Mirrorless options

My greatest challenge with the GM1 is that it wants its own lenses! Such small wonders as the 35-100 would be a great match to my Lumix' 14-42ii (e.g. they both use 46mm filters) and in-lens stabilization would lead to improved telephoto images.

The problem is that I have a Pentax smc-M 100/2.8 that is really small and takes excellent images that are 2 stops faster than the Lumix zoom. The smc-A 50/1.7 can make that same claim. The GM1 has focus peaking so these small prime lenses are easy to adapt and focus with that little body.

So the temptation to buy µ43 lenses must be tempered for now; maybe at a future time I will add a Lumix lens or two. In reality the 12-60mm Lumix is the greater threat with its extended range on each end!

The other mirrorless kit is the Samsung NX300 team. The white one now has the 16/2.4 prime and matching white 20-50mm lens, both quite talented but with no IS. The brown body comes with 16-50/OIS, and a 50-200/OIS is available for both. Since all are interchangeable this is an arbitrary alignment.

Lumix 14-42ii and Pentax DAL 50-200wr w/o adapter
taken by the Sigma 28-80 1:2

Pentax lenses are also adaptable for either mirrorless mount. The Lumix 14-42ii is an excellent and absurdly compact lens, and its 35-100mm counterpart is equally so.  However, the Pentax 50-200 that I own has more range, the same f/4-5.6 range (so it's brighter than the tiny Lumix tele at 100mm) and is reasonably small and light since it's built for the APSc sensor size. My other nice option is the Sigma 28-80 (also f/3.5-5.6) with 1:2 macro. It's very similar to the Pentax lens in bulk but going close up to 1:2 'macro' is very nice to have!

While the AF and especially OIS will be missed for a while (especially for telephoto shots!) these options are good ones. Indoor shot here was at iso8000 which works decently on the GM1.

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.

all wrong

Recent plans have been adrift, planning without verifying. Once again I was buying bargains, but if the system is not the best of fits it will all be re-sold so 'bargain' is less the correct term. I had figured that the possibility of using a viewfinder would make a big difference to her over the Samsung body she has now.  But no - my wife really likes the NX300, and she has now made that clear. This means we have NX as our mirrorless system, and µ43 gear is all wrong as a second camera.

The little Olympus (and Panasonic) cameras go great work, and I've been impressed.  However, a second mirrorless kit is not a sensible answer. I sort of knew this and grabbed some 4Thirds 'bargains' too - and I enjoyed it for a bit until I found myself stranded in an ideal photo shoot with less-than-ideal gear.

The E500 simply cannot do action or low light, which is precisely where I found myself when a crowd of pelicans visited a local pond.  Even the NX300 with PDAF on the sensor could have outdone this - though right now I can only go to 75mme with that camera, so the pelicans would have been absurdly smaller compared to these taken at 350mme.  Very sad to be stuck between systems at this moment, but it's a learning experience that will stick with me. I have a K-01 (yes, another mirrorless body) that might have improved on these, but holding its VF-free body steady with a larger and equally-slow telephoto lens could easily have produced fuzzy birds too even with its SR system working.

For surrealism I like this second image.. but I'd greatly prefer some frozen pics of flying pelicans at iso4000 or so. And none of the gear that I have now cannot manage it.

A final spasm of financial pain came as I was learning all this, and in a flurry of deals the µ43 gear has pretty much all departed. The 4Thirds gear is still here for a while; I had ordered spare batteries and cables so until they arrive they aren't much of a package.  Hopefully I can get most of my ill-planned investment back once the package is fully assembled; the Zuiko 11-22mm is very much a sought-after lens in the Four Thirds and adapted world. That sale plus the pending IRA funds will put us in a better situation for thinking things through and moving on.

"Moving on" comes in two steps.  Part One is a second NX300 so that my wife and I have matching kits. Those bodies are still at around $200 for a decent used copy which is what hers cost. I had considered an NX30 instead, but those tend to cost more than I deem reasonable for our needs.  The 50-200mm ois telephoto can be had for $150, so I might as well have a shareable copy of that. And the 10/16/30 primes might come later if they strike me as great deals.

Part Two is clearly Pentax.
I know their gear, like it a lot, and still have a few good lenses for it. The 28-90, 100/2.8 and a 300 mirror remain in the closet, and a few others could hang about as well. I will seek weather seals so either an 18-50re or 20-40 Limited zoom would be fine, with 16-50 or 16-85 as outside odds to join me. With the 300 mirror I could be satisfied with a 50-200wr, but we'll see when the time comes.

