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The Samsung NX10, a system camera and it is small because it lacks a pentaprism and instant return mirror.
I got chatting to some ePHOTOzine members in the bar (where else?) at the recent Focus on Imaging show and one of them had a very interesting opinion on the lines of, ‘Is it right for a system camera not to have a reflex mirror in it?' Leaving aside Leica M cameras, what the chap was clearly referring to was the rash of Micro Four Thirds format cameras that have appeared from Olympus and Panasonic. This camera type has done away with traditional aspects of design that date back 50 years, ie gone are the pentaprism and the instant return reflex mirror, thus saving weight and space for the user and material and production costs for the manufacturers. It’s win-win.
The Micro Four Thirds system camera market has materialised very quickly and shown that there is a demand for compact cameras with interchangeable lenses. The Samsung NX10 has jumped on the bandwagon but using an APS-C sized sensor rather than Four Thirds and a new lens mount, the NX mount.
As an aside, for those of you interested in camera trivia, the first SLR with a pentaprism was the Contax S (1949) and the first camera with an instant return mirror was the very rare Hungarian-made Gamma Duflex (1948) and only 800 were ever made. The first Japanese made SLR with instant return mirror was the Asahiflex IIb (1954).
Anyway, back to the present-day, The NX10 is in the shops now and has a guide price of £600 with the standard 18-55mm OIS lens. However, the street price is already down to £490 with the same lens.
Samsung NX10: Features
Small size does not mean that the camera's features list is compromised. Far from it. The NX10 is brimming with features, a mix of stuff aimed at experienced and inexperienced photographers.
Aimed at the less experienced user, for example, there's a long list of Scene modes. Portrait, landscape and night are common but there are some more exotic ones such as fireworks, sunset and something called Beauty Shot.
For keen photographers, there is the usual array of exposure modes, PASM: program, aperture-priority, shutter-priority and manual. To modify exposure settings there is the usual powerful trinity of exposure modification tools: exposure lock, compensation and bracketing. A noteworthy feature of the metering system is the multi-zone measurement system that utilises no fewer than 247 zones.
The autofocus system relies on 15 sensor points in normal use and 35 in close-up, with the choice of using all of them or just one. Face detection and self-portrait AF modes are also options. The single zone AF function allows you to move that zone around to the relevant part of the frame. The sensor allows you to shoot at the 14Mp resolution with its image ratio of 3:2, or if you prefer a more panoramic format you can select a 16:9 picture ratio and a resolution of 12Mp.
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19/04/2010 12:58
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