Samsung Digital Imaging has provided the author of this review with the mentioned digital imaging device.

3 consecutive shots in a sec, High speed shots in 30 fps

JPEG consecutive shots take 3 shots in a sec. The number of consecutive shots depends on image quality, Compression rate, and file size. If you want to increase the number of pictures, you’d lower the compression rate from Super Fine to Fine or less and setting it to Normal compression, the camera keeps the speed in 3 fps until the memory is filled.

According to the specifications, it’s up to 10 pictures in 3 fps, but I think it’s the minimum number. As you can see from the below video, in Super Fine, it took up to 15 pictures and in Fine, it kept the speed until 32 shots, and then the speed got slower. The number of shots changes depending on files, size, and the number of shots. (Class6 SDHC)

Super Fine Compression JPEG consecutive shot

Fine Compression JPEG consecutive shot

Normal Compression JPEG consecutive shot

As far as I remember, in Super Fine, the shots haven’t been below 12 shots. Using it in RAW format, it keeps the speed only up to 3 shots. The compressed file size of Super File JPEG is about 5~6MB. The compression rate is relatively high. I hope it will support RAW compression. I think this great camera needs that performance. With high sensitivity reduction on in ISO 3200, it can’t reach the speed, no matter how fast the shutter speed is, because of noise reduction image process.

High Speed Shooting mode

In the consecutive shot mode, there’s a high speed shooting mode called burst shots. It takes a video for a sec while the sensor is open and captures it to 30 shots. The image size is 1.4M 1472×976. It used to take shots with inappropriate exposure, but it’s a little larger than the Video capture, so it will be useful when saving a video to GIF or keep it to small JPEG files.

Using the High speed shooting, the sound of lightening fast consecutive shots comes, and then it’s going to be automatically displayed as a GIF animation. It’s a kind of funny thing.

Smart Range

Smart Range can be turned on or off. It’s totally different from ACB function of compact digital cameras, but almost the same as highlight compensation of Pentax. Turning this on, ISO starts from 200 and details of bright part are restored. Of course, it’s also good to apply highlight compensation or dynamic range by using RAW file format, but the file size is quite big and it’s difficult to handle RAW files, so turning Highlight Compensation on is much better. Even if it goes up to ISO 200, it doesn’t involve noises much. Below pictures were taken a little brightly for the comparison of Smart Range performance.

It restores highlight more than when it’s off. Generally, it much more widely keeps the bright part details, so let’s use Smart Range properly.

[Download original]                               [Download original]

Wide range of compensation, RAW

Using RAW format, it allows much wider compensation range. In order to compensate important pictures to high quality, I tried to take shots in RAW format. It’s 25MB, but due to the heavy delay of image saving, it didn’t bother my shots. The image process of the NX10 is quite fast. It basically includes Samsung RAW converter 3.0 and this software is based on Silky Pix software. Because it has more than 14M pixels and good RAW converting details, let’s try to cut out useless part of images and crop them.

Original JPEG

RAW file Crop JPEG conversion

Final JPEG file [Download original]

The reason I use the RAW file is dark part compensation, noise, White Balance, and bright part gradation. It can compensate high contrast shots more naturally, and noise and details can be more strongly handled than JPEG images. The details of bright parts going white can be restored more, so it allows more natural and good looking image for highlight on faces.

Original JPEG of RAW+JPEG [Download original]

RAW file conversion [Download original]

Of course, the RAW files of the NX10 can widely be compensated, but the bright part gradation is not as great as Fuji or Kodak, so please do not use overexposure a lot. It’s a similar to the previous GX20 or K-7, or a little bit better? That’s why it might be better to take shots in JPEG with Smart Range rather than very large RAW. However, I used RAW files a lot unintentionally. It’s because RAW format can freely adjust not only gradation, but also White Balance, and high sensitivity noise pattern.

Original JPEG of RAW+JPEG [Download original]

RAW file conversion (WB, Dynamic Range, etc.) [Download original]

Setting the menu variously regarding noise and details, it creates all different results. Below picture was taken with the 30mm lens in JPEG ISO3200, and color noise, noise reduction, noise reduction intensity, and so on were applied. What do you like?