The body - well, the pelican shot suggests that an AF upgrade would serve me well at times. The K-3 has far more AF points within a similar screen area, and its logic systems outdo the K-5 combos as well. Many other features hide within as well that I'd like, and while slightly heavier and harder on battery life the body size is very K-5ish. That's where I'm leaning for now, with K-3ii and K-5ii as outsiders and the K-01 a disappointing fourth.  The extra $1000 is too much to bear in the near future, not to mention more grams and lens requirements.  The temptation is great though!

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 Contestants

In the category of Most-useful Compact Camera with Interchangeable lenses in a Personal role, we now have three* possibilities.

the Big Little Three: EM5, ePL5, NX300 (clockwise from top). Image taken with K-01.

Samsung NX300. Largest sensor, most pixels (20M), a few great little lenses.. and a system whose future is in doubt. Samsung has gone totally silent, and no rumors suggest that another brand is picking up the tech.  Nobody wins with this: bad Samsung PR, poor user comfort even if they own great gear. They still have nice small primes (16, 30, 45, 60 macro), the compact 16-50 with optical stabilization and very few telephotos that are either massive (50-150/2.8) or the 50-200, a decent but not amazing lens.  So Samsung has chosen to take itself off the radar.. too bad as the NX300 is a really nice camera.

Olympus ePL5. The best micro4:3 sensor to date (this is the 16Mpix sensor, the new 20Mpx has not been reviewed much), NX size or a bit smaller, all necessary controls and an option to add a viewfinder. Very comparable to the NX300 but with a future that's more visible and reasonable.

Olympus em5. A bit larger than the ePL5 but same imaging pipeline (sensor, processing, options).  A bit taller since the eVF is built in, and weather seals too. Two control dials for easier adjustments while preparing to shoot. And at some point one might be able to see the 5-axis stabilization win out over the ePL5 and its lesser axes of correction. I don't plan to actively seek out the difference so I'm not greatly concerned.

*The fourth possibility is the Pentax K-01 that took these photos. Far larger than any, another great 16Mpix sensor but APSc / NX300 size. Also white like the NX300, curiously enough. It uses a bunch of lenses that I already own, has focus peaking (the Olympi do not) and can take decent movies.  Here's the K-01 and ePL5 matched up, the 28mm f/2 Kiron is on the K-01.



*Might as well include the fifth option, which is/was the Oly ePM2.  The red one I briefly owned was great fun and smaller then the PL5 but it has no tilt screen. The VF option is there though, and that does tilt - and images equal those from the em5 and PL5. So the PM2 is still a decent choice, really, and the bargain of the bunch. The shot at right compares the PM2 and NX300.

So how do they all compare in the real, non-laboratory world?

All are quite good at what they do, and any differences in image qualities would not impact me. I owned the Pentax and Samsung first so they are more familiar to operate, and in many ways do things in similar ways. I do wish Pentax could take over the NX technology but no news of that = no more time spent on that dream. The Olympus menus are a bit more dense than the others, but worse than that is their cryptic, non-traditional references to what is actually being adjusted.  Irritating, but ultimately one can adapt.

Having seen the various results I'd say the most recent Micro4:3 and APSc sensors are quite evenly matched - it took a few years to get there but with Sony making sensors for both sensor types that's not a great surprise.  No doubt shots above iso6400 will reveal differences, but one can fine-tune the camera before the shot and mess with images later with desktop software. Therefore the differences aren't sufficiently relevant to me that any of these cameras is rejected or required.

For basic zooms the kit 14-42mm is much smaller than the Pentax 18-55, though Pentax now has a retractable 18-50 kit zoom which I have not tried. I've found that the NX 16-50 is pleasantly small and images with it are quite nice. As to primes, all three systems make excellent primes and the 'larger' Limited lenses from Pentax are easily as good as the others. So the wider end is not as big of a deal using any of these systems for lenses that I tend to choose; it's the telephotos that show the most difference.

The Olympus 40-150mm and Samsung NX or Pentax-DA 50-200s (all 80-300mme) do similar work, but the Oly is much less bulky and therefore more likely to come along. If one must have f/2.8 telezooms those lenses for all systems will be large, and I would want a large body to hold such lenses; however I am not interested in shooting at f/2.8 above 100mm so it's not relevant to me.

