30mm vs 18-55mm, 20-50mm, 20mm or...

[timedrun]

The 16mm is more like 15mm in raw, it corrects to 16mm AFAIK.

The 20mm is a little bit more compact than the 20-50mm, but not a lot really, it also uses the same filters as the other compact lenses and it's front element doesnt rotate when it focuses, which again makes it more filter friendly. Personaly I see no reason to buy the 20mm if already got the 16mm and/or the 20-50mm.

 

[de_klaas]

monkeybrain wrote:

One option for you that doesn't require you spending any money is using the 30mm in portrait orientation and stitching together shots to make a wider landscape shot; it's a good solution because the 30mm is such a good lens, certainly a lot better than the 18-55 or 20-50mm.

That's a good suggestion for serious shots, but I'm looking for something more simple. I have a FF system for my more 'serious' work. The Samsung gets mainly used on family outings.

Regarding focus speed, what do you typically take pictures of? I haven't noticed any huge difference in focus speed between the 30 and 20-50, but then I mainly take pictures of landscapes or people standing in front of landscapes so I don't care much about focus speed.

My family outings usually include some kids running and playing. Better AF would be great because the NX11 + 30mm is barely usable for that. However, I think that the body is a big part of that problem.

Surprised no one has mentioned the 16mm. The photos posted on this forum using it have been great, and its definitely better than the 20-50 or 18-55. I'd seriously consider it and it's very reasonably priced.

Some reviews I've seen have reported soft borders, so I'm not sure if this lens is indeed better than the kitzooms. Besides that, doesn't the 16mm have issues with the 20MP sensors?

 

[de_klaas]

trac63 wrote:

I really wish people would stop obsessing about "IQ".

I'm not obsessed, I just want a decent lens. My 18-55 is not decent.

The differences between the 30mm and 18-55mm set at 30mm are so small that they are practically irrelevant in real-world photography. Even looking at 100% crops one would be hard-pressed to see any difference between the two.

Based on the reviews I'd say the same but based on my personal experience I strongly disagree. If you can't see the difference at 100% you really need to get better glasses or a new monitor. Maybe I'm imagining things (because I know how the lens performs at 100%) but I think I can spot the difference in a web size picture. Again, maybe my sample is simply bad. If I can find the time I'll try to post some side-by-side results.

 

[tjobbe]

de_klaas wrote

My family outings usually include some kids running and playing. Better AF would be great because the NX11 + 30mm is barely usable for that. However, I think that the body is a big part of that problem.

the 30mm isn't one of the fastest ones in the NX lens lineup but rather a slow one which is why I prefer the 20mm for street as that is beside the low price (when buying used) the biggest advantage of that pancake.

As well the 30mm rattles and is similar to the 20-50 a but noisy so the main usage of the 30mm for me is really night shots or those where you need the DoF at open aperture. As the 45mm has a significantly faster AF I prefer that in the meantime.

I agree that using the NX11 you will hardly recognize the difference but with the NX20 and NX300 that counts for me.

 

[jonathanj]

I agree with the posts above suggesting the 12-24, I recently purchased mine and although I haven't haven't had it very long, I'm very much liking it so far. I also have the 16mm and I think if I'd been able to buy the 12-24 earlier, I would not have bothered buying the 16mm.

(Which is not to say the 16mm is bad, just that I think the 12-24 sems to be as good, and I generally used the 16 stopped down so the speed doesn't matter to me.)

Unfortunately I can't compare either to the 20-50, which I don't have, or the 18-55, which I barely used before giving away, but I would have thought that in conjunction with the 30mm, you would find the 12-24 more useful..

 

[trac63]

tjobbe wrote:

trac63 wrote:...

There is nothing inherently wrong with optical quality the 18-55mm kit lens from what I can tell. It's just more lens than I want to carry around.

cannot agree on that as my experience with ANY version of that lens (and I had four of them meanwhile) is a heavy tendency to flares and purple color bands when shot against the sun in different angles. That lens did spoil lots of great pictures for me, so that is one reason I avoid that.

I do not have this behavior with the others mentioned (and the 12-24 does not show any issues here at all)

The 85mm has some very mild tendency for that when used without the hood.

I have had my NX210 for a couple of months now and shot over 700 frames with the 30 and the 18-55. I have had only one instance of lens flare and it was with the 30mm. And even there I had to shoot into the sun to make it happen.

 

[de_klaas]

Here's some pictures that quite clearly show the difference between my 18-55mm and my 30mm. Feel free to check it out. If you're in a hurry just compare the upper right corner. (top: 18-55, bottom: 30mm)

Is this what's to be expected of the 18-55?





--
http://www.klaastuin.nl

 

[hootsmon]

Yes, the 18-55 image looks softer in the top-right corner, even without pixel-peeping.

 

[Chris62]

My 18-55 is as sharp as 30/2 and in better light or night pictures I use zoom because is more convenient.

30/2 I use when I want to have compact camera

 

[trac63]

There's something fishy about your two photos. Either your 18-55mm is a really bad sample or there's some sort of technique issue at play here. There's about a 1/3 stop difference in exposure, there's a noticeable difference in colour rendition, and the 18-55 seems to have much less DOF at the same f-stop and focal length, which is very strange.

Anyway, I did my own experiment.




NX210 with 30mm pancake.




NX210 with 18-55mm set at 30mm.

