Detailed review of the NX500

The fastest focusing lens on nx is the 45mm (very cheap and great iq, as well).

12-24 is very fast as well (about like 16-5pz or a bit faster). S lenses are very fast (like 45mm or a bit less).

Thanks 3XO! I have never tried the 12-40 but I did have the 20 1.7 (both versions actually) and you're right it's much slower than the other MFT lenses, particularly the MSC ones. In that respect, I agree the 30 f/2 is similar. I've never tried the Samsung 85 or 60 but my understanding is that those are slower to focus as well, compared to other Samsung lenses.

Did the GX7 focus on moving subjects just as quickly as the NX500, and was it able to stay focused? On the EM5 and EP5, I found that focus for still shots was fast, but continuous autofocus was weak, and I had a difficult time focusing on moving subjects.

Best regards,
Mic

Thanks! I appreciate the feedback.

pretty close to my experiences with the nx500. The only thing that could make it better is a built in viewfinder. I simply love the camera

Yeah..my perfect camera would be the NX500 with a viewfinder (well..and a larger buffer). I would willingly pay more for that. Wish they would listen - there's more than a few of us.

Pretty happy with mine. I've been using the Clearviewer when I need a viewfinder.

Clive

Thanks Mike and Clive! I agree it would be nice to have an EVF. I'd like to have the NX1 in a rangefinder-style body with EVF and fully articulating touchscreen. I hope Samsung makes something like that, though odds are remote (afaik, Samsung has never made a rangefinder-style body with EVF).

creaDVty said:

http://betterfamilyphotos.blogspot.com/2015/04/samsung-nx500-review.html

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Hi Mic,

Excellent review. Thank you for sharing your work.

On my way to visit one of the 7 (sic!) Sony Centers in my city I passed by a Samsung shop, and stopped to have a look at the NX500. I spent only an hour and I found it quite impressive. I went to the Sony shop to experiment with the AXP33 4K BOSS videocamera (nearly twice as more expensive than NX500) with money in my pocket to buy one if I like it. My experimenting with the NX500 (for much less money than th price of AXP33) was enough to decide to postpone my 4K camera purchase for a couple of months.

Interestingly, the Samsung store didn't have the NX1, the flagship: "it's too expensive for their market", was the shop assistant's reply.

Since Xmas 2014 I have a Sony A5100 as my main camera, which is an excellent HD camera for the price, but since the NX500 is available for about the same price, the NX500 might be (nearly) as great camera. The A5100 has extremely snappy, accurate and quick auto focus in AF-C, which is especially important in movie mode for my solo shooter jobs). The NX500's AF-C was not as quick as the A5100's: when I touched the screen on the A5100 (with PZ1650) it locked immediately, at the same time, same place in the dimly lit Samsung showroom, the NX500 was always a tad bit hesitant to focus. My quick conclusion was that A5100 AF-C in low light is a tad bit better than NX500.

Touch to magnify while recording in manual focus mode. In your review you mentioned that MF support is not really great on the NX500. What I was looking for in the shop when experimenting with the NX500 was touch to magnify to confirm focus in MF mode. Somehow this feature is missing or I wasn't able to find/enable it: on the A5100 when I switch to MF, touch-to-magnify as well as focus peaking are automatically enabled.

I have an Atomos Ninja2 to use the A5100 for long-taking videos (events, conferences, concerts, interviews). Can you test if your NX500 can output clean 1080p HDMI in liveview mode or while recording? My Nikon V1, for example was crippled by Nikon in this regard. BTW, the Ninja2 has no touch-to-magnify feature either.

As for stills photography. I mostly skipped those parts of your review: I think today's cameras are so great with still images (starting with Nikon V1 and up) that I cannot see any real diferences. I have Nikon V1, Sony A5100, I used Olympus PEN EP5 (with external EVF), Fujifilm X-A1, Sony A7 (that was a beast!) for months, and all were excellent for photos.

The real discriminating factors are video and special features: high resolution tilting touch screen, high resolution fast EVF, accurate and fast focus peaking, Speed Boosters and adapters for high quality Canon (EOS and FD), Nikon, Olympus OM, Minolta MD and Leica lenses. Kipon tilt-shift adapters for Nikon lenses, and so on and forth.

