Taking Stock 2 - Samsung NX10

One of the items destined for ebay is our Samsung NX10 outfit. Not because its a bad camera or has bad lenses, quite the opposite, but because its a casualty of the quality and convenience of the Panasonic Leica D Vario-Elmar 14-150mm f3.5-5.6.


The Samsung kit zooms are excellent but not as good as the 14-150. There is also no saving in terms of weight as the 50-200 NX zoom is big and heavy. The NX system has sat unused for a long time now. If only the video had been usable then it may have been more useful.


Since we may not be writing about it again, could we repeat once again how good this camera, and its lenses are. It has been replaced in our affections by the purchase of a lens that is hardly commonplace, very special in terms of quality and very expensive. Since you can buy two NX10 systems for the cost of the lens, this is probably not a choice that many people would face. 


If you are looking for a high quality camera system that eliminates most of the bulk and weight of a DSLR and delivers very high quality results, then the Samsung NX10 is an excellent option. Particularly with Samsungs desire to keep prices reasonably low. If you're not that concerned about low light, high ISO performance and like punchy images with saturated colour and excellent handling, then this is a very good alternative to m4/3. There's not a great lens choice currently, and we would suggest that Samsung need to give some thought to a wide-angle, but the lenses that exist are certainly of a very high standard. An excellent first attempt by Samsung.


Words and Image - A

Gower and the Mumbles

We have just returned from a stock photography shoot in the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park in West Wales. On the way we stopped off at the Gower Peninsula and The Mumbles near Swansea. The light was very flat to begin with, so we used the Samsung NX10 for its warm high contrast jpgs.



On a Gower beach we found beautiful red and pink wild flowers amongst the sand dunes and in the absence of strong sunlight, concentrated on these using shallow depth of field.





The Samsung NX10 and the three lenses currently available, produce great richly coloured images that can be very "over the top" in bright sunny conditions, but can give a real lift to images taken on dull days. It is possible of course to tweak the jpg settings on most cameras, but we have never found anything approaching the Samsung for such intense colour saturation.


The requirement to produce commercial images that people find attractive and want to publish is very much the prime consideration in travel and landscape photography. Some people seem to object to photographs that do this. Back in the days of film there was a split between users of films like Fuji Velvia and Kodak Panther (A very short-lived yet beautiful film) and other less saturated emulsions. There was some notion of "photographic purity" that was often cited as a reason to use more "conservative" films such as Fuji Provia.


The truth of course was that no film was ever 100% "accurate" In the same way that no sensor in a digital camera reproduces "reality" Considering that we all see colour in a different way, there's not a lot of point to this anyway. The primary consideration with us is, have we produced an image that we are happy with? Also do we think that others might like it too and be prepared to pay to use it? Whether other photographers think that we over-saturate images or use too much photoshop manipulation, is not really of any concern to us. It makes as much sense as criticism of photographers such as Ansel Adams who worked out elaborate systems of exposure and development and used extensive "burning and dodging" techniques to produce his beautiful, yet often "unrealistic" images.


Whatever your photographic "philosophy" or personal preferences there is no "right" or "wrong" way to produce an image. Thankfully we have a wide variety of ways of taking and producing images, and choice and experimentation is always preferable to uniformity.


Our experience of the world through our eyes (the best lenses ever produced), is 3D, capable of incredible dynamic range and colour differentiation. The world is full of intense saturated colour, and it is often very difficult to produce a photographic image that does it justice.


Returning to the Welsh trip, the clouds did eventually lift late in the day and we able to get some dramatic shots of the Gower (Top Image) and the Mumbles Lighthouse (Below)


D & A

Samsung NX10 Photoshop CS5 iMac i7 Technology driven images

There have been many posts here about creating Panoramas using panoramic stitching software such as photomerge in Photoshop or PTGui. One of the advantages of stitching using multi images is to produce very high definition files with a high pixel count suitable for large scale reproduction. Doing this means that you don't necessarily need to use a camera with a lot of MP.