Given similar enough results and both lens sizes and Samsung's uncertain future, I feel that the micro4:3 gear will serve me/us best going forward. My wife and I can enjoy the ePL5 and em5 with pretty much identical results. The issues between them are small but could become nagging, as they use different batteries. I'm tempted to seek the em10 as a swap for the em5 - I would lose the weather seals but gain a match for power source and get a slightly smaller camera as well. We'll see about that. Or the ePM2 could make a return visit and go along with either of these. In any case images will be more than sufficiently excellent for my needs and uses, and I will dare to say for my wife as well.

Return of the Thing

Yes, this thing.  The K-01. 
Another barely-used white version is coming!

A familiar friend is coming home again: a K-01 in zuzu white (Zuzu's our tuxedo cat). I enjoyed my time and images with this camera quite a bit. Yes a few things are disturbing about the K-01, most notably the viewfinder and glare off the screen on bright days.  I bought a flip screen cover long ago to help with that, and really this is the best way to acquire a super-16Mpx sensor on a budget. The K-30 is commanding cult prices and the K-50 has yet to fall to this point. So I'm regaining native mode for my K lenses, time-lapse stills/videos, and 500 shots per battery charge (that addresses my biggest grouse about µ43 bodies). I even have a white 18-55mm sitting near that screen shade - it needs a new mount, but perhaps I can pirate one off another old lens.

Part of today's problem for me is that the em5 is not quite the ideal body for me. How can that be, with all its great features?  Beats me - but every setup I try seems to have an issue for me that the ePM2 did not have with its single control wheel.  I've run into this 2-wheel mental lockup before, for unclear reasons adding a second wheel does not improve my interaction with my cameras. The best way for me to use a camera with two control dials is to completely ignore one, then act surprised when I see it work.
Call me crazy.. I often do!

image via imaging-resource.com

Since the em5 and epm2 were both just a pinch off, one way or another, I'm splitting the difference with a nicely-priced used ePL5.  Goldilocks lives! 
The epl5 will have the the em5's tilt screen, mode dial and image quality and a size closer to the epm2. It's quite tiny, sized between the Q and NX300 - so for my wife it will be ideal and the nx300 is free to travel. Whether the em5 or a second epl5 + viewfinder is the best answer for both of us, let's just say.. reply hazy, ask again tomorrow.

One thing is quite clear though:  the gear swapping must end!  Again.

deciphering the New Red camera

New Red is a complex little camera. It's not that much different from any advanced camera, but its size dictated the absence of a mode dial - so many more items in menus, and Olympus has a reputation for menu obscurities that is well deserved. Even after reading and watching a video, I had to watch again just to enable the Super Control Panel, a screen that allows me to mimic my Pentax info screen (but with touch control!). Even then I didn't know to press OK to bring it up - so it's quite possible that I had already enabled it correctly..

Nevertheless, the camera has worked very well even in my ignorance!

With Sigma 30 and Oly 40-150 (60 and 80-300mme) I don't have any wide-angle options right now; however the NX300 only has a 24-76mme lens so they are very complementary! I also have mic4:3 extension tubes so ePM2 closeups are straightforward - though a tip screen like the NX300 would be nice (that's an ePL5 feature).

My hike to the mailbox is just under 1/2 mile, so I find plenty of chances to capture images.  The trillium are opening, the skunk-cabbage ripe, and plenty of new shoots to shoot :^) With the Σ·30mm attached the ePM2 does very nice work in a very small package!

Each set of test shots shows me something new to work on, and more menu effort follows to correct it.  My focusing efforts were not paying off (especially on complex things like the yellow-flower shot, where I pressed AF several times) but now it's set to center-square only so I'm using focus/recompose mode. It also has magnifying MF override, I need to practice that more! The ePM2 is able to set the Fn button as focus - but my attempts have not paid off yet. At one point I enabled HDR shooting because I thought it was asking what setting I'd choose if I wanted HDR but the camera felt I wanted it ASAP; once discovered & disabled I've been quite happy with the s·CPanel access. I have not found a touch-AF mode that does not immediately take a picture, so more reading to come soon!

 

shocking news.. well OK not much

The Pentax kit has sold.

Taxes, medical bills.. the usual. Got a decent price but I'll miss it.

Small cams rule!

(taken by my little phone)

NX300, ePM-2

retrenching a bit, and new thoughts

When the G7 failed to work out I let a lot of micro-43 gear go elsewhere.  Not everything left in a hurry so a few odds and ends are still here, like the 30mm f/2.8 Sigma and some extension tubes and adapters remain.   While negotiating sales on the last few µ43 items in my collection, I encountered other owners' sales of their Olympus E-PM2 bodies.