ISO 3200, 30mm lens, F8.0

1. JPEG shot             2. RAW file conversion       3. RAW file(compensation-1)

(no compensation)

4. RAW file (compensation-1)   5. RAW file(compensation-2)   6. RAW file(compensation-3)

7. RAW file(compensation-4)

The color of RAW conversion picture with no compensation is stronger than JPEG. JPEG high sensitivity images looks more focusing on clarity of images without color noises than detailes.

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14.6M, Great details

The NX10 has adopted the APS-C 14.6M pixels CMOS which is the same as the GX10, K20D, and K-7. When the bodies applying this sensor had come out first, it had the best quality in the same level cameras. I’m expecting the NX10 applying the sensor very much. The NX10 is a middle level among lens interchangeable type cameras and the image quality is also great as much as the sensor. Everything such as Detail and sharpness is good. The power of the APS-C sensor is based on image quality and pixels and it’s the fundamental point superior to Micro Four Thirds. However, I don’t think more than 14.6M pixels is needed, but high sensitivity image process needs to be upgraded. Image details in over ISO1600 are slightly insufficient. However, it’s not that much and with less color noises, it’s good enough for web sites..

Landscape, ISO200, 18-55 OIS, F10.0

Night Scenery with long time exposure, ISO100, 18-55 OIS, F11.0

ISO100, 30mm, F2.0

Original JPEG

RAW compensation_1

RAW compensation_2

ISO1600 detail Crop

Especially, with the 30mm pancake lens, you can enjoy outstanding quality for indoor, outdoor, portrait, and snap shots. The 18-55 OIS lens has also great sharpness for outdoor scenery. With these 2 lenses, great pictures can be taken. After taking in RAW format and compensating, better details can be expressed.

The overall image is a little dark. Under the same shot setting values, more than 1/3EV is bright. During the comparison I did before with Panasonic in M mode, there was a reason of a little dark shot by the NX10. This is the same as the quality test below by ISO.

Soft Pattern high quality

Fortunately, I’ve received the V1.00 official firmware right now. Of course, the body is not yet the official one, but it’s a good reference for those who are about to buy the NX10. The NX10 supports ISO 100 to 3200. Setting Smart Range, ISO starts from 200. Below is the comparison of image process by ISO with the K20D, K-7 which have the same sensor and so on. Pentax body is in a natural mode with pancake 40mm F2.8 lens in A mode F8.0. The NX10 is with 39mm F2.0 lens in A mode F8.0. I personally wanted to put the same 30mm Pancake lens on the Pentax body. While testing there was some angle difference, I hope you understand this. For your reference, the shutter speed was the same by each ISO.

Body level is a little different, but it will be a good material to see the image quality. High sensitivity image pattern of the NX10 is slightly unique. On the whole, it has less red and blue color noises which are soft and calm. Low sensitivity quality is clean. From ISO100 to ISO400, by increasing the ISO, color balance moves to blue a little and from ISO800, with disappearing this blue, and getting some noise. From ISO1600, green pattern noise starts coming and red/blur colors get weaker, and in ISO3200, saturation becomes even weaker. Even though the Pentax body was set to Natural, the color of the Pentax body is deeper than the NX10.

High sensitivity images of the K-7 developed with prime engine and its extremely high speed of consecutive shots are vivid and good, but the pixels are a little too rough, so medium brightness is not clean enough. After this comparison, the noise pattern of the K20D is so nice and traditional. As ISO increases, there’s no color change and only color noise increases, so increased ISO doesn’t ruin the details. When it comes to the NX10, it ruins details a little bit, but they are smoothened and become natural. The NX10 is the best for web sites. But over ISO1600, especially ISO3200 needs to maintain the details.

The brightness difference in the same setting value is quite big. According to a test, in 1/3~2/3EV, the NV10 is a little darker. That means if taking with the same brightness, the shutter speed of the NX10 gets longer and it’s weak to hand-blur. Therefore, I considered testing with the same brightness with more brightness in the NX10, but on second thought, I didn’t, because this comparison according to the real value could be easy for you to understand. Actually, pictures taken were kind of dark and when taking indoor shots with proper exposure, the shutter speed was a bit insufficient. Looking at the image quality of the NX10 in ISO1600 and ISO3200, difference of details is noticeable. The K20D and K-7 adopted different color noise and noise reduction not allowing ruining details and colors. Considering the body level of the NX10 which is a little lower than them, once they make a little progress, users will like it more.