Investing into expensive high quality Samsung lenses is another big dilemma. Canon EF, Sony E mount, Micro 4/3, Leica M mount (even Fujifilm X mount), are much more established than the Samsung mount, and I am a bit hesitant to go into the Samsung tunnel. Canon makes interchangeable lens cameras from APS-C, full-frame, cinema cameras all using the EF mount. Even Blackmagic makes cameras with EF mount. Metabones makes Speed Boosters for EF mount for nearly every mount (except Samsung). When I buy an EOS lens, it can be mounted on practically any cameras (except Nikon and Samsung). Sony makes interchangeable lens cameras from APS-C, full-frame, consumer and professional cinema cameras all using the E mount. If and when I buy a Sony or Zeiss E-mount lens, I can use it on a hell lot of cameras in this range. Samsung: they have only two decent cameras NX1 and NX500 both APS-C still image cameras, that's all. I see no system here, at least not now. I jumped out of the Fujifilm camp because it was really a very small market and limited support.

Just some additional thought to extend the scope of your review in case you wanted to continue your brilliant work.

BTW, the form factor of Samsung NX30 was very clean, I loved the tilting huge EVF. If only Samsung made an NX30 mark 2 camera with all the new features from NX500. I am quite happy with the A5100, and when I upgrade, my next camera (Sony, Canon, Samsung) must be absolutely much better than the A5100 in that price range. I don't think Nikon will ever make a Nikon 1 model that is significantly better than the V1 I have for three years now.




April's Greetings



Thank you again, and wich you and your nice family a happy May Day weekend.

Miki

A fellow family-and-friends fun photographer/videographer

havanna60 said:

Thank you again, and wich you and your nice family a happy May Day weekend.

Miki

A fellow family-and-friends fun photographer/videographer

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Hi Miki. Thanks for the feedback!

Re focusing in low light, there is no question that the a6000 is better than my NX500. The a5100 has the same AF system as the a6000, so I assume the same is true for the a5100. Where the NX500 is a little better is in tracking moving subjects in good or average lighting conditions.

Manual focus - I agree the implementation is much better on the a6000 and the a5100. This is something Samsung could learn from Sony.

Image quality - the NX500 is better (high ISO, latitude, colors). Whether this is noticeable depends on the audience and the viewing size. I agree that to some people there is no noticeable difference.

Touchscreen - the NX500 implementation is much better than the a5100. I had the chance to use the a5100 and the touchscreen was used primarily for choosing focus. On the NX500, the touchscreen is tightly integrated with the UI, making it intuitive and convenient to change settings.

Lenses - I have to disagree on this. Sony is producing a lot of FE lenses, but it hasn't produced an E-mount lens since 2013. I have a feeling that Sony is pouring their resources on FE and thinks that its E-mount lineup is sufficient. Meanwhile, Samsung has fewer NX lenses but with less redundancy, and more importantly, they are still steadily producing new lenses, the newest ones of which are the 16-50 f/2-2.8 and 50-150 2.8. Will they continue to produce lenses for NX? I think so. Samsung seems hell-bent on carving out territory on the photo industry. I'm not sure why, given the shrinking sales of interchangeable lens cameras. In any case, even if you add the market capitalization of Sony and all other camera companies, it would still be dwarfed by Samsung.

MARKET CAP (USD)

Canon: 40B

Nikon: 5.7B

Olympus: 12B

Sony: 35B

Ricoh/Pentax: 937M

Samsung: 200B

So if you ask me does Samsung have the resources to stay in the game? I think so.

I should also add that their consumer-grade lenses are generally cheaper and either optically the same or better than their Sony E-mount counterparts. On the other hand, the Sony 35 1.8 and 50 1.8 are stabilized while the Samsung 30 f/2 and 45 1.8 are not.

Best regards,

Mic

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Sony was a non-starter for me precisely due to their abandoning APS-C E-mount lenses. Their FE offerings haven't been all that impressive.

Additionally the E mount lacks the fast normal pancakes that both M43 and NX have. It's super nice to be able to size down from the 85mm to the 30mm and quickly be jacket-pocket-friendly.