Wow, some of the smaller used bodies are cheap!  They should be cheaper than the NX300 since the sensor cannot keep up, I'd expect.. but checking online shows me the excellent Sony 4/3 sensor is in the ePM2, the same one that the EM5 and later models use.  The ePM2 is (slightly) smaller than the nx300 and takes telephoto lenses that are far smaller than the APSc sensors will allow.  Interesting.

Personally I've viewed Olympus Pen (really all their cameras) with a jaundiced eye (whatever that is, why does a yellow eye make a difference?) - my thoughts align well with this New Camera News post. How would I choose a P/PL/PMx (where x=1 to 5) and know which feature-set I had, or didn't have?  The EM5/10/?? feel the same way. Too many similar-looking cameras with discontinuous numbers and letters that fail to convey how things differ.  Ugh.

I have always entered the µ43 system through the Panasonic door, and never the Olympus. The Olys have in-body IS like the Pentax bodies, so you'd think I would have tried one by now.  The confusion above was one deterrent, the appeal of the Lumix bodies another.  But given the NX300 currently in hand why should the Olympus bodies be shunned?  My NX300 plus 20-50 lens has no IS at all, and to acquire an IS lens would cost more than the PM2.  Interesting again!

The PM2 is set up as the 'entry' Pen body, and with no mode dial it seems pretty crippled.  But it has a touchscreen and control panel similar to Pentax' Info-button screen (and the NX300 one too) which makes many functions easy. I'm liking what touch screens offer on cameras, both as an alternative to buttons & dials plus the ability to AF on demand to a specific location. So the leaner option is as good image-wise as the beloved OMD EM-5± and can take lenses that will fit better in a large pocket or small rucksack.  That's a good thing.

The down-scaling that comes with making a lens cover only the 4:3 sensor allows for a smaller 100mm lens, and it produces images that print like a 200mm (or a 150mm on APSc), so less actual telephoto mm yields bigger results. That's another good thing.. and add the really low price for 'strike three'.

I'm not planning to do a major dump/rebuild.. but I might dabble a bit. The price is low enough that, whatever the result, the 'rental' cost would be pretty low.

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

On the Pentax side, I'm letting the HD55-300mm WR lens go. Crazy again, but that's the 4th time I've done that so it's not a huge surprise.  I own both the Quantaray 100-300 and a Spiratone 300mm mirror lens, and all three around 300mm look interchangeably similar.  So I'm swapping the HD for a WR 50-200mm, which is much smaller and takes smaller filters.  This will clarify when to carry which big lens, since I had so much overlap above 200mm. It also brings cash back into the system, which can be used for the 'dabbling' above!

a rough day ends OK

The last 24 hours were not comfortable.  Stomach troubles, ringing in my ears - and a dead camera.
Fortunately the camera was resurrected today!  I'll just let the story repeat here:

I've installed many firmware updates on many cameras without issue, even with SD cards half-full of pictures.  Maybe I'll remember this event and be more careful in the future: empty cards with one update at a time installed on them, use a truly fully-charged battery (which always seems silly for a 3-minute process.. until it isn't) and more diligence so that later I don't ask myself "did I really see that last screen appear that said it was done?".

So now we have two NX300 bodies, two NX lenses and a PK-NX adapter.  My wife will get the first like-new body that came with the 20-50 zoom but she can have the 16-50PZ; I will use the not-dead-yet one with the 20-50 and we can fight over the adapter.  In truth she isn't ready to play yet so really  it's all mine!!! :^)

Now if I can just stop the ringing & enjoy some food..

attempting a slow-but-steady path

For once my new-years imaging resolution is to use the same cameras throughout 2016! 
If that comes true it might be the hardest thing I've ever done.. not quite, but very true photographically.  Since 2010 I've switched cameras/bodies at least fifteen times - several were due to finances but many were just frivolous adventures.  Finances have stabilized now so it's time to become a photographer again for my main hobby, instead of gear-swapper! 

After the quick and over-eager attempt to make mic4:3 my system of choice, I found the drain in funds to be alarming. Even with great bargains the adventure was becoming a large cash drain.  After more thinking and less rationalizing I returned the camera and sold off a couple of lenses. . and prepared to restore my Pentax collection, which had not quite vanished.

