spousal considerations

I was reluctantly attempting to sell the GM1 to get us through the last weeks before our refinancing - but my wife knocked over the box of sale items and inquired about the amazing little camera. When she saw its possibilities, she pronounced it superior to the NX300 I bought for her last year. With her bizarre health circumstances light weight is a major factor - and lighter lenses + GM1 = winner.

So we're back to selling off the fast-depreciating NX gear. It's great stuff but Samsung declared them orphans a year or two ago, so only those truly addicted to the system will seek backup bodies for future use. Perhaps I can find those users, but most likely I will barter them off to a used site for a second Lumix body. Thankfully I did not pay much for the NX setup so I cannot lose a large amount!

So this also streamlines the second-body question.

I think my best choice now becomes a nicely-used GX7, since the GM1 uses the same imaging components inside a smaller body. That way we can take 'identical' images, which is what my wife wants us to do while she learns the basics of imaging. For several different reasons I'd prefer a GX85 or GX8 - but a used GX7 will be easier to trade for at most used shops.
In theory.

Many GX7 users who updated to a higher level have complained that the feature set is better but the interface is not quite as good.  The GX8 has weather seals that I'd love to have, the GX85 has a new shutter that removes fear of 'shutter shock', a condition that causes far more worry than blurred photos.

No matter: for now the GX7 will do just fine.
Hopefully in silver..

Wet weather blues

So now the GM1 and NX300 stand alone to face the wet season. That isn't ideal in the least, as my only "safe" wet-weather gear is the Pentax 50-200mm wr lens! Our budget is tight for a few months so it will have to do.

What are my options for future foul weather? Let us see:

•  Samsung has nothing for me under $1500 with the NX1 & S-class glass. No thank you.
•  Pentax has a few choices for $500 or less, best options being a K5 variant, a K7 or another K50. A wide wr lens would need to come along though, as the current 50-200 is not a full purpose option.
•  For micro4:3, Panasonic has a couple of weather-protected choices now, the GX8 and G85 being the sub-$1ooo choices while Olympus checks in with EM5 and EM1 options. My preferred choice would be a GX8 and Lumix 12-60, with the GM1 and 14-42 becoming our spousal cam. 
•  The bargain of the bunch would be an older Olympus EM5 and 12-50 for $500ish, since my 14-42 lens for the E500 is not weather sealed. 

So this decision will wait for Christmas and its potential bargains. I think.

playing with color - NX lenses

Samsung's NX system cranked out many great little primes before going dormant.  (Not that their zooms were bad, but I don't wish to lug around their fast zoom pair - the 16-50pz is just right though!) In the past I've owned the 16 20 and 30mm pancakes and found them to be talented lenses and handy enough to carry any time.

The other curious thing about Samsung is that they do several things similar to Pentax - and that includes colors!  Several bodies came with color options (the NX300 came in silver-trimmed black, brown and white) and other NX and NX-mini bodies also played with colors.  The fun part is that they made several lenses to match the bodies.

I didn't think of color-coded pancakes until my wife asked about a pink lens, and I showed her the NX 16/2.4 prime in a pearly pink. She thought it was cool, but I also showed her white and black primes like the 30/2.0 that many camera folk feel is the best of the pancake primes (they probably did not try Pentax Limiteds, but other than build the NX30 is excellent). We ordered a pink 16 - and now I think about a time when their 10mm fisheye and 30/2 join us. The 3 pancakes look almost identical.. but not if I buy each in a different color! That would force me to buy the 10mm next as it's the hardest to find, and its color would determine the 30's. Or we could just get the Samyang 7.5mm which is easy to distinguish!

  

our new 16/2.4 (via eBay)

30/20/16mm trio from B&H 2012 website

In Pentax news, no surprise: I was just outbid on a 20-40 Limited. I expect it to go over $420 before it's over (in 4 hours) which is too much right now for us to deal with.

