[rwp-review id=”0″]
Samsung is trying to break new grounds and change a few rules around with its new flagship camera, the NX1. It’s a mirrorless, professional camera that boasts 28.2MP on an APS-C BSI CMOS sensor without any optical low-pass filter. The specs are quite beefy: 4K video recording caters for the videographers, and a whopping 15fps continious shooting makes it ideal for the sports photographer. There’s a lot of other good things going for it, too: it is weather-sealed; it has a functional electronic viewfinder; there is a 3 inch tilting Super AMOLED (gasp!) touchscreen (which is clumsy) and an ISO range that goes up to 51200.
If it’s not enough, there are 205 phase detection points as well as contrast detection. You also get WiFi and NFC connectivity.
Needless to say, the NX1 is quite an ambitious camera.
Design, Build, & Ergonomics
While the NX1 is mirrorless camera, it certainly doesn’t look the part and, instead, pays homage to the bulky DSLRs that has been the staple for many years. It’s an odd move considering manufacturers aim for ever-so-smaller cameras, but the NX1 will definitely not alienate traditional DSLR users with its appearance.
The camera felt really good in my hands and wasn’t particularly heavy, despite the large lens that came with the review unit (large for a mirrorless camera, that is). It didn’t feel any different than my previous 5DMK2 or any other DSLR I’ve used before, but given that it’s new, the grip is extra rubbery and comfortable and the alloy body is pretty sexy. The camera looks like it could take a good beating (except for the screen) and the buttons and dials are quite rugged.
What I could not get used to, however, is the button layout. Understandably, all cameras are different so adaptation is necessary; however some of the button placements did not make any sense. The dial with the dedicated ISO, metering, white balance and auto-focus buttons sits on the top left shoulder of the camera. It made it quite impossible for me to change settings quickly without having to take my eyes off the viewfinder and looking directly at the knob. I typically use my left hand to stabilise the camera from underneath the lens and my right hand for the grip and thumbs do the grunt work. It’s finicky that essential controls are placed so out of reach, but left-handed folks might find it welcome, given the general discrimination against them in camera layouts otherwise. You can map these to the more accessible function button should you give up on reaching them.
The touch screen is beautiful to look at, and as is natural with the Super AMOLED, it’s quite colourful so don’t expect your photos to look exactly as they are on display. Since I shoot in RAW, though, the colours on the display didn’t really matter for me as long as I could see what I was shooting. The real downside is the touch screen’s sensitivity being wild, so I ended up switching it off and opted for traditional button navigation through the menus. It’s particularly non-responsive when you’re tapping for new focus points or for metering; it’s faster and more reliable to do it the old fashioned way with focus-lock and exposure compensation. What goes well for the touchscreen is how flexible it is in tilting, giving you a good enough vieweing range when you can’t look directly into the viewfinder (aka Hail Mary shots).
Performance & Image Quality
Let me get something out of the way: The 205 phase detection focusing system doesn’t really work as advertised. In perfect conditions, the focus is amazing fast – almost instantaneous – but as soon as I’ve moved indoors and during night time, it’s a little more tricky and failed a couple of times. I’ve attempted to focus on Burj Al Arab from the Palm and eventually had to give up completely and switched to manual focus. There are numerous focusing modes available, like face detection and “auto shot” but in my opinion it’s just easier to lock focus and recompose than have the camera decide for me what to focus on. Some of my images appeared to be “soft” and I didn’t truly have a razor-sharp image, even when the camera rested on a flat surface.
I’m inclined to blame the lens that was given with the review for this. With a range of 18-200mm there is definitely a lot of compromise on image quality, focus, and performance. The softness however is not that visible once you resize the massive images and apply a little bit of sharpening, but if you’re one of those who would zoom into hair follicles then you’ll start to notice it. The 15fps is insane, but comes at a price – the autofocus can’t keep up with the shutter speed and some images will be out of focus. Unfortunately I didn’t have another lens to experiment with.
The NX1 is packed with plenty of wizardry and shooting modes as well as basic retouching tools. My explanation for this is for Samsung to draw in as many people as possible into buying this beast without feeling intimidated by its professional-grade status, but in reality the bulk of your editiong should be done in Lightroom or Photoshop or whatever editing tool you use, since the AMOLED screen gives an inaccurate colour representation of the captured images anyway.
The RAW files are naturally flatter in tone and they have a decent enough room of information for you to play with without much degradation in quality. Needless to say, post-processing is as joyous for me as is taking the shot, so I was pleased with the RAW capabilities. ISO range is very good, but image quality degradation is visible from ISO 3200 onwards, but not too mortifying as long as you have noise-reduction off and deal with the noise later yourself in post-processing; the NX1 noise-reduction makes oil paintings out of your images.
Verdict
I liked the NX1 for many things: mirrorless professional-level camera packed with plenty of features and an unusual sensor. It takes some really good pictures with a lot of detail, as well as some pretty bad ones – though I am very confident this is an issue with the lens and not a testament to the camera’s capabilities.
The NX1 tries to do be so many things that it often feels an extension of Samsung’s own Galaxy phone line – powerful hardware let down by a lot of unnecessary bloatware. If you strip the unnecessary away from the NX1, you’re left with a very good sensor with solid shooting capabilities. It’s a bit of an investment with AED 5999 for the body only. I reckon that if I had been given the 16-50mm f/2 lens I would have praised it even more, but for what it is, there is a lot of potential which could be better realised with software improvements.