If Samsung met two or more of the following I'd think they'd have a good shot at capturing the market:

1. Better warranty/servicing options or dealer network for professionals

2. Expanded third-party ecosystem

3. Lack of "consumer electronics company" stigma, though I guess this one isn't really fixable...

I read Your review with interest and found it detailed and interesting. Thank You for all that work. I received my NX500 almost 2 weeks ago. I bought it for my upcoming trips to Germany and Japan and as a walk around camera. I wanted a competent stills camera with good image quality in a small form factor and the Samsung NX500 appealed to me mainly because of it's BSI sensor. After taking around 1000 photos in a variety of lighting conditions with the kit lens PZ 16-50 and some of my Pentax ltd. primes (manual focus only), I am split about the NX500. I shoot RAW only and these movie features don't interest me much. The kit lens focusses well and fast at 16mm but the focus accuracy diminishes progressively wit increasing focal lengths. At 50mm I find the kit lens next to useless, it's soft, mushy and almost always out of focus. Very good image quality at 16mm with reliable focus but anything in between 16 to 50mm is hit and miss, soft and sharp which I find unsettling. I just hope this is lens related and not due to some dodgy in camera focus implementation. Manual focus works fine generally on all lenses I have tried although it took some practice to nail accuracy. I have the Samsung 30mm f/2 on order and wonder how useful this is going to be. So far, very good little camera when it works as advertised but it often does not. the file sizes are massive (sometimes over 80 GB.). My 24mp. Pentax K3 are about half that, and less. Cheers and good luck with photography.

Thanks! When you say that it misses focus at certain distances, do you find that it instead focused on the background? A known issue with the NX1 and NX500 is that they tend to focus on the highest contrast that is anywhere near the AF point. Therefore, even if the AF point looks like it is on top of the subject, it can still focus on the background or some other high-contrast object near the AF area. A partial workaround is to use speed priority (not accuracy priority or release priority) which reduces the chance of focusing on the background but doesn't avoid the problem all the time.

Gazeomon said:

The kit lens focusses well and fast at 16mm but the focus accuracy diminishes progressively wit increasing focal lengths. At 50mm I find the kit lens next to useless, it's soft, mushy and almost always out of focus. Very good image quality at 16mm with reliable focus but anything in between 16 to 50mm is hit and miss, soft and sharp which I find unsettling. I just hope this is lens related and not due to some dodgy in camera focus implementation.

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My 16-50pz does nicely in the center through the fl range; but corners/edges don't satisfy me for landscapes. This is true on my other zooms also. For me it's not a big deal because all my primes are very nice to outstanding across the frame. And I prefer the smaller camera lens profile anyway.

TJL LTFF said:

Gazeomon said:

The kit lens focusses well and fast at 16mm but the focus accuracy diminishes progressively wit increasing focal lengths. At 50mm I find the kit lens next to useless, it's soft, mushy and almost always out of focus. Very good image quality at 16mm with reliable focus but anything in between 16 to 50mm is hit and miss, soft and sharp which I find unsettling. I just hope this is lens related and not due to some dodgy in camera focus implementation.

Click to expand...

My 16-50pz does nicely in the center through the fl range; but corners/edges don't satisfy me for landscapes. This is true on my other zooms also. For me it's not a big deal because all my primes are very nice to outstanding across the frame. And I prefer the smaller camera lens profile anyway.

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One cannot rule out that there are lens sample differences at play here. I can always use the PZ 16-50 as a 16mm prime if I have to ( that's where mine is at it's best). I agree with the quality of good compact primes. That's the way I like to shoot on street and travel. Good image quality on a small footprint. Zooms are either too big or lacking IQ or both. Cheers

Mic,

Do you have any insight onto the "OLED Color" menu option?

I'm wondering whether the color representation is more accurate with the option set on or off since I couldn't find a consensus in a quick search. At least one report has a positive impression based on accuracy against high-quality computer monitors, while another calls it unrealistically oversaturated.

Figured I'd ask here since your review of the NX500 is the most comprehensive I've seen yet.

Thanks 3XO. I try to think of my audience. In my case, most of them will be viewing my shots on the web (not print) and on a regular LCD monitor (not OLED). Therefore I want to know how my shots will look to them. For that reason, I prefer to turn off the OLED color option.

Best regards,

Mic