 A 'used' red Pentax  K-50 + 18-55wr kit and a 'like new' HD55-300wr lens arrived soon after - in the K-50 case 'used' meant a shutter count of TWO including the one I took to check the shutter count!  Neither 18-55 nor 55-300 has ever let me down in a way I could attribute to them, and both are weather ready but with greater range than my previous kit. 

I've also picked up a bargain 10-17mm fisheye for max versatility in K mount.  The fisheye zoom has often interested but never joined me; until now I've been a prime ultrawide user, having tried the DA15 and both Sigma 15mm and classic Pentax SMC 17mm fisheyes.  Oh I did have the F 17-28 fisheye briefly, come to think of it.

So I'm set at 10-300mm, and weather resistant above 17mm.
I've never had such a full focal-length range at my disposal!

On the small side of things, I've reverted to Samsung's NX300 rather than going micro4:3. The nx500 has pushed this model aside with its newfangled sensor and 4k video, but my time with the 300 last year left me quite impressed.  The one is white, and will be for my wife; I will add a darker one for myself later.¹ In the meantime I'll be thoroughly testing it out for her with shots like the K50 image above, and hopefully a few more creative offerings. It's been a while since I used a date-stamp camera - more precisely I did not know my previous NX300 had that feature!

I also snatched up a bargain copy of the well-liked 16-50 with OIS for it, so the kit is really small and image stabilized! It boasts a talented 20Mpx APSc sensor and many cool features that I managed to pick up quickly (unlike the G7, sadly).  The white 20-50mm lens came with the camera; it gets fine reviews but its lack of IS makes it less useful compared to the smaller, wider 16-50.  This bargain copy came in black but is available in white; assuming my wife likes this camera, the black lens will be mine & a white 16-50 will come soon for hers!

We'll have no native NX telephoto option right now - but telephoto isn't a good fit anyway for a kit that's buile to be tiny; a PK>NX adapter will do for non-stabilized telephoto shots with good light and/or a tripod.  Maybe later we shall do something about this - but Samsung has implied by its silence that its NX lineup is being phased out, so maybe not?

  I suppose my Q should be worried; the nx is a bit larger but the sensor difference is massive.

¹stay tuned - I found a second white body at an even better sub-$200 price, plus something to make them distinctive :^)  If I can pull this off my wife will be quite impressed with her anniversary gift!

Battle of the Giants

A monster film-era zoom, a big fast film-era prime and a modern stabilized zoom
battle it out for ownership of the 200mm turf. 
 Who shall pass?

Ugh - I didn't check the settings (typical, and in part why I hate doing lens tests) so first tests were +0.6EV, iso800 and blindly spot-metered (no spot showing on the VF) on an unevenly-lit tree whose lighting changed continuously.  Clearly I need to learn better how to adjust settings!   All were hand-held with the nx300.  My one distress over this camera is that the Fn button brings up a half-dozen settings that are good to adjust on the fly but leaves several others off; the lens iFn is similar that way.  Practice practice..

Anyway - on to the results!

images are really not worth showing but here's a triplet shot.  Ugh-ly, even at small resolution..

The 50-200 won but not by a mile, and mostly because I didn't find the OIS-off switch while testing (no fair!).  I should toss in the Pentax SMC-M 135mm* and crop, see how it fares - the contest is wide open after these severely unprofessional tests.  Even focus peaking did not help the two manual lenses feel all that sharp.

* update.. a copy of the 150mm f3.5 Pentax is on its way!

tiny part II

On the left we have a Pentax K200d with 18-55wr lens.  Nice camera, decent lens.
On the right, in a bag that would not quite hold the K200d, we have

• Samsung's NX300 with 30mmf/2 lens attached
• their 50-200f/4-5.6 III OIS lens with folding hood
• a side pocket with 16mm f/2.4 pancake lens
• a side pocket with spare battery and flash
• a top pocket with spare SD card and a filter or two

 - and that's why tiny gear can be very nice to have!  Yes it all breaks down if I want to carry PK primes, but the 50 macro and 100/2.8 can swap out for the 50-200 for similar weight but a pinch more bulk.  Oops I'd also need the pk.nx adapter; guess that can go in my pocket!

tiny lenses rule!

Whether on a Pentax dSLR or the small Samsung NX bodies, small and light lenses are great to have on hand.  The 16 and 30mm NX are 'prime' examples %( but Pentax also makes small ones - and they even work on full-frame film bodies!

Shown here are the Samsung 30mm f/2 plus Pentax 50/2.8 (1:2 macro!), 100/2.8 and 135/3.5.  The K:nx adapter is similar in size to the 30mm.

