Samsung has a reputation of manufacturing smart products with professional design, and their designs involve lot of ‘cool’ factors. The NX1000 is another ‘smart’ camera from the Samsung stable with multifunctional buttons and a intelligent features. The 20.3 megapixels NX1000 is an ILCC with an APS-C sensor.
Design and Build Quality Samsung seems to be obsessed with the colour white. We wonder if this has anything to do with their fight with Apple. The NX1000 too is white (we have not yet seen a different coloured piece on the Samsung India website). The camera is made in China, but as we always insist, China does not always mean poor quality. The NX1000 is nicely crafted and feels well built with a sturdy polycarbonate body and a textured, protruding grip. Though the grip is not rubber, it is non-slippery. The tripod and lens mounts are metal.
Key Features
The 20.3-megapixel Samsung NX1000 uses an APS-C Type (23.5 x 15.7mm) CMOS sensor with an RGB primary colour filter for imaging. The sensor features Super Sonic Drive dust reduction system, which shakes off any dust particle from the sensor. The camera accepts Samsung NX mount lenses (Though there are 8 lenses listed on Samsung international website, only one lens is available in India as of now). Samsung uses Optical Image Stabilisation and hence there is no Image Stabilisation mechanism in the body. It uses contrast detect autofocus and the focussing modes are Single AF, Continuous AF, and MF. Focussing points option are 1 point (Free Selection), 15 points, and 35 points. The camera can detect up to 10 faces. Shutter speed ranges from 30 to 1/4000 sec with an additional Bulb option (4 minutes). The camera uses TTL 221 block segment metering and the metering options are Multi, Centre, and Spot. Exposure can be compensated up to +/-3EV in 1/3 EV steps. Sensitivity ranges from ISO 100 to 12,800. The camera can record still images in JPEG and Raw (SRW ) format at a maximum size of 5472 x 3648 pixels. The NX1000 can capture continuous frames at 8 frames per second, for up to 11 shots in JPEG High quality or Raw. Burst mode provides options of 10, 15, and 30 frames per second. Videos are recorded in MP4 (H.264) format with the best quality of 1920 x 1080 pixels at 30 fps. Self-timer can be set from 2 to 30 sec. The camera features White Balance options of Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Fluorescent ( White Light, Neutral, Daylight), Tungsten, Flash, Custom, and K (Manual). White Balance can be adjusted by 7 steps each in Amber, Blue, Green, and Magenta axes. Shooting modes available are Smart Auto, Program, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, Manual, Lens Priority, Magic, Scene, Movie, and Wi-Fi. Scene mode provides preset settings for Panorama (Live, 3D), Beauty shot, Night, Landscape, Portrait, Children, Sports, Close-Up, Text, Sunset, Dawn, Backlight, Fireworks, Beach & Snow, and 3D Photo. Smart filters include Vignetting, Miniature, Fish-Eye, Sketch, De-fog, Halftone Dots, Soft Focus, Old Film1, Old Film2, Negative, and Selective Colour with four colour modes. The NX1000 does not feature a built-in-flash, but Samsung bundles an external flash with the SEF8A kit (which also includes a 30.8-77mm equivalent f/3.5-5.6 lens) which can be attached to the standard accessor y shoe on the camera. The flash has a Guide Number of 8m at ISO100. Flash modes are Smart Flash, Auto, Auto+Red-eye reduction, Fill-in, Fill-in+Red-eye reduction, 1st Curtain, 2nd Curtain, and Off. Flash syncs with the camera at 1/180s or slower shutter speeds. Flash exposure can be compensated up to +/-2EV in 0.5EV steps.
The Samsung NX1000 uses a 7.62cm, 921,000-dot TFT LCD and is powered by a 1030mAh BP1030 Li-ion battery. The camera body weighs 222g without battery and memory card and has dimensions of 114.0 x 62.5 x 37.5mm.
Ergonomics
As mentioned above, the textured grip provides a secure feel. All controls are easily accessible and the LCD is clear and responsive, though we could observe slight pixel jitter in dark areas. We received the camera with a 20-50mm (30.8-77mm equivalent) kit lens, which features iFunction (iFn), a special feature on certain Samsung lenses. The iFunction button allows you to control different features (depending on the shooting mode) through the front ring (normally used for focussing). For example, in Aperture Priority mode, this can be used to switch between Aperture and Exposure compensation and control these using the focus ring. I found this quite useful for making quick adjustments. The menu is simple and easy to navigate.
Performance
The Samsung NX1000 performed reasonably well in our tests. Since we received the equipment in kit form, we have also included the parameters that are dependent on the lens. So this is essentially the test of how the NX1000 – 20-50mm combination performed.
Autofocus was reasonably fast, considering that the body was combined with the relatively slow kit lens. AF locked on even under low light. We observed very slight darkening of corners at the wide-angle end with the lens wide open, but this vanished completely at f/5.6. Slight flare was seen with mild chromatic aberration under strong against-the-light shots, but you will notice this only if you deliberately look for it. Out-of-the-box JPEGs appeared sharp and f/8 was found to be the sharpest aperture. The three metering modes performed well, as expected. Slight barrel distortion was observed from 20 to 24mm and slight pincushion distortion at 50mm.
Auto White Balance produced slight cast under most lighting conditions, but this could be corrected easily in post processing. You might not even notice this in normal everyday shots. Native print size was 12.16 x 18.24 inches at 300 ppi. At 25 percent of the screen size, images were usable up to ISO 3200. Both ISO 6400 and 12,800 were quite noisy. Even ISO 3200 showed slight noise. Enlarged to 50 percent, images up to ISO 400 were spotless, while slight noise could be observed at ISO 800. Viewed at 100 percent of the screen size, ISO 400 showed very slight noise, while ISO 800 was noisy. Overall, the images were perfectly usable up to ISO 1600.
Value for Money
The Samsung NX1000 retails at an MRP of Rs.34,900 along with the kit lens. In an ongoing offer on the Indian e-store, Samsung provides a free Galaxy Tab 2 (P3110) worth Rs.12,899 along with the NX1000. Even without this offer, the price seems fair for an ILCC with an APS-C size sensor and 20
megapixels.
+ APS-C sensor
+ Good build quality
+ Fair Performance
+ Price
– Only one lens available in India as of now
| FINAL SCORE | |
| Design and Build Quality | 18/20 |
| Key Features | 18/20 |
| Ergonomics | 17/20 |
| Performance | |
| Autofocus | 3/5 |
| Metering | 5/5 |
| Noise Control | 4/5 |
| Sharpness | 4/5 |
| LCD/EVF | 3/5 |
| Auto White Balance | 3/5 |
| Sub-Total | 22/30 |
| Value for Money | 8/10 |
| Grand Total |
83/100 |
Verdict
Samsung has managed to fit an APS-C size sensor on to an ILCC and still keep the size as small and light as one with a smaller sensor. With the camera performing well, we see no reason to keep it off the Best Buy list. However, the non- availability of other lenses makes this only as good as a fixed lens camera.
Sujith Gopinath