The disadvantage of doing this has been the time taken to produce these images. Anyone who has done it will realise that the software needs to analyse and then warp and blend the images into a seamless whole. There is often touch up work to be done later plus cropping and usually further warping and scaling to produce a final image. This often means anything up to a 1000% increase in the time needed to produce one finished picture.

During the recent excursion along the River Avon we decided to take a lot of images for the specific purpose of stitching them together later. Since the trip was unplanned we only had the Samsung NX10 plus the 30mm f2 lens with us. We duly produced about 150 files which when combined would provide the raw material for 18 "stitched" images.

Since the iMac i7's arrival we had tried creating a few "stiched" images using photomerge & we were impressed by the increase in speed. Also using Photoshop CS5 we had noticed that Adobe have tweaked the software again & there is a marked improvement in its ability to produce wide panoramic images.

However this time we decided to use PTGui. This is very good, simple to use software which we would highly recommend. One particular advantage that this software has is the ability to batch process. We consequently used this to process our River Avon images.

PTGui is fast working software and it has recently been optimised to process even faster. However we weren't quite prepared for the extraordinary performance that it produced on the new iMac. It was actually producing finished Panoramas in seconds. The 18 Panoramic stitches were created in around under 1/2 hour. Thats less than 2 minutes each! This was using jpgs rather than raw files and the 8 rather than 16-bit option. However we find that neither working from raw files or using 16-bit produces better images anyway. The files were then ready for editing in Photoshop. Again the work time was much reduced. The iMacs quad cores speed everything up and Adobe have done a good job in optimising this version of Photoshop to achieve significantly better performance. We had noticed improved speed over CS4 on our old iMac. A nice change to use upgraded software and find that it works faster. The usual equation of upgrading your computer to get better performance & then finding that once you upgrade your software the manufacturers have added so much that you are back where you were before doesn't apply here.

So overall an illuminating exercise. Shooting multi-image stitched panoramas is now not the chore it once was. There has been some reluctance on our part to shoot many recently because of the work load involved. The improvements in both processors and software, that we are now able to take advantage of, has made creating these stitched images a pleasure again.

Personal Work

The Samsung NX10 fitted with the 30mm F2 lens is currently being taken everywhere. Its light, small and with its 14MP 40MB file output, provides excellent quality. An unexpected free 90 minutes, in the proximity of the River Avon provided a chance for a walk along the river bank. Taking the camera along also meant the opportunity for some pictures, though the light was a bit gloomy, with occasional short sunny breaks.

There is a freedom and a simplicity that working with only one prime lens gives. By concentrating on finding subject matter that "fits" the lens rather than choosing the lens that fits the subject matter, a creative rather than recording process takes over. In a situation like this, there is no brief, no shot list, just an opportunity to create pictures as and when they occur.

Many working photographers talk about "personal work" This can mean many things. In our case this is an opportunity to record what we see, try out techniques and explore the equipment we have with us.

NX10 Tests - some thoughts

Often you get a "gut reaction" about how a camera or lens performs and its interesting to see whether those reactions are accurate. We have been doing extensive tests on the NX10 to see how our initial impressions stood up to some more thorough testing.

After reading David Clapps article on his use of a GF1 as a light, small, tripod mounted landscape camera http://www.davidclapp.co.uk/blog/reviews/43-panasonic-gf-1-in-the-landscape.html we were interested in exploring the possibility of something similar. We had a couple of reservations about using m4/3 however. One was the size of the files produced and the other was the dynamic range of the m4/3 sensor. The Samsung NX10 seemed to offer advantages on both counts while still offering the size and weight bonus. This being very important when a tripod is carried around. Initial use of the NX10 gave encouraging results, though this was only on the basis of jpgs. Now that we are able to use and process raw files via our preferred option of Photoshop it seemed a good time to do some testing.

Since getting the NX10 the most used lens has been the 30mm F2 pancake lens. Its size and weight being very attractive. However for the purpose in mind the 18-55 zoom would be a more useful option. With this in mind we tested the zoom at 30mm against the 30mm prime.

