Monday, March 15, 2010

New milestone of digital cameras, NX10

Here is a long review about Samsung NX10 camera.

1460M pixels APS-C type CMOS sensor lens interchangeable type digital camera


 


Users tend to buy their sub camera high-end or compact camera, because of the heavy weight and its mobility of DSLR cameras. Especially, women leave their heavy DSLR at home, and carry a compact digital camera for its great mobility. Therefore, DSLR camera makers tried to reduce the size and weight, but due to the structural limit of DSLRs which need mirror box and penta prism, it hasn’t appealed to users much.


 Recently, Samsung Digital Imaging(www.samsungimaging.com) has released the NX10 which has small size and light weight with the same image quality as DSLRs. Like DSLR cameras, it can also change lenses to take various pictures and the AMOLED is another distinguishable point. After releasing the NX10, now Samsung has a dream to succeed in the DSLR market. Let’s take a look at the possibility of the NX10.



Traditional DSLR design


The body of the NX10 looks like a small DSLR body. Similar to Micro Four Thirds of Olympus, the NX system reduces the distance between the lens and sensor called flash back to less than a half. Therefore, the thickness of the body is just less than 1 inch. The NX10 has taken out the view finder, prism and mirror, and become more compact. However, the traditional design means the NX10 has performance of DSLR, I think.


 



 


 


 


Analog Interface


Pushing a button to set ISO, Shutter speed, and Aperture, analog indication bar comes up. Recently, Steampunk which remind of industrial revolution in 19th century becomes an issue to stimulate customers’ emotion. The NX10 also becomes one of them to capture customers with the analog design.


 









































































































































































































Image sensor


Type


CMOS


Effective Pixel


Approx. 14.6 Mega-pixels


Total Pixel


Approx. 15.1 Mega-pixels


Lens


Mount


Samsung NX Mount


Usable Lens


Samsung Lenses for Samsung NX Mount


Viewfinder


Type


EVF


Field of View


Approx. 100%


Magnification


Approx. 0.86x (APS-C, 50mm, -1m-1)


Focusing


Type


Contrast AF


Modes


Single AF, Continuous AF, MF


Shutter


Type


Electronically controlled vertical-run focal plane shutter


Speed


Auto:1/4000sec. ~ 30sec.
Manual:1/4000sec. ~ 30sec. (1/3EV or 1/2EV step)
Bulb (Limit time : 8 min)


Exposure


Compensation


±3 EV (1/2EV, 1/3EV step)


ISO Equivalent


Auto, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200 (1EV step)


Modes


Single, Continuous, Burst, Self-timer, Bracket (AE, WB, PW)


Metering System


Metering : Multi, Center-weighted, Spot Metering range : EV0 ~ 18 (ISO100•30mm F2.0)


AE Lock


AEL Button












Drive Mode


Modes


Single, Continuous, Burst, Self-timer, Bracket (AE, WB, PW)


Continuous


JPEG : 3fps up to 10shots , Burst mode : 30fps, 30shots by 1 released
RAW : 3fps up to 3shots


Bracket


Auto Exposure Bracket (±3EV), White Balance Bracket (±3step), Picture Wizard Bracket (Selectable 3modes)


Self-timer


2-30sec. (1sec. step)


Remote controller


Wired : SR9NX01 (Optional)


Flash


Modes


Smart Flash, Auto, Auto + Red-eye reduction, Fill-in, Fill-in + Red-eye reduction, 1st Curtain, 2nd Curtain, OFF


Type


TTL Auto Pop-up flash


Guide Number


11 (at ISO 100)


Angle of View Coverage


28mm wide-angle (Equivalent to 35mm)


Sync. Speed


Less than 1/180sec.


