NX500 Image joy and screen sadness

I imagine one could argue that a camera and/or lens was defective.  I do know that the 16-50 PZ is one ultra sharp lens - that's for sure.  As for the camera, if it is defective - and you don't know that as of yet - then there's only one thing to do in that scenario and that's send it in.

But let me ask you this - are you shooting the camera with everything in default mode?  Some folks, regardless of the cameras they buy, leave everything on default mode and shoot in that manner (JPG's).  As a result, some of their results show hit or miss approaches.  In other-words, there usually isn't much consistency with how their photos turn out.

When I get a camera - regardless of what brand - I set that baby up to shoot RAW, make image IQ adjustments and ensure (if available) that the IS is enabled.  I've yet to be disappointed with the cameras I've used or owned.  In addition, if you know your lighting scenarios and how a camera meter will react to a given scene, that helps also.  All too often (well, with some folks that is) they'll point a camera at a scene, keeping it on matrix metering, and all of a sudden wind up with images that are over or underexposed, and they can't figure out why (because they didn't realize that certain parts of a scene will influence the metering one way or another).  I know I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but I had to chime in.

I'll be curious to see what settings you've used and if IS was engaged.  Do you shoot in Program mode or do you shoot in one of the other modes - i.e. Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, or Manual modes?  How about image format type?  RAW or JPG?  I guess I could go on and on and on....