We certainly expected the 30mm to perform better and were pleased and surprised to find that the zoom was virtually indistinguishable in terms of results. It also has a slightly "warmer" look to the results. A bit like adding an 81A filter in front of the lens. Used on the tripod it produced sharp results and overall performed well.

We tested the 50-200 zoom on its own, including stopped down to f22 and again were pleased to see an excellent set of images. Again excellent sharpness was observed, including images shot at 200mm and f22.

Our conclusion was that both zooms will be "up to the job" and give us files that can be interpolated to 48MB with no problems.

A final test was carried out comparing the NX10 + 30mm F2 to a Panasonic GH1 + 20mm f1.7. Though having different focal lengths we felt it would be a good test as these lenses are regarded as the stand out optics of their respective systems. Initial viewing of the results seemed to indicate that the GH1/20mm files were "punchier". They certainly seem to have a warmer look. However closer examination showed that the NX10/30mm files were slightly sharper * to our eyes. There is very little in it, however bearing in mind that we will be enlarging the files, this was important.

(* Our suspicion is that that the Samsung AA filter is weaker than the Panasonics. Certainly there is a little more luminance noise visible)

Two final thoughts. The Samsungs colour balance is quite "cool" when the files are processed via Photoshop. (In contrast to the jpgs which are certainly more saturated) How much this has to do with this first attempt at NX10 files on Adobes part, we cannot say. Certainly they have made no announcement that ACR 5.7 works with raw files and neither the Lightroom 2 update or the Lightroom 3 beta will recognise NX10 files, leading to the suspicion that there may be more to come from Adobe in terms of NX10 raw conversion.

Secondly, we preferred the layout of the Samsung. Having always found the layout on Panasonic cameras a bit fiddly, the NX10 is laid out well. Manually focusing the lenses, for example, involved less button pushing. The AMOLED screen is also much better to use outdoors in sunlight. While still not perfect its a lot clearer than the Panasonic, whose articulated screen becomes less of an advantage when you can't see it!

Whether the NX10 sells in enough quantities to keep Samsung interested in it remains to be seen. At the moment its a system with only three lenses, though all seem to be good performers.

Whether using 3rd. party MF lenses becomes an option we cannot say. However there is somewhat waning enthusiasm for the whole MF lenses + adapters scenario for stills round here currently. Still it would be nice to see how our Nikon lenses perform with the NX10.

Hopefully some decent light in the next few days will allow a good "real world" test of zooms + tripod.

N.B. it is still our intention to post the raw files from the NX10/GH1 comparison test. However there's 500MB+ of data to upload to facilitate this and we need to find a time when we are not uploading images to stock sites, which is currently most of the time!

As ever this is a personal commentary and not intended to influence or criticise others choices and prefereces.

NX10 at Chipping Campden

Chipping Campden is a small town/village in the English Cotswolds. Like many such places it caters for tourists, who come from all over the world. Consequently it has a fair amount of what might be called "English Whimsy"

You can buy things there that you might find difficult to obtain elsewhere! The "Gardening Gadget Shop" and "Psychedelic Sausages" are some of the unique delights available.

The Ferrari in yesterdays post was also spotted there. "Italian Whimsy!!!"

We had taken along the Samsung NX10, which has been somewhat neglected recently due to a lack of a Mac programme to process the raw files. With the release of Photoshops ACR 5.7 this is now possible, so it seemed a good opportunity to shoot some pictures with it.

As before we found this to be an impressive little camera. Fitted with the excellent 30mm F2 pancake lens it produced excellent images. Its great use is as a light unobtrusive "snapshot" camera that doesn't attract any attention. Very handy for walking the streets of Cotswolds towns for example. While certainly appearing "harmless" it produces very detailed 40MB images perfectly capable of A3 resolution.

Its surprising just how useful the 30mm F2 lens can be. As photographers we all like to cover as many situations as possible from wide-angle to telephoto, but its often liberating to work with one lens. Since this is an excellent lens anyway, there's no compromise in image quality. Apparently the sensor in the NX10 is the same as in the Pentax K7. This begs the question as to what Pentax did to it! Certainly to our eyes the results from the NX10 are significantly sharper than those we obtained from the K7. Pentax do seem to have a tendency to be a bit heavy-handed on the noise reduction, which is a real shame since they have some spectacular lenses.

