Review Date: June 17, 2013
Category: Beginner to Serious Amateur
Samsung NX300
Photoxels Gold Award – Interchangeable Lens Camera
USER’S EXPERIENCE
Thursday, May 16, 2013 – Here’s what I receive in the box:
- Samsung NX300 [black body with silver top plate]
- No memory card
- Li-ion Battery BP1130 7.6V 1130mAh 8.58Wh
- Travel Adapter ETAOU61JBE (used in conjunction with the USB cable)
- External Flash SEF8A
- Neck Strap
- Body Cap
- USB cable CB5MUO5E
- Documentation: User Manual (Quick Reference Guide)
- Software CD: User Manual (detailed), Multimedia Viewer, PC Auto Backup, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4
- Samsung 1:3.5-5.6 18-55mm III OIS i-Function kit lens (Filter diameter: 58mm) with lens hood
Enjoyable. While some brands are veering toward a more yesteryear retro look, the Samsung NX300 firmly looks forward with a futuristic smooth and organic design. It is a handsome camera with flowing lines, rounded curves and excellent handling with one of the best implemented controls layout and one of the most pleasant screen info display I’ve ever used. It’s fast and very responsive with that rare everything-works-as-you-expect (and without having to resort to the User Manual) feeling.
The 3.3-inch tiltable AMOLED display is now a Touch Panel with a high 768k dots. It’s beautiful. You can even set Touch AF to One touch shot so that the camera focuses where you touch the screen and takes the picture. This is a great feature when the camera is on the tripod and all it takes is a gentle touch on the screen to focus and snap a photo. You would however want to turn that feature off when walking around otherwise the camera will be taking pictures willy nilly everytime your finger, button or shirt contacts the screen.
Everyone, it seems, is switching to a hybrid sensor featuring both Contrast AF and Phase Detection AF. The NX300 sensor features 105 points (Phase Detection AF) and 247 points (Contrast AF) and probably explains why AF is so fast.
Setting up Wi-Fi is usually a messy process but I surprised myself when I was able to easily setup the Wi-Fi properly for PC Auto Backup to wirelessly transfer images from the camera to my PC. I was also able to set up my Android smartphone to use as a Remote Viewfinder. So now I can use my smartphone as a remote controller to trigger the NX300.
PC Auto Backup is a joy to use and means no more hunting for a USB cable anymore. It will transfer JPEG, RAW and MP4 files wirelessly. Note that it seems to me that Auto Backup will not launch if Multimedia Viewer (or i-Launcher) is running.
The new Multimedia Viewer software does its job but I don’t like the pop-up windows. For example, if you want information about an image, you need to pop-up a separate window to view properties (though you do get a short version just by mousing over an image). Then close the pop-up window and click on another image to pop-up the properties window again. It gets tiresome real quick. Also, Multimedia Viewer does not display any of your RAW files, requiring you to launch a separate RAW converter software (not included) to view and edit them. Another pain in the neck “feature” is that it does not save your last file path, requiring you to laboriously navigate to it everytime you launch the software. It does not playback movies well, depending on the amount of available memory on your PC.
A Quick Reference Guide in how to setup and operate your camera is provided in print. The detailed User Manual is on the CD, which means you can’t carry it with you, but on the other hand it is easily searchable. While the User Manual [pdf] does a pretty good job in explaining the various features and functions of the camera, links are missing, i.e. it mentions page numbers but you cannot click on them to get there immediately.
About the sweetest freebie is the inclusion of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5. You however need to be running Mac OS or Windows Vista and above.
Samsung markets the iFn feature as a compelling advantage that its lenses have over other brands. I am not quite sold on this though some photographers love this feature. Using the manual focus ring to perform different functions taxes my brain and I have to constantly verify what function it is currently set at. I would rather have an aperture ring around the lens that does just one thing: change aperture.
All serious cameras should feature a shutter speed dial and an aperture ring. These two features should be a constant so that moving from one camera to the next, irrespective of brand, should not require one to relearn how to set the basic exposure settings of the camera.
There’s no movie setting on the Mode Dial — and truth be told, you don’t need or want one. To record a video, just press the dedicated movie button; press it again to stop recording. You can’t shoot a still picture during video recording because pressing the shutter button also stops the recording. You can however pause the video recording by pressing the OK button, then resume it by pressing the OK button again. This neat feature allows you to snap your finger and make a person or thing disappear or reappear (you pause the recording, the person walks off or on the scene, and you restart the recording). Depending on the ambient sound, you may hear the sound of the zoom ring as you manually turn it to zoom.
Samsung should remove the help text that irritatingly displays whenever you switch a shooting mode. Please make it optional in the Menu.
The NX300 recharges its battery in-camera so, if you shoot a lot in the field, consider buying an external battery charger so you can recharge a spent battery while you keep shooting with a spare battery.
What I like about the NX300:
- Very good to excellent image quality from ISO 100 to ISO 800, with very usable images up to ISO 3200.
- Complete shutter speed range available in all PASM modes.
- Very good build and looks.
- Fast and precise AF.
- High resolution AMOLED screen, now tiltable and Touch Panel.
- Focus Peaking function makes manual focus a breeze.
- Best screen info display.
- Tripod socket is now centered and inline with the lens.
No review is complete without a couple of improvement suggestions:
- Need a built-in pop-up tiltable flash.
- Some people need a Hi-res EVF
- Make Shooting Mode help display optional
Samsung NX300
The Samsung NX300 answers almost all the needs of the enthusiast photographer and of those learning digital photography. However, if Samsung wants to convince photographers to switch to its brand, it needs to build not just a great camera, but a great camera system that appeals to many different types of photographers. Photographers need to know that Samsung NX cameras are here to stay and that their investment in its cameras, lenses and accessories will last a lifetime of enjoyable photography — wherever their interests take them now and tomorrow, whether to explore macro photography, portrait photography or astro photography. The fact that Samsung continues to introduce new lenses (12 as at time of writing) for the NX System is a good sign.
Since Samsung used Open Source code in a number of its components, it is also making the NX300 firmware code available to users.
Like the NX210 before it, the Samsung NX300 is a great enthusiast camera. It takes great pictures, is intuitive and is a compact mirrorless Interchangeable Lens Camera that serious photographers will enjoy using in spades. It is fast, has a beautiful titltable AMOLED Touch Panel screen and effortlessly captures great images even at high ISOs. Highly Recommended.
Next: Samsung NX300 QuickFact Sheet / Buy
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