Noise Reduction in ISO3200

High sensitivity noise reduction can be turned on or off and it works only in ISO3200. In ISO3200, 3fps consecutive shots are not supported. However, results are quite good, because it reduces color noises a lot without affecting any details.

NR off (ISO3200)                              NR on (ISO3200)

Balanced Sharpness

Sharpness can be adjusted to 9 levels. Standard is well balanced and +2 is also appropriate if you want a little sharp pictures.

Samsung’s Compact 3 kinds of NX lens

With the release of the NX10, 3 lenses have also been released. Like other brands, they are composed of pancake lens, standard zoom lens, and 50-200 telephoto zoom lens. There will be more lenses, but anyway it’s good enough as a beginning with the 30mm F2.0 pancake lens and 18-55 OIS lens, because the performance of the 30mm F2.0 lens was beyond my expectation. OIS has been applied only for zoom installed for 2 zoom lenses. These are the specifications of each lens.

Lens Name	SAMSUNG 30mm F2	SAMSUNG 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 OIS	SAMSUNG 50-200mm F4-5.6 ED OIS
Focal Length	30mm(equivalent to 46.2mm in 35mm format)	18-55mm(equivalent to 27.7-84.7mm in 35mm format)	50-200mm(equivalent to 77-308mm in 35mm format)
Elementsin Groups	5 elementsin 5 groups (1 Aspherical lens included)	12 elementsin 9 groups (1 Aspherical lens included)	17 elementsin 13 groups (2 Extra-low Dispersion lens included)
Angle of View	50.2°	75.9°- 28.7°	31.4°- 8.0°
Aperture	F2 (Min. F22),(Number of Blades : 7, Circular Aperture Diaphragm)	F3.5 – 5.6 (Min. F22), (Number of Blades : 7, Circular Aperture Diaphragm)	F4 – 5.6 (Min. F22), (Number of Blades : 7, Circular Aperture Diaphragm)
Mount Type	Samsung NX Mount	Samsung NX Mount	Samsung NX Mount
Optical Image Stabilizer	No	Yes	Yes
Minimum Focus Distance	0.25m ~ ∞	0.28m ~ ∞	0.98m ~ ∞
Maximum Magnification	Approx. 0.16X	Approx. 0.22X	Approx. 0.2X
Lens Hood	Optional	Included	Included
Filter Size	43mm	58mm	52mm
Max. Diameterx Length	61.5 x 21.5mm	63 x 65.1mm	70 x 100.5mm
Weight	Approx. 85g(without hood)	Approx. 198g(without hood)	Approx. 417g(without hood)
Operating Temperature	0 ~ 40°C	0 ~ 40°C	0 ~ 40°C
Operating Humidity	5 ~ 85%	5 ~ 85%	5 ~ 85%

Value of the NX! 30mm F2.0 Pancake lens

The lenses of the NX series are made by Samsung and Schneider has not been involved at all. Especially, the performance of the 30mm F2.0 is incredible and it seems like designed by someone from another world. Image quality in F2.0 is wonderful and it’s really slim and light as 85g. Because it doesn’t support IS, it couldn’t be started from 1.x. However, I think the performance in this size is the best among all pancake lenses. There was no inconvenience yet caused by absence of the zoom function. With this lens only, I could enjoy it all day long. It doesn’t’ take much space in a bag and makes users comfortable. This is possible only by a pancake lens.

The front of the lens is cute and looks like cut with a sharp knife. The slim size is by the lens structure and the thin focus ring. But there’s no inconvenience to adjust manual focus. While adjusting focus ring, there’s some noise, so while recording a video, it could make operational sounds. While AF, inside barrel comes out and in again for a moment, and the AF speed is really fast.

Satisfactory Inside and outside Portrait,

Snap Scenery, and Objects shots

Even though it doesn’t have an IS function, with F2.0 and open sharpness, it will show great performance indoors and outdoors. In F2.0, the background of a whole body will be knocked out of focus. The pretty out focus of background makes a person more remarkable. Converted focus length on 35mm film is 46.2mm and it can comfortably cover inside portrait and objects, and it’s useful for outside scenery and portrait.

Full body F2.0                                     Full body F8.0

Indoor half of the body F2.2                 Indoor half of the body F8.0

Outdoor half of the body F2.0              Outdoor half of the body F8.0

Is it a power of the sensor? The whole feeling of pictures is prettier than Micro Four Thirds lenses. Through the background out focus, useless background can be arranged well.