 

[Raf007]

If I can share my thoughts on Samsung lenses Id agree that the 30mm is the sharpest lens of them. The 20-50mm is also a very sharp at wide angles, sharper in the corners than the 20mm but only a bit, you would need to look for it to notice. The 20-50mm is a little narrower then the 20mm but uncorrected is actually much wider. It can be seen by opening RAW file in a converter which doesn't apply any corrections automatically. After corrections, at 20mm the perspective distortions are still more visible then in case of the 20mm 2.8. The vertical lines converge a little bit more than in pics taken with the 20mm 2.8, so for architecture the 20mm may be a better choice. It is the slowest lens to focus (the difference between them is really only noticeable in a bad light), it is also very noisy so forget about video and the front part is rotating when focusing so you can't attach any filters except for protective ones. Overall the 20-50mm performs optically very similar to the 20mm and if you got it already as a kit lens and dont care much about a little faster focusing and 1/3 stop of speed advantage you may have little reason to buy the 20mm.

The 20mm is a very decent lens. Its main fault is that the 20-50mm is also very good at 20mm. It is the cheapest lens in NX line, I paid for mine only £80 so no regrets even if I don't use it often.

The 18-55mm focus very fast, is silent and has OIS what makes it a very good lens for video. The lens suffers from focus breathing more than the other lenses but for me it isnt important. It is a pretty sharp in the centre but less sharp in the corners then the 20-50mm, except for longer focal length. When you get close to 50mm the 20-50mm becomes very soft, I never use it at 50mm. The 18-55mm on the other hand doesnt change the sharpness and is very usable at 55mm, it should be better lens for portraits.

The 18-55mm has a very plasticy feeling. I think it is the worst lens in terms of build quality. Specially the focus ring feels very flimsy. I know it is just a kit lens but Samsung should have done better here.

My favourite lens is the 30mm due to size, speed and sharpness. As a walk-around lenses I prefer the 20-50mm to the 18-55mm mainly because of the size, good quality and the fact that its bokeh is a bit more pleasant for the eye then the 18-55mm'.

Just my two cents

 

[de_klaas]

trac63 wrote:

There's something fishy about your two photos. Either your 18-55mm is a really bad sample or there's some sort of technique issue at play here. There's about a 1/3 stop difference in exposure, there's a noticeable difference in colour rendition, and the 18-55 seems to have much less DOF at the same f-stop and focal length, which is very strange.

I noticed exactly the same which is why I started this thread ;-)

I shot both (series) with the camera on a tripod, self timer, same focus point etc etc, so I don't think it's a technique issue. Actually, I first shot these with the OIS enabled, saw the results and thought it might be the effect of the OS on a tripod. So I disabled the OIS but the results were exactly the same. The difference in colour rendition may be related to the use of AWB. I'd have to check that in LR.

I just noticed this line in the Photozone.de review: "We tested two samples of this lens. The centering quality wasn't really great in both cases. Based on what we've seen so far you need to be generally cautious with Samsung's OIS lenses in this respect."

Maybe my lens suffers from severe decentering?

Anyway, I did my own experiment.

Thanks! There's still a difference (as could be expected), but the quality of your 18-55 seems very acceptable.

 

[trac63]

You can see on my examples that the 30mm still underexposes by 1/3 stop compared to the 18-55mm.

You can also see the greenish cast under artificial light and manual WB with both lenses.

 

[TJL LTFF]

Sergiusbr wrote:

Hello all,

I have both 18-55mm (version I and vII) and both are very sharp kit lens (much better than my NEX5n 18-55mm kit). I prefer the NX 18-55 - vI as It has the OIS on/off button (direct access) in the lens (no need to menu).

With all this talk about these NX lenses, it got me thinkiing about mine. I have the 16 & 20mm's that I've used the most lately (with the 30mm being used the next most). So I went in search of any photo I may have taken with my 3 year old 18-55 vI at its widest on the NX20. There is only one.

After taking a closer look at my only example, I'm now interested in trying it out more; because my one example compares very favorably with the two wide primes. Will it hold up well under further scrutiny? Just maybe I have one of the good 18-55's. It should be fun checking it out.

Here's my one and only fl18mm with the lens+NX20:

 

[de_klaas]

Since the NX11 is my 2nd camera and I'm not planning to upgrade to a newer body soon I decided to buy a used 20-50mm. It came with a NX100 attached for less than the price of a new 20-50mm ;-)

 

[sixfootzero]

Nice!

 

[de_klaas]

Added the 12-24 to my little collection today. Couldn't resist the €400,- price tag ;-)

Now I'm afraid I'll have to update my body as well to unlock the full potential of the lens...

 

[tecnoworld]

Great! Please post some pics when you have time!

 

[Ralf Bauer]

I can't help but find the Samsung 20-50mm lens nothing short than sensational. I have 3 copies of it. Each of them as good. I rarely put it off. Concerning sharpness at 30mm I cannot find a visible difference to the 30mm lens. The difference is .... the 20-50mm lens at 30mm that means F4.5 which is TWO and a HALF Stop slower. So the 30mm lens, that is a different kind of light beast.

Find my aperture series of theses lenses here: (fullsize shots provided)

http://www.ihobs.de/tmp/samsung_lens_comparison

I did not mount the 18-55mm lens that evening ... now I regret it.

 

[de_klaas]

tecnoworld wrote:

Great! Please post some pics when you have time!

I hope to receive the lens this weekend. As soon as I've shot something interesting I'll show it here ;-)