Our next priority is not a lens but a heat-pump, which will both cool us in summers (well in typical summers, it's drizzling here now!) and will be a much more efficient heat source than our 1980s furnace. With a wood-stove to supplement in chilly weather, it's a nice set of choices.

R.I.P. NX

I just visited the Samsung website, and I see nothing about cameras at all. Galaxy phones and refrigerators with cameras inside - but no NX system, no general Cameras category, not even Consumer Electronics. That's very sad. The NX system had some great concepts and very good plans, even if the NX1 and huge f/2.8± lenses was not my style. The NX300/500 were great ones though, but other than the 50-200mm they made no telephoto products for me. We've now shifted to Olympus for compact cameras with excellent image quality - but the NX300 and 16-50PZ+ois will hang around for a while.

So much for that contender in the bottom left. The white NX will definitely stick around though: with the 24-75mme lens that focuses very closely at 16mm, and the impressive Samsung touchscreen (no doubt Samsung knows how to do those!), it's a very easy camera to use and not worth much to sell.  The upper EM5 camera has been replaced by a silver/black EM10 - so the equations are quite different today.  As is quite typical for me lately, that didn't take long!

The camera waltz

Step forward, then to the side, slide both feet together.  Rotate while doing so to be sure that your path is nothing like a straight line and 'step forward' is always in a different direction.  Hmm, the waltz and my camera kit have much in common it seems!

 As soon as our recent cash crunch slowed, the 4k craze took me.  The G7 can do it all, obviously - hooray for micro4:3! Well, after going in for about $1k (and each buy a true bargain!) maybe micro4:3 isn't much of a bargain after all.  To see the miracle of 4k would also require a new monitor and probably a TV too.  OK.. so maybe we'll let that dream incubate for a bit.

Looking back a year it seems I had the Big kit / Little kit combo worked out nicely.  Pentax for best image quality and poorest weather, nx for compact size and video.  Budget crises removed all traces of both k200 And nx300 but the logic remains.. and the nx300 was a good fit with its tip-screen touchAF, very responsive controls and nice 20Mpxl sensor.

via camerasize.com/compare

In Samsung's world, the nx500 sings the 4k siren song too.   But that makes the talented but older nx300 even cheaper: for a G7 price I could afford to buy two nx300s (white for my wife, black or brown for me?) and make the Q worry about its place in the kit!

The best deals include the retractable 20-50 zoom; no stabilization but a camera that fits in a big pocket.  Like the G7 it has good tiny wide-angle lenses (NX 10mm FE or samyang 12/2). And the NX  can trickle-charge from my solar charger on long sunny walks or campouts in the wild, unlike most every camera out there!
Hmmm.. time for another dance?

three wide 'cakes

I've been wondering whether I truly need the NX 16, 20 and 30mm lenses.  I bought the 20mm to be the wide option since stitching has become so easy (and can be done in-cam for jpeg); just shoot three vertical images, stitch and you've gone wide!

However - the 20mm took the slow path to my home, and a bargain-price 16/2.4 reached me first.  It's also a fine lens and needs no stitching to capture a big field.  So now they are all here and want to play.  Should they all stay, or is the 16 or 20 expendable?

Here's the first set of shots to make things interesting.  All were shot so that the fence-post would remain at the far left edge of the scene.  Not surprisingly, those four mm on the wide end lead to a large difference, bringing an entirely new tree into the shot.  Looking at it this way, the three lenses do not interfere with each other.

But would I take them all with me on a backpacking jaunt?


Here's a shot of the 20mm in portrait mode.  Yes, it clearly covers more vertical space than the 16 shot horizontally, no real surprise here.  Is that enough to take over for the 16?  And imagine the 16mm oriented this way, how cool would that be?  That could keep the Samyang 12mm f/2 from my bag.. whether for good or ill it's hard to say.  That Samyang sounds like a fun lens, especially for sky imaging after dark.. but funds will be tight for a while.  In the end that will likely determine if one of these pancakes must go.