Minimum Shot length 25cm

It’s impossible to expect macro shot like a Macro lens, but it provides a reasonable shot length. 25mm can easily cover normal snap shots. Below is the comparison of the shortest shots which can set AF with Panasonic and Olympus Micro Four Thirds to 3:2 ratio.

Pancake Shortest Shot

When taking a coin, it’s slightly smaller by the NX10 and similar by Olympus and Panasonic. One more thing I can deduct is that the indoor color temperature is the highest with the NX10 and lowest with Panasonic. And Olympus is between.

Strong open sharpness

It’s strong to all open sharpness, Focusing, backlight flair, and chromatism. The reason I consider the lens is better than the NX10 body is that it’s the most remarkable among existing pancake lenses. As you can see from the resolution test, its performance is not easy to understand by looking at it.

You don’t need to be afraid of F2.0, because of the great performance and the quality of surroundings is also very good and there’s no light reduction in Open. It provides the best sharpness in F8.0-11.0, but it’s not much different from F2.0. Little distortion doesn’t bother much. Once it’s over F16.0, the quality starts to degrade. The weaknesses of this lens are that it has no OIS and overall video recording functions are not as good as a standard zoom lens. Nothing else.

Standard zoom lens

Samsung 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 OIS representing the NX.

The 18-55 OIS lens from Samsung has 3x zoom and 27.7-87.4mm of focus length on 35mm. Telephoto zoom lens is good for Portrait and Macro shot while wide angle lens is good for Scenery and Various Portrait shots.

Elegant design and OIS

Lens hood is basically included. OIS and AF/MF conversion switch is provided. When using telephoto zoom, the lens barrel comes out. In order to reduce the weight, the mount is made of plastic not metal, and zoom and focus control is smooth. Most of all, the AF is fast and the performance of consecutive AF function is the best among 3 lenses released and the focusing is so smooth that you can’t feel the operational sounds. Turning the OIS on, from the inside menu, OIS option is activated and it can be selected as always or when shooting.

It’s true that it’s smaller and lighter than previous standard zoom lens, but compared to pancake lens, it doesn’t have many advantages in size and weight. Filter is a 58mm bigger filter. On the other hand, the appearance is neat and elegant fitting the NX10 well.

The most various shots

Because it has F3.5-5.6, compared to the F2.0 pancake lens, it’s difficult to secure a shutter speed indoors. On the other hands, it’s very useful for outdoor shots. When zooming, the background is knocked out of focus properly and Macro is maximum 0.22x and good for temporary Macro shots.

Maximum wide angle shots         55mm Maximum telephoto zoom Macro shot

It has great quality in telephoto zoom angles, the various expressions by narrow angles are as great as a pancake. Before Super zoom lens is released, this lens is used as a standard zoom, and according to the quality and performance, it deserves it.

Great Sharpness in all regions and quality degradation

Open sharpness in all regions is awesome. Therefore, when taking scenery shots on a sunny day, I didn’t think I need more lens for scenery shots. It’s good for resolution, flair and chromatism reduction, but there’s some distortion. Below is the comparison table for wide and telephoto zoom lens

Maximum wide angle 18mm

Sharpness of the central part is great independent to aperture value. And in wide angle, there’s some quality degradation in surrounding parts. The surrounding quality is improved at F8.0, so when taking a scenery shot on a sunny day, the aperture needs to be tightened to about F11.

35mm Resolution by aperture

The image quality from 35mm is wonderful. From here, the quality is as great as a single lens.

55mm Resolution by aperture

I was surprised that there’s no quality degradation in 55mm maximum telephoto angle. The surrounding quality is even better. Considering everything, in sharpness, I think the maximum telephoto angle is the best. There’s some dented distortion, but I don’t think you will notice this on normal scenery not on this type of chart.

14 lights

The performance for Night scenery is also very important, so there are a lot of people wondering the light division. The aperture has 7 edges and the light is divided into 14 ways. In order to make it look nice, the aperture needs to be tightened to more than F11.0. As tightening the aperture, the light gets longer. If long time exposure is not intended, you’d better use up to F16.0 for proper light division and keeping details.

* New eyes for the world, Samsung NX10 -Part 1-

* New eyes for the world, Samsung NX10 -Part 2-

* New eyes for the world, Samsung NX10 -Part 3-

* New eyes for the world, Samsung NX10 -Part 5-

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