Photography News 14

Camera review

ABOVE The NX1’s top shooting speed gives an amazing 15fps. In super-fine JPEGmode, our preliminary tests captured a burst of more than 70 shots at this rate before the buffer filled and it began to slow. This is the sort of effect you’ll get on a high-speed train, shot using a 16-50mm f/2-2.8 S lens at 50mmwith the shutter speed at 1/4000sec at f/4, ISO 640.

A lot of attention has been paid to the NX1’s body design. It has a die-cast magnesium alloy chassis and is weather sealed to keep out dust and moisture. The body certainly feels robust in the hand and there’s no sign of any give. Articulating monitors and pop-up flashes are potential weak points of any camera but those of the NX1 feel solid, too. Samsung has also worked hard on the controls, in terms of layout and usability. Two input dials, which suit thumb and forefinger, control aperture and shutter speed in normal use (they can be switched over if you prefer in Key Mapping in the menu). The dials also come into play when used in conjunction with other controls such as changing ISO and white-balance. There’s also a full information LCD panel complete with illuminator so you can check settings easily from above. And another nice touch is the exposure mode dial, which can be locked in place or left to be quickly adjusted just by using the central button. On the left side there is a little turret of key controls, again good to use – I like the fact that the four buttons on the top do not have to be held down to allow adjustment.

The rotating collar is the drive speed control and this is where you’ll find the option of shooting at that massive 15fps (see above), along with self- timer and bracketing controls. The NX1 has a touch-sensitive monitor that provides a bright, high-quality image for composing and previewing and there’s an electronic viewfinder to use if you prefer. EVFs have come on tremendously over recent years and, currently, one of the best is found on the Fujifilm X-T1, so that was what the NX1 was compared to. It has to be said that the NX1’s EVF is clearly better. It’s brighter, more contrasty and fine detail is very well resolved. Pushing the DISP button scrolls through various layout options mirroring what’s on the LCD monitor. The touch-sensitivity feature is good to use once you get used to it. Like most people my experience with touch-sensitive camera monitors is limited and to start with it is easy to inadvertently move the AF point or call up the FN menu, but you soon get used to it. I mostly used the EVF for composing and even had the camera set so that only the EVF was working, which is just my preference. You

EVFs have come on tremendously over recent years and, currently, one the best is found on the FujifilmX-T1… theNX1’s EVF is clearly better

can have just the monitor on or have the NX1 switching automatically between the two options. When I had the NX1 on a tripod the monitor and its touch-sensitive features came in really useful. The viewing image itself is bright and crisp, and being able to move the AF point around was very handy. So too was the ability to focus on one part of the scene yet meter from another – and it was all done with just the forefinger. I used this feature several times when contrast in the scene was high, taking a reading from the highlights or shadows but leaving the focus sensor on the central area. The custom wheel on the back panel is also a four-way control pad. The wheel and three of the four-way control pads can be customised to a wide variety of functions – the DISP button is the only one that can’t be altered. In single-zone AF operation, pushing the central button lets you change the position of the active sensor (with the four control pads) as well as its size (with the rear command dial). In multi-zone AF operation, pushing the central button lets you choose a mode where the AF sensors are working in a smaller, middle area rather than the default 90% of the image frame. For this first look, I was using a pre-production sample camera together with a selection of lenses including the 16-50mm f/2-2.8 S, 50- 200mm f/4-5.6 and the new 50-150mm f/2.8. The camera was set to shoot super-fine JPEGs and Raw files. No Raw processor was available at the time of writing, so the images you see here started life as super-fine JPEGs. As you can see from our sample images however, picture quality is impressively high. We’ll be looking in more detail at the NX1’s performance in the next issue of Photography News , but so far, so good.

IMAGEQUALITY The NX1’s 28-megapixel sensor looks capable of excellent image quality. This was shot using a NX50-200mm f/4-5.6 telezoomwith an exposure of 1/640sec at f/6.3, ISO 200. You can see here the fine detail has been rendered impressively.

Photography News | Issue 14