screen has an extremely wide angle of view (practically 180°), and neither colour nor contrast shift with viewing angle. It’s also bright and works well in sunshine. For those of you who shoot while wearing polarised glasses, the good news is that it’s not polarised like camera LCDs typically are (the image “disappears” if you rotate the LCD to take a vertical photo), but rather each RGB colour pixel has a different polarisation, so as you turn the display the hue changes, but the display never disappears. If you never shoot with polarised glasses, forget I even mentioned this.

In short: The screen is a joy to use and top of its class.

  

EVF

The electronic viewfinder pales in comparison to the AMOLED screen, despite it being quite decent for an EVF. It’s not as large as that in the Panasonic G2, but not as minuscule as those found in bridge cameras. It does suffer from colour shifts every now and again; on the bright side the refresh rate is high so there is no banding when panning the camera. The information displayed in the EVF mirrors that of the LCD, including optional grid lines and live histogram, with the only difference being everything is larger, thus taking up more screen space—if I’m using the EVF frequently, I’ll set the info display to empty (only the focus zone appears). Shooting mode, aperture, shutter speed, EV comp, number of remaining shots and battery level are always displayed, but below the frame so they don’t take space away from your field of view.

  

Auto ISO

First of all, it’s not available in Manual mode! Samsung, please enable this with a firmware upgrade. Second of all, it’s very optimistic, and in low light I often found myself with blurry photos because when using Av the camera would select too slow a shutter speed. The lens has optical stabilisation, and I have steady hands, yet the shutter speed chosen was still too low (because the ISO was too low). Now I only shoot Auto ISO in Tv so I can set an appropriate shutter speed. If shooting Av I’ll just set the ISO manually.

Next ISO issue: You can only set it in full stop increments! So that’s 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600 and 3200. I’m not kidding. I thought only cameras from 4 years ago worked like this. Another firmware fix for Samsung’s list. And it’s not like the camera isn’t capable of 1/2 or 1/3 stop increments, because in Auto ISO it will use intermediate values—this is a bad programming issue.

  

Auto White Balance

I had written a couple of unhappy paragraphs here, but before going to press Samsung released firmware v1.15, and one of the issues they addressed was Auto WB. I am now happy to report that Auto WB works very well. The issues with the original firmware were mainly in tungsten light, the bane of all digital cameras, but now images come out with a slight yellow tinge to add character and let you know the light was warm, but not enough to make you grimace.

  

Menus

Instead of scrolling vertically through endless pages, Samsung has adopted a horizontal style, so there are 3 “camera” menus, 1 “user” menu and 3 “settings” menus. Each menu takes up 1 screen with a maximum of 6 items. To change menus you use the left/right keys and to select an item within each menu you use the up/down. To change an item you press OK and to go back you press MENU. It’s easy and quick, and thanks to the many-pixeled AMOLED screen, all labels are very easy to read.

If you’ve done you math, you will have figured out that there are 7 menu screens with a maximum of 6 items each, totalling 42 possible settings to change (at most). That’s not a lot! The Olympus E-PL1 probably had that many options in its first screen alone. The exact number is actually 37 settings. I don’t know if Samsung were trying to keep it simple (reeeeeeal simple) or if they just got bored of programming the menus, but either way they need to get back to work and add more settings with a firmware upgrade. Maybe they can add them to an “advanced” menu that only appears if you set it up to, so as not to frighten newbies, but there are functions missing on this camera that need to be addressed and will need menu entries for that.

  

Battery Life

Sorry people, but I don’t have a number for you; what I can say is that it’s shorter than I would like. It hasn’t lasted me a full day of shooting on the few occasions I’ve had that much time, so make sure you purchase an extra battery when you buy this camera.

  

Scene Modes

As an advanced photographer (if you don’t mind me calling myself that) I cringe at the thought of scene modes, but as a camera reviewer, I understand their need. There is a segment of the camera buying population (a large segment) that have no interest in learning anything about photography and want every camera to work as a point and shoot. To those people God gave scene modes. Let’s see how Samsung has integrated them into the NX10.

The Mode dial includes the requisite PASM and video modes, plus Night, Portrait and Landscape modes, on top of which there are the SCENE and SMART modes. In every mode but SMART, you can shoot in RAW, which is nice. In SMART mode, as you might guess, the camera will attempt to guess what you’re shooting and apply appropriate settings. The SCENE mode lets you choose from a number of different scene modes accessed via the Fn button; the scenes available are: Beauty Shot (portrait), Children, Close Up, Text, Sunset, Dawn (because it’s so different to Sunset), Backlight (first time I think I’ve seen this one), Fireworks, and Beach and Snow (you only get both in Antarctica!). When choosing a mode some limitations are placed on certain settings, while others are chosen for you. For example, in Children or Portrait mode the only autofocus setting available is face detection. In Close Up mode there is no face detection available…and strangely enough there is no flash available either! On the other hand, Backlight will pop the flash up automatically. I’m thinking there should be a Stadium scene that prohibits flash, that way we could avoid all those people who use their flashes when shooting a sports pitch from the stands in automatic mode.

A last note: In most scene modes the camera automatically adjusts its focus as you move it around, like many P&S’s do; when you half-press the shutter it will still autofocus, but I suspect it prefocuses in order to speed up picture taking.

  

Exposure

Consistently good! If and when I use EV comp it’s for artistic purposes or to control for backlighting. I suppose the camera could be a bit smarter with backlighting, but I almost always use center-weighted metering and instinctively add EV compensation in those situations, so I haven’t tested how well (or poorly) the camera deals with backlighting in matrix metering mode. In any case, having a live histogram available in both rear screen and EVF means there’s no excuse for messing up the exposure.