To play fair it must be noted that the 30mm in stitched-portrait mode can do to the 20 what the 20 does to the 16, so one can play all sorts of games to eliminate a lens!  So for now I'll hold on to the trio and give it all more thought.  The ideal of keeping 16 and 30 makes more sense for spacing, but the 20mm has other ideas...

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

In Pentax news, those same tight funds referenced above have led to the 50/2.8 Macro's departure.  The 50/2 and a close-up diopter will do for a bit.  The 135 and 80-200 zoom are also on the block; given the 50/100/150 K-trio I will be just fine with them moving on since they are all f/3.5 or faster anyway.

Samsung team photo #1

So here is the NX team for now, and presumably for some time to come.  The non-OIS 20-50 and 30/2 and the 50-200 OIS cover plenty of range and the 30mm can 'do' low light.  This photo includes the K-to-NX and SMC 55mm f/1.8 lens, and a few other Pentax primes could have been included in the shot; I decided to add just one for general scale.  That 30mm f/2 is small.. but really so is the 20-50.  The 50-200 is similar in size to the Pentax DA and I believe it's a bit heavier, thanks to OIS I suppose.  Note that the Samsung lenses are all made for APS-c sensors, and the Pentax primes can do fine with 24x36 film.

NX300 in silver/brown, 50-200 III OIS , 20-50 II and 30mm f/2 - plus NX>K adapter and 55mm f/1.8 Pentax lens.

Recent Samsung cameras do not come with external chargers - not even the NX1!  People are giving Samsung some well-deserved grief for this decision, since charging this way means the camera cannot be used for several hours.  Anyone wiling to spend $1500 on an NX-1 body will likely have a second battery charging or in their pocket, so refusing to include a $10 accessory seems very stingy or insensitive.  No matter, the charger and 2nd battery cost me about $15 elsewhere - so Samsung did not get any extra cash from me for their negligence.

I must say that the NX300 body-only deal I received online feels quite similar.  That company implies with this sale that it only gets bodies detached from the Samsung peripherals - yet it sells the flash for $60 separately.  They could get $120 for the Lightroom CD + license easily enough, another $20 for the battery... suddenly the $500 kit sold elsewhere yields them as much or more parted out.  Curious.  Samsung told me the NX300 only comes from them with LR4 disc battery and flash so I needed to speak with AsTech, who would rather refund my cash than supply me with any 'missing' parts.  I really do just want the body, since I got such a fine deal on the 20-50mm ultra-compact kit lens - but it's unsettling to get such a reduced kit which the manufacturer says nobody should have.

Really though I have most everything I need (though LR4 would be very nice) and I cannot afford to pick up those missing parts right now; perhaps Samsung will be asking around and make things complicated for dealers that are not doing what's expected of them.  I suppose this is a grey-market body as well - but it does the job nicely.  So while it feels wrong it works better for me with a tight budget to buy a little at a time; maybe I'll even pay for the full LR4 license that I did not receive... though it won't be soon.

If I'm not entirely happy, I am quite satisfied - and for now, that will do.

reading fine print + more comparisons

Well, now I know why the NX300 was such a great price: it's missing box flash and battery.  And registration papers, and manual.. and Lightroom 4 come to think of it!  That was pretty much  stated on the listing but I failed to do my due diligence.  In this case I'm OK as a battery (my 'spare') arrives tomorrow and I can contemplate the flash options for a bit.  I've ordered a spare spare battery now.  I will contact them about how to register and get a copy of LR4 software, and on to Samsung after that.

Re. comparisons - I've boxed up the Pentax K-5 IIs so only the Q can take photos, making it difficult to compare the NX300 to another camera.  On the other hand it's smaller than my 5"-screen cell phone in two of three dimensions, so that's saying something.  The Q is definitely smaller in every way, but given its 1/2.5" sensor the comparison (0.4" against a 1.15" using that math) gets a bit silly.  Silly data is still data though, so there it is.



Well OK, it's pretty bad but the phone in fact can take an image of the two cameras together.  I warned you!