These four lenses, along with the nx300 and 16/2.4 lens that took this image, can fit into a mighty small space.. And some day soon the NX 20mm f2.8 will join in.  The other small-carry option is 16, 30 and 50-200 Samsung lenses, the latter with in-lens stabilization (but somewhat slow at f/4-5.6). Nice choices to have!

another small step for wireless

I finally set up and demonstrated that the NX300 and my telephone can play together.With a few quick button presses the phone becomes a viewfinder and can take pictures through the NX300!  Not many settings come up for adjustment this way, and it's odd to tilt the phone without changing the view - but practice would approximate perfect if it were done more often.  It's a potentially handy feature for animal or bird shots, maybe at the right sort of party.. but this isn't something I would use on a daily or weekly basis.  Still, it's good to know that it can be done and works properly.  Technically speaking, this is NFC at work.

Hmmm, maybe I'll try the tablet next!

Yup that works too! :^) but don't look too long you might fall in...

Samsung's 30mm f/2

Every camera brand has a few consensus picks: lenses or gadgets that every owner must choose or at least consider.  For NX owners the 30mm f/2 pancake is one of these.  Its tiny size, fast aperture and wonderful image quality is unmatched by the several kit zooms that overlap this focal length.  Consider that Pentax has their FA 31mm film lens that is universally praised at around $900, and I picked up the 30mm for $175 (to my surprise and delight).  I cannot compare the FA31 and NX30 as I never paid that amount for any Pentax lens - but I can say with confidence that images with the NX 30/2 are consistently great and fully deserving of its acclaim.  And being tiny it has no reason to stay at home!

30mm f/2 wide open

Samsung has other pancakes at 16 and 20mm.  Those are also convenient and faster than zooms in the range, but for the most part reviews are less consistently positive than for the 30.  None of the pancakes include stabilization, which is too bad.  Perhaps in the future I will pick up one or both but for now zooms, the 30mm and a few Pentax primes will do just fine.

learning by doing

I tried out a few nx300 features to see - not read about, but see! - how they perform.
First up was the panorama feature, something I hadn't owned since the Fuji F550.  One can do this with the camera held in either direction, and just release the shutter button when you have enough.  It does lock down most settings, and that needs to be seen in a photo to be understood.

My test shot began on an indoor wall so the nx300 set focus and exposure.. including white balance.  The shot swung left past our kitty and out to the porch.  Duncan is a much fuzzier cat in the photo as he's inside the set focus point, and outside is fuzzy overexposed and mighty blue due to tungsten WB!  These are not surprises, just part of what comes with certain features, and seeing it at its worst will help me use it better in the future.

Another feature I tested is in-camera processing.  Pentax has that down to an art, but we're holding a Samsung now.  I took a fine image of Duncan resting near the crackling fire with the 30mm f/2 pancake lens.  I then went into playback, cropped it mostly square (via touchscreen, quite nice!) and then added vignetting to lessen the distractions and focus on flames and cat.  Nice look and swiftly finished.  I do need to see if I can control vignette settings though, in my haste to try it I did not look for alternatives to the preset value.  Either way it worked well and looks good.

There's plenty more to learn on this camera - and relearn as well!  I took an HDR image early on but now I've forgotten where that setting resides.  Oopz!  Found it: a dynamic range setting of course..

Learning also extends to Lightroom 4, which is a much different game from PS Elements v10.  I may need a guidebook for that, looks more complex than the Sierra Nevada above timberline.. :-)

Holideals

The nx300 received a Thanksgiving-week price cut of about $100 with 18-55ois (and battery and manual and Lightroom CD and Samsung CD and ..?).  Not bad, although my assembled-in-pieces kit still wins out.

 However.. 
Amazon is one of the dealers with that price, at least in some colors.  When that happens it pays to seek barely-used copies in their Warehouse; that's where I picked up my K-5 a few years back, in 'very good' condition.. and it appeared new to me.  Sure enough, several 'used - very good' nx300s available in white for.. er.. $310 and change.  Hmm $[250+60+14-CDs-manuals]= my great deal was just topped, if the two kit lenses are comparable.  For speed they are, but one has slightly more reach and ois while the other impresses by its compactness.  Many users and reviewers praise the tiny 20-50 but with kit lenses each copy stands on its own for quality and value.

Always more deals this time of year.. hard to resist a second copy for my wife.  And 4 days later, the price was $100 higher!

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!