NX10, New milestone of digital cameras

Posted by BUYKING on Mar 19, 2010 • (1)

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

New milestone of digital cameras, NX10

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 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 19^th century becomes an issue to stimulate customers’ emotion. The NX10 also becomes one of them to capture customers with the analog design.

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 (17.3×13.0mm), but the NX10 has the APS-C type (23.4×15.6mm) 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 640×480, 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 1280×720 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.

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