A glorious spring day in the Vale of Evesham, with the Samsung NX10 plus the 18-55 and 50-200 zooms.
A long day involving a lot of walking, great light without a cloud in the sky all day. A good chance to make an assessment of the camera + the two zooms.
Plus points.
Light & Small, though the 50-200 zoom is a bit "chunky."
Kit zooms are really good quality - especially the 18-55 which is an excellent performer. Nice bokeh too.
Zooms are sharp from edge to edge.
Lenses are well made. One got dropped and is undamaged and unmarked.
Images are great out of the camera. Very little processing needed.
Colour. Not to everybody's taste but we love it.
Very "punchy images"
Very little CA on images. One of the best camera lens combinations we've used for this.
Amold screen not perfect but better than most in bright sunny conditions.
Reasonable operating speed. Not great but adequate.
Nice handling and good layout.
Battery life is excellent.
Minus points.
EVF dark and murky.
AF a bit slow - particularly the 50-200 zoom.
Raw files are too big. Plus .dng files would have been a much better idea.
Dust spots starting to appear.
Amold screen gets very dusty and smeared. Needs constant cleaning.
Using the camera for a long day gave us a good opportunity to make an assessment of it. This was in the main very positive. The most important consideration is always image quality & it does perform really well. The zoom lenses are very good especially the 18-55 zoom which is one of the best kit zooms we've ever used. The 50-200 is not as good but still performs well. To give you an idea, we like the Samsung 18-55mm better than the Lumix 14-45 or Olympus 14-42 for m4/3. We like the 50-200mm more than either the 55-200mm Canon lens we have or the Panasonic 45-200 we used to have.
Overall we prefer the Samsung to m4/3 for landscape stills work. The files are sharper, punchier and bigger and need less work, apart from these worrying dust spots. It compares very favourably with the Canon 550D which beats it in terms of resolution, but not by much. Its not in the same class as the Leica M9, but then nothing we've ever used is.
It is a very real alternative to a DSLR. Giving very similar performance in a smaller lighter package. The zoom lenses, and the 30mm F2 pancake are excellent. If nothing else these mirrorless cameras are leading to the production of some very decent standard zoom kit lenses. Canon in particular should take note. Their 18-55 is pretty poor in comparison to what Panasonic, Olympus & now Samsung have produced.
As ever this is a personal commentary and is not intended to influence or criticise others choices and personal preferences.