External Flash


Samsung External Flash available


(SEF-42A, SEF-20A : Optional)


Effect


Picture Wizard


Yes


White Balance


Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Fluorescent (W, N, D), Tungsten, Flash, Custom, K(Manual)


Shooting


Modes


Smart Auto, Program, Shutter Priority AE, Aperture Priority AE, Manual, Night, Portrait, Landscape, Scene, Movie


Scene Mode


Beauty shot, Children, Close Up, Text, Sunset, Dawn, Backlight, Fireworks, Beach & Snow


Image Size


JPEG (3:2):14M (4592x3056), 10M (3872x2592), 6M (3008x2000),
2M (1920x1280), 1.4M (1472x976): Burst mode only
JPEG (16:9):12M (4592x2584), 8M (3872x2176), 5M (3008x1688),
2M (1920x1080)
RAW : 14M (4592x3056)


Quality


Super fine , Fine, Normal


RAW Format


SRW


Color Space


sRGB, Adobe RGB












Movie


Format


MP4 (H.264)


Compression


Movie : H.264 , Sound : AAC


Movie Clip


With Audio or without Audio
(user selectable, recording time : 25 minutes)


Image Size


1280x720 , 640x480 , 320x240


Frame rate


30fps


Sound


Mono Sound


Movie Editing


Still Image Capture, Time Trimming


Storage


Media


SD, SDHC


File Format


RAW (SRW), JPEG (EXIF 2.21), DCF, DPOF 1.1,
PictBridge 1.0


Capacity (512MB)


14M : RAW 35
14M : Super Fine 142, Fine 278, Normal 408
10M : Super Fine 197, Fine 382, Normal 724
6M : Super Fine 322, Fine 615, Normal 1128
2M : Super Fine 738, Fine 1334, Normal 2238
Burst (1.4M) : Super Fine 1201, Fine 2092, Normal 3320
12M(W) : Super Fine 168, Fine 328, Normal 630
8M(W) : Super Fine 234, Fine 454, Normal 860
5M(W) : Super Fine 381, Fine 727, Normal 1334
2M(W) : Super Fine 872, Fine 1573, Normal 2638
Movie : 1280x720 : High Quality 15min., Normal 22min.
640x480 : High Quality 44min., Normal 66min.
320x240 : High Quality 145min., Normal 210min


Image Play


Editing


"Red eye fix, Back light comp., Photo Style Selector, Resize, Rotate, Face Retouch


Type


Single image, Thumbnails (3/9/20 images), Slide show, Movie


Photo Style Selector


Soft, Vivid, Forest, Autumn, Misty, Gloomy, Classic


Interface


Digital Output Connector


USB 2.0 (HI-SPEED)


Video Output


NTSC, PAL (user selectable)
HDMI 1.3 : (1080i, 720P, 576P / 480P)


DC Power Input Connector


DC 9.0V, 1.5A (100 ~ 240V)


Power Supply


Power Source


Rechargeable battery : BP1310 (1300mAh)
Charger: BC1310
AC Adaptor : AD9NX01 (Optional)


Battery Life


200min/400shots (CIPA Standard)


Physical Specification


Dimensions (WxHxD)


4.23"×3.43"×1.57"


Weight


353g (without batteries and card)


Operating Temperature


0 ~ 40 °C


Operating Humidity


5 ~ 85%


Software


Application


Samsung Master, Samsung RAW Converter 3.1
Adobe Reader, QuickTime Player 7.6


 


 


14.6M pixels Image sensor


Low price digital cameras also have more than 10M pixels, so the pixel is not an issue to select a camera any more. However, considering that normal DSLR camera have 12M pixels and recent DSLR have 14M pixel, the NX10 has enough specifications.


 



 


People compare the NX10 with Olympus E-P1 or DMC-GF1 from Panasonic, but there’s a big difference in the size of the image sensor. These 2 cameras have adopted a Micro 4/3 type image sensor (17.3x13.0mm), but the NX10 has the APS-C type (23.4x15.6mm) which a lot of DSLR has adopted. In digital cameras, the size of the image sensor is closely related to the image quality, so this is the advantage of the NX10.