One small complaint about the NX10. The raw files are huge. Around the 27MB mark. Now being able to convert them to .dng files does help and usually cuts the size in half.

All in all though a nice little camera/lens combination.

Vintage Ferrari

Samsung NX10 30mm F2 pancake lens.

Leica M9 Zeiss 21mm F2.8 Biogon

Leica M9 Leica Tele-Elmar 135mm F4

The sin of "very red"

After reading Chris's account over at In My View - http://cjeastwd.blogspot.com/2010/03/internet-discussions.html

I was recently engaged in a debate on another forum concerning the reds produced by the Samsung NX10. I was informed that with regards to the samples I posted here:- http://soundimageplus.blogspot.com/2010/03/30mm-f2-pancake-lens-on-samsung-nx10.html:-

"any shot with red shows the reds are overexposed - leading to complete blotching out of detail in the highlights."

"The reds are definitely blown"

"We are just saying that red objects appear very red, in the same way that a wedding dress in sunlight would appear very white - and if you wanted to bring back some of that detail in an over-exposed shot, then well you can't."

Histograms were duly produced to prove the error of my ways. I had committed the unforgivable sin of my reds appearing "very red" and furthermore I was told off because I am unable to "bring back some of that detail in an over-exposed shot"

I therefore resolve to stop making my reds "very red" I don't know what to do about the over exposure, as I have this tendency to try and get my images correctly exposed, but hey - what do I know?

By the way there's a blow up of one of the shots I posted at the top of this post. Be warned - it is "very red" with that colour overexposed, leading to complete blotching out of detail in the highlights.

Funny how I can't see that though. It must be me.

D

I love this lens!

Samsung NX10 30mm f2 Pancake

Pancake Lenses

It seems that if you produce a small mirrorless camera then you also produce a small high quality pancake lens. After the Panasonic 20mm f1.7 along comes the Samsung 30mm f2.

I was (and still am) mightily impressed with the 20mm and imagined that it would be difficult to better. However it seems I was wrong. The Samsung 30mm f2 is, quite simply, a magnificent lens. Pin sharp, even wide open, with no chromatic aberration or fringing and almost unbelievable bokeh.

I couldn't quite believe the above shot when I first saw it. Photographers go on about "creamy bokeh" and this is a wonderful example of it. From pin sharp to a complete blur with a very smooth and very fast transition.

I have been extremely enthusiastic about this camera as you will have noted in previous posts and this lens adds another dimension. I spoke about the relatively larger zoom lenses giving the camera a small dslr feel, but with this lens fitted it becomes very compact and lightweight. Its a tiny lens, just 85g and is in fact 15g lighter than the 20mm lumix. Combined with the excellent viewfinder in the Samsung its easy to manually focus, which is useful since its a bit slow to auto-focus. I detected no front or back focusing wide open, which is essential because you have far less depth of field "leeway" with this lens due to the larger sensor.

Unfortunately Samsung have only indicated 2 more prime lens coming this year. A 20mm f2.8 pancake and a 60mm f2.8 macro, and nothing wider than the 18mm end of their zooms, which seems strange.

However they have done a very good job so far. I'm very impressed with the NX10 system in general & this lens in particular.

Finally would anyone have predicted a couple of years ago that Panasonic and Samsung would be at the forefront of innovative camera design and high quality lens production. There was a quote allegedly from a Nikon rep. recently - "I wouldn't take Panasonic and Samsung seriously in the camera market, they are more interested in microwaves" If I was Nikon I'd watch my back!

Set of NX10 images at:-

http://www.flickr.com/photos/45203414@N06/sets/72157623460115881/

D

See also:-
http://cjeastwd.blogspot.com/2010/03/small-cameras-keep-on-comming.html

30mm f2 pancake lens on Samsung NX10

Just got this lens this afternoon.

Set of NX10 images at:-

http://www.flickr.com/photos/45203414@N06/sets/72157623460115881/

D