Advantages NX500 over NX300.

Hi LiveM, yes, I kind of left Samsung because I did not enjoy the jpegs from my NX500. I owned 3 NX500 (two black and a brown). I bought the two black ones together since an ebay seller had a bunch of like new NX500s and I couldn't resist. I then sold my older brown copy and one of the black ones. But I did have about a month with all three and I tested all of them and the jpegs they produced looked identical.

I wanted to upgrade my glass. At this point I had the 20-50, 20, 30, 16-50 and was using a Canon 10-22 with an Iris adapter. To get the cash to upgrade I decided to sell my NX300, NX3000, and NX2000 and and one of my NX Minis since I had Samsung's flagship compact and assumed it would give me better output than the other NXs I owned. So at this point I had the Mini and my NX500.

Before upgrading to S glass we went on a small 5 day vacation and I took my remaining two NXs with me. When I got home I realized how much more lively and 3D like the NX Mini jpegs were over the NX500. I had compared the Mini jpegs to my other 20MP NXs in the past and while they have their own character they still shared that liveliness. It's not so much the colors it's more a lack of 3D or a flatness I experienced with the NX500. I played around with the picture wizard but still could not get the pictures to look less flat (flat in comparison to my other Samsungs). I'm mostly talking landscapes, I do have some beautiful portray shots (regarding color and feel) with the 30mm on the NX500 but I also have just as beautiful shots from my other NXs.

I'm sure there are plenty users that will disagree about the NX500. We all have our preferences and tastes about what we want from a jpeg, but I eventually could not live with the NX500 jpegs with the NX500 being my main camera.

I sold all my NX gear including all lenses except for my NX Mini. I moved to Micro Four Thirds and bought into a number of awesome lenses and a GX85 (which I sold now). However, after a while I started missing the Samsung colors and jpeg character. It is special and I missed it so much I ended up buying (and for the first time trying) the NX3300 with another 16-50.

And strangely enough I did not like the output. The NX3300 to me definitely had a different output than my NX3000 in the past. The NX3300 displayed a similar flatness to me so I too sold it. In fact, some of my most lively pictures came from my NX3000. It's default jpeg settings were a little on the over-sharpened contrasty side, but that can be easily changed. But the NX300 and NX3000 have very similar output.

Anyways, long response, but I realized I don't want to miss the Samsung output from my NX300 and NX3000, so I bought myself a Galaxy NX, as I found a good deal. It is supposedly based on the NX300. I bought 3 more lenses for it. I now have the 16-50, the 30, the 18-200 and 50-200. Somehow the 30 worked best on my NX500 even though on my NX300/0 I especially loved the 20.

The Galaxy NX, the 30 and the 18-200 are in Germany at my parents' house (I bought these on German Ebay) and I haven't tried them yet. Here in Seattle I have the 16-50 and 50-200 and I use them on my NX Mini with the elusive Samsung adapter.

The 50-200 is an amazing zoom on the Mini, but the wide end is too tight. Hoping the 18-200 will be sharp on it since only the center is used. If it is I'll sell the 50-200. But that's food for another post.

In closing I wonder if the NX500 sensor performs best with higher resolving/ sharper lenses like the e.g. 30, 45 and S series. I have not had a chance to try any of the S lenses, but at this point I won't invest in them. Maybe the 28MP sensor out-resolves lenses like the 20 or the 16-50 and thus we get the perceived flatness in jpegs. I just know that for me as an amateur photographer the NX300/0 is plenty sharp with the cheaper lenses and jpeg output is superb. Another NX500 with let's say the 16-50S or the 12-24 would be a too expensive buy for me especially considering that if anything goes wrong with our Samsungs we're now on our own.