 



 


 


Clean and vivid 3” AMOLED


Even though it has a small body, the 3” AMOLED is an outstanding feature of the NX10. Compared to other digital cameras having 240K pixels LCD, the 620K pixels AMOLED is incomparably wonderful. The RGB colors are more vivid and the visibility under the daylight is also relatively great. Moreover, considering the shooting patter with a lot of live view shooting, the less power consumption AMOLED is very appropriate.


 



 


920K pixels Electronic ViewFinder(EVF)


The NX10 has an electronic viewfinder instead of optical viewfinder depending on a prism or mirror. People usually preferred optical, because the quality and response time before, but now EVF has been developed a lot. The NX10 has a quite good quality in 920K pixels VGA unlike the low quality of high-end cameras. However, compared to the AMOLED, the EVF has low quality.


 




Small but stable grip


When someone who has used a DSLR starts to use a rectangular compact camera, the grip is so different. Like I mentioned, the NX10 has a traditional DSLR design, so the grip is also like a DSLR. For those who have a large hand, it might be insufficient, but considering the small body of the NX10, the grip is quite great and the rubber material prevents slip. Actually, I haven’t experienced any slip in outdoor shooting. However, there was some miss operation which mistakenly pushed White balance button, due to the small size.


 



 


 



ISO 3200


Up to ISO 400, there was no noise, but from 800, noise was detected in bright parts. In 1600 and 3200, noise increased, but when resized to 640x480, it drastically reduced enough to ignore. Compared to high-end camera having a similar body size, noise was much less and compared to crop body DSLRs, it was similar level. I think it was because of the similar size of the image sensor.


 


 


Manual mode


The manual mode is the most useful in the night mode. Night mode is supported in the NX10, so beginners can also take great scenery in the night, but by using the manual mode, users can also get images they want by setting appropriate shutter speed and aperture. Below pictures was taken with the 30mm pancake lens in f/22 with different shutter speed, and by tightening aperture, star shape light was created.



 


People like out focused images. The NX10 has a bigger image sensor than Micro Four thirds, so it’s better for out focusing.



 


 


Supersonic vibration type dust removal


Users have to be careful of dusts the most when changing lenses. If dusts put on a low pass filter on the image sensor, it causes quality degradation of images. The NX10 has specially coated low pass filter and supersonic vibration type dust removal function.


 



 



 


30 fps HD movie recording


The NX10 can record 1280x720 size movies in 30 fps. It can record for up to 25 min similar to 24 min of Canon DSLR. The limited recording time is caused by the size of the image sensor which is much larger than a camcorder. For picture, a large image sensor is very good, but when it comes to a movie recording, in order to prevent a trouble caused by heat, the time limit is necessary. However, considering the time of videos uploaded on YouTube 3~5 minutes, 25 minutes is long enough.


 



 


16 convenient auto modes, Smart Auto


No matter how great manual mode it has, most of the cameras have an auto mode. Auto mode can reduce the preparation time and allows users faster response, so it’s very important. Especially, the NX10 has Smart Auto mode from Samsung and finds the best setting for the situation. 16 scene modes such as backlight, night, macro, text, and so on are very useful. Smart Auto allows beginners to learn the manual more slowly with taking great pictures without any trouble.


 



 


 


Face Recognition and Beauty Shot


The NX10 can detect faces up to 10 faces. The NX10 is also more suitable for self shots than DSLRs. Beauty shot also doesn’t need any inconvenient retouching. These convenient functions allow the NX10 to be used for wide range of users.


 



 


White balance




 


Bracket



 








New milestone of digital cameras, NX10


1460M pixels APS-C type CMOS sensor lens interchangeable type digital camera





The biggest feature of the NX10 is the reduced size without mirror box and great image quality as much as DSLRs. Olympus and Panasonic already released their products and prepare the next product. And Fuji also will participate in this market. NX system from Samsung and Micro Four Thirds might be their strategy, but I think it’s more like a result of customers’ request instead of heavy DSLRs. I’m looking forward to watching the NX10 in the new camera market.



This review is from the original source at http://www.segadget.com/entry/535


No comments: