NX1 first impressions

I've had the NX1 for about a week now and thought I would share my impressions. The camera is a heavy rig compared to my Sony A7II or OMD-EM5 but I like the controls and handling. I will have to pick up a sling strap because the body and lens feel uncomfortable after an hour with the neck strap. The touch screen is great and very responsive. The LCD isn't very good in bright sun, Sony seems to excel at LCDs with less glare.

My 16-50 S lens zoom travels smoothly but it feels a little gravely, almost like you're turning the spindle on an electric motor with resistance from the magnets and bearings. Might be the focusing mechanism. But the lens is sharp and no complaints so far.

The 50-150 S is very smooth and fast focusing. Lighter than I expected compared to my Nikon FF 14-70 f2.8.

Focusing is great in good light but in low light it's disappointing, often hunting. Hopefully Samsung can improve this in firmware.

Cons - the camera seems to freeze up at times, this is remedied by turning the camera off and on. Sometimes when shooting the camera won't go into playback mode. Or trying to change the focus mode from CAF to SAF on the touch screen doesn't respond. Minor teething issues on a new product given how fast the camera reboots. That is one big plus, the turn on speed of this body!

Battery life is not in the same league as Nikon D800. Just sayin.

Thanks for any comments!

sample can be found on Flickr

Congratulations on the new camera

It is the S lenses that make the whole setup heavy. With one of the pancake lenses, the 45, or 12-24 the setup is very lightweight.

My 16-50S has no such gravely sound and it is focus by wire so I'm not sure that shouldn't be looked at.

The random freeze ups are unfortunately not uncommon. Mine seems to freeze up and require an off/on cycling if I'm using it for long periods like events. I'm beginning to think it is because the NX1 is more supercomputer than camera and as such, runs into "errors" occasionally that require such. None of my Canon DSLRs have ever frozen or locked up during use. Hmmmm....

Enjoy the camera!

Thanks for your reply. The focusing is very smooth, it's the zoom that's a little rough. I don't shoot much video so I'm not too worried about it.

The hangs are tolerable so far. I think Canon and Nikon have very mature firmware and Samsung's buggy firmware may be ironed out after they get some more experience. Hopefully it's not hardware related.

I just got an NX500 which i realize is not the same but ive had some qwerky issues with mine as well. It freezes up trying to read or write to various memory cards. Ive had to pull the battery out a few times.

Dear oh dear...fancy buying a camera for $2,000 that freezes up.

Every camera I have used for Video until now has been hacked to get the best out of it for Video. Panasonic GH series and Canon 5DIII. and these don't come close to what this camera can do even with their hacks. Lock ups? Haven't had any on the Samsung, but certainly have on my previous "hacked" camera's. Nice to see a company pushing the limits of it's hardware rather than hobbling it and seeing a hack to unlock it's potential. Much rather have the parent company pushing this envelope.

I have the NX500 as well as the NX1 and haven't seen hangs in the NX500. I use Sandisk Extreme Pro 32GB 95mb/sec SDHC cards most of the time and haven't had any trouble with them. The only flaw with the NX500 is it's almost impossible to see what's on the LCD due to the glare on bright sunny days. Even the diminutive RX100MIII has a pop up EVF. The Oly EPL-7 has an optional hotshoe EVF. I wouldn't be surprised if the next generation NX500 has some accommodation to deal with the glare on the EVF.

How would you compare it to the E-M5? Have the E-M5, and have been thinking about the NX1.

I have the EM5M2 and love it. The 5 axis IBIS is great for me as my hands aren't as steady as they used to be. The big advantage of the NX1 is the APS-C sensor and the 28MP resolution. The S lenses on the NX1 are quite good but so are the m43 pro lenses. For me the m43 2X crop factor is a big deal because I more often shoot longer focal lengths. The 100-300mm gives 600mm for birding, not so fast focusing and not the IQ of Nikon/Canon lenses at that focal length but affordable and portable. I often go out slung with both the NX1 and the EM5 to cover wide and long focal ranges without lens changes.

So unless you have some cash burning a hole in your pocket I would stick with the EM5 for now or upgrade to the EM5 II. Samsung doesn't have the range of lenses that m43 offers yet and the S lenses are really expensive. Both Canon and Nikon have some great f4 lenses which are lighter and affordable. So far Samsung seems bent on providing only fast pro lenses the f2.8 300mm they're working on is huge and will probably be very expensive, I would rather have an f4 version.

Only you can decide wether the NX1 is for you. If you get one you will feel as if you're using a dslr because the weight of the S lenses makes the kit feel massive compared to m43 gear.

--
Michael

I get the random freezing when shooting too. I've tried to mitigate things by shooting raw only instead of raw + jepg, turning off image review, keeping my bursts to 3-4 frames, waiting for the buffer to clear before firing off another burst and so on. Unfortunately it still happens.

Turning off the camera hasn't worked for me, so I have to pull the battery. This is especially annoying because I always have the grip on. So I have to take off the grip, pop the internal battery, then put everything back together. This is the only camera I've owned that shows this behavior. I hope its something that can be addressed.

I had a shoot at a preschool for some promo/website photos - spent an hour of shooting about 150 frames - the NX1 froze twice. I put twice as many on the D750 with no issues. Little quirks like this make it difficult for me to part ways with a DSLR for good.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the NX1 is soooo close, just needs a little more refinement. Hopefully we won't have to wait for a NX2 to get it right.