  

The Kit Lens

Currently in the United States the only lens available for the NX10 is the 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 with optical stabilisation. Not a bad lens at all, and balances OK on the camera for two-hand operation, but makes the combination feel a bit lens-heavy when shooting with one hand. The inner barrel of the lens extends while zooming to the long end and the rubber-ribbed zoom ring gets a bit tight when it reaches 35mm. The focus ring doesn’t turn during autofocus, but to use it to focus manually you need to engage the AF/MF switch on the lens. I’ll add that the feel of the focus ring is like plastic turning on plastic; there is none of that nice feel the Olympus micro-4/3 lenses have. The front element of the lens doesn’t rotate during zooming or focusing, which is handy when using polarizing filters. The lens also has a stabilisation switch, should you wish to disengage this function.

  

Manual Focus

I will slap Samsung on the wrist for this. When focusing manually the screen will show a magnified view of the scene; the problem is that it’s only a 2x magnification, which might be fine at longer focal lengths but is woefully insufficient when shooting wide angle if your subject is further than a few feet away. Just like the Olympus micro-4/3 cameras do, there needs to be a selectable option of magnifications. Since Samsung is starting from scratch, I would suggest the following: 2x, 5x, 10x and 15x. As of mid May 2010, firmware v1.15 is available, which allows magnification with any lens mounted via an adapter (although I have not been able to test this because I haven’t received the adapter yet).

  

Autofocus

I think Samsung scored big in this department, and I hope the autofocus engineers get a nice Christmas bonus this year. How quick is the autofocus? Faster than a speeding squirrel! See the photo on the right; this little fellow jumped into the path at the park, I knelt down and was able to autofocus and take the shot before he ran away. He was still for just an instant, then he was gone, leaving me impressed that I got the shot once it came up on the rear screen.

I tried out AF-C (continuous autofocus) on moving traffic standing next to a busy street. I tracked cyclists as they approached me and try to snap them as they passed by me; this way the AF-C would have to keep focus from 20m or so down to 3-4m. If we ignore the way too slow shutter speed (that’s user error), the AF-C worked very well; not as good as a high-end AF-C on a Canon DSLR, but far and away better than the Olympus E-PL1.

How about the accuracy of the focusing area? Samsung allows you to choose from 4 different sizes (all of them square), with the smallest being truly spot-focusing. You can see in the photo of the baseball player through the wire fence that the camera locked on the player, not the fence. I took a few shots, with my methodology being to first focus on the fence, then focus on the player to take the shot. Every time the camera locked on the player without hesitation, showing how accurate the focusing area is.

My last comment on the autofocus is about the location of the focusing square. You can move the square almost anywhere on the screen (the extreme edges are excluded) which makes composition so much easier, especially with still subjects. Although given how quickly you can access the AF area location function (press the OK button and then use the arrows to move it around, or press the green button to return it to the center), you can, with some practice, use it on non-stationary subjects too. In the flower photo I noticed the fly as it landed, then quickly moved the AF area so it was on the fly with the composition I wanted, and then I took the shot with a narrow DoF and without the need to focus then recompose. Not only does focus+recompose take time, it will most likely lead to focusing errors when focusing on subjects that are close to the camera.

  

The Form Factor

It looks like a miniature DSLR, why? I don’t know. DSLRs look the way they look because there is a big prism above the mirror that’s between the lens and the sensor; that prism, and its associated viewfinder are the hump on top of DSLRs—form follows function. MILCs (Mirrorless Interchangeable Lens Cameras) don’t have prisms, or mirrors, so why give them the same shape as a camera that does? And why does the viewfinder have to be on top of the lens? If it’s an EVF it can be anywhere, like somewhere ergonomically more efficient…the left-hand side of the camera! Whether you’re a right- or left-eyed photographer, the far left is a better place for it. It wasn’t until I took up photography that I began to think of nose reduction surgery, and if I ever thought rangefinders were attractive it’s because their viewfinders are where they ought to be: IN THE TOP-LEFT CORNER.

  

Real World Shooting™

The NX10 does not get in the way, and it’s a pleasure to shoot with. Yes, I’m annoyed by the lack of 1/3 stop steps in manual ISO setting and a few other things, but in general I find myself enjoying the shooting experience a great deal. For street photography it surpasses my DSLR by far, and I don’t know how I’ll be able to go back to it. While the NX10 doesn’t have a swivelling screen, the wide angle of view of the AMOLED means I can still compose with the screen almost edge on, which is something I do a lot—with my DSLR I have to guess where I’m pointing, but with this camera I know fairly accurately where that is. Also, thanks to its light weight and small size, it makes shooting at awkward angles a lot easier, and that’s something I do a lot too.

With my DSLR I use a lot of manual focusing, simply because most scenes are here and gone and there’s no time to autofocus. With the NX10′s fast autofocus and easily selectable AF area I find myself using autofocus a lot more. And not only is it fast, it’s accurate. Even the AF-C mode is usable (unlike on the Olympus E-PL1), although it’s still not as good as on most DSLRs. All in all, the autofocus on the NX10 gets an A+ from me.

Another thing that makes shooting easier and quicker is all the direct access buttons on the camera body. Being able to access ISO, AF mode, metering mode and AF point location immediately (and set EV comp with the finger dial) makes a difference when the scene you’re shooting changes quickly and you want the camera to respond just as fast.

In case you can’t tell, I’m liking the NX10 a lot. But is the image quality up to the level of its ergonomics? Find out in Part 3!

Part 3: Image Quality and Conclusions ⇒

  

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1. Review – Samsung NX10, Part 1: First Impressions
2. Samsung NX10 Arrives at EtL Headquarters
3. A Photowalk with the Samsung NX10 and 30mm f/2
4. Review – Panasonic G2, Part 1: Introduction and Using the Camera
5. Review – Canon S90, Part 2: Using the Camera