NX500 - Disappointed by AF performance

andre95 wrote:

Dear All,

so far, I have been quite happy with my NX500. However, yesterday was my daughter's birthday and I actually felt let down a bit by the camera.

Regardless of the camera used, the time to test camera settings should always be before the event you intend to shoot, not during one's daughter's birthday party.

While it often performed nicely as usual, I noticed four things which disappointed me:

1. AF performance with the 30mm is poor, often hunting, taking ages to find focus

2. I have set AF Release Priority to Focus - Shooting Speed Priority. So far this worked usually very good, but yesterday I had a lot of shots which were just completely out of focus. I don't know whether setting it to "Accuracy" would have helped, but such a poor performance is not acceptable no matter what setting...

3. I don't know whether it is the same as in (1.) and/or (2.) but I had (unavoidably) a lot of shots against light (my daughter blowing out the candles, in a well-lit room, but with a brighter window behind her). Although a green square was shown spot on the face of my daughter, a lot of images were either completely out of focus, or the focus was on something completely different (e.g. the cake topper) surely not in the AF square (and also not a brighter object).

4. In particular for shots of persons with a window in the background, the camera actually didn't take shots (with 30mm). It was hunting for finding AF, and then didn't find it and just gave up... My wife wanted to take pictures, and gave it back to me, frustrated, just saying that the camera doesn't take pictures... I didn't want to tell her that my new 600€ toy just needs a few more attempts (and 6 year olds at the dinner table are reluctant to constantly smile at you while the camera takes ages and several attempts to actually release the shutter...)

Luckily I took literally hundreds of shots,

Your daughter and everyone else must have been camera weary.

At almost every event I cover involving children performing or interacting with each other, parents are using their phones or cameras, almost constantly, to the point of being photographers/videographers more than being parents enjoying the moments of their children's performances.

Strongly lit backgrounds always inhibit AF of any camera. The best is using Single Shot AF with a small box at center.

so that I have good images. But AF performance in these conditions (which were not really challenging or poor) is worse than with my old NX100.

Some information for clarification

- When I say blurred/out of focus, I'm not pixelpeeping. I refer to something were I (and my wife) immediately say "delete" when viewed full screen on a 14" laptop.

- I usually shoot in A mode, adjusting ISO (put on second wheel) to get a sufficiently short exposure time (usually at least 1/60s, often 1/100 or faster). I know the difference between motion blur and out-of-focus shots.

The minimum I shoot people at is 1/160, especially children being children.

- Only today I realised that OIS 1 was on. But it shouldn't make that big a difference...

- Body firmware is 1.10. I haven't had the time to play in the newest one...

Not good on your part.

- Most problems appeared with the 30mm, but also with the 16-50mm PZ

- Drive mode was continuous normal

This was your big mistake.

Sorry, I just had to get this out. As I said, I'm usually very happy with the camera, but not yesterday...

Best wishes,

I suggest you download the user manual and read and apply its information. This will enable you to separate camera issues from operator issues.

Please take my tone as being constructive in nature knowing the truth can sometimes be painful.