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Posts Tagged ‘Dale’s’

Gear of the Year: Dale’s choice – Fujifilm X-Pro3

20 Dec
Photo: Dan Bracaglia

I think we can all agree that 2020 has been an unpredictable year, so it seems appropriate that my gear of the year is a camera I wouldn’t have predicted a few months ago: the Fujifilm X-Pro3.

But first, a bit of context.

Some of my earliest photography was done with a hand-me-down rangefinder camera, a Kodak Retina IIc. I loved the experience of shooting it and still remember exactly how it felt in my hands. I even remember how it smelled, no doubt the result of the grease used to lubricate gears, something you don’t get from digital cameras today.

However, as much as I love rangefinders, I’ve never had a natural knack for focusing them. I can do it, but it’s not my superpower. To this day, I have tremendous respect for photographers who can quickly and accurately focus a rangefinder.

Mt. Jefferson in Oregon’s Cascade Mountains. Velvia film profile, processed in-camera.

ISO 160 | 1/250 sec | F2.0 | XF 18mm F2 R

That’s a roundabout way of explaining why I mostly shot with SLRs for so many years and never lusted after a Leica.

This is where Fujifilm comes into the story, but maybe not in the way you’d expect. You see, I was never so much a fan of the X-Pro series, which always seemed big and chunky, but rather of the fixed-lens X100. I didn’t need one, but from the day I first used an X100 in person, I wanted one. Badly. It was sexy, compact, and provided a shooting experience similar to a rangefinder, but with autofocus. Eventually, I broke down and bought the X100T, and it remains my most-used camera to this day.

With that in mind, I suppose it seems odd that I picked the X-Pro3 as my gear of the year instead of the X100V, so I should probably get around to explaining that.

Pre-pandemic family gatherings. Acros film profile, processed in-camera.

ISO 5000 | 1/80 sec | F2.8 | XF 23mm F2 R WR

It turns out the thing that made me enjoy the X-Pro3 most was the exact thing I expected to dislike about it: the inverted rear screen, which is undoubtedly the most polarizing feature of the camera. Unlike most cameras, the X-Pro3’s screen folds inward and remains hidden until deliberately folded out. There’s an extra step required to access menus or, more importantly, to chimp images.

I trained myself years ago not to ‘chimp’ images on the back of a camera when doing work for clients; I didn’t think it conveyed professionalism or confidence. When shooting for fun, however, I’m like most people. I like to see my photos right away. Because instant gratification.

With the X-Pro3, I shoot differently. Nothing actually prevents me from flipping open the screen to look at my images, but a glance at the back of the camera reminds me that that’s not what this camera is about. The thought of flipping open that screen feels like cheating, so I don’t.

Cowboy country. Astia film profile, processed in-camera.

ISO 320 | 1/170 sec | F6.4 | XF 55-200mm F3.5-4.8 R LM OIS

It’s a subtle shift in mindset, but one that I’m really enjoying. I find myself having more of those zen moments where it’s just me, the camera and my subject. By removing the temptation even to look, I’m spending more time taking in what’s around me, looking through the viewfinder, and just enjoying the journey. I can look at the photos later.

I’m starting to fully realize how the presence of a screen impacts the way I shoot a digital camera, and I’m beginning to appreciate why someone might spring for a model like the Leica M10-D, which has no screen at all.

The only area where I feel let down by the X-Pro3 is its hybrid optical viewfinder, which is a core part of the camera’s experience. Viewfinders on previous X-Pro models had a magnifier that would engage depending on the attached lens’s focal length, allowing the user to view frame lines for a pretty wide variety of lenses.

Home on the range. Astia film profile, processed in-camera.

ISO 640 | 1/3200 sec | F4.0 | XF 18mm F2 R

That’s missing on the X-Pro3. You can’t see frame lines for lenses wider than 23mm (equivalent to 35mm), which I notice when shooting Fujifilm’s 18mm F2, though fortunately, that lens’s field of view pretty closely matches the viewfinder itself. The EVF is very usable, and I’ll switch over to it at times, but it takes away some of the magic.

Many people pigeon-hole the X-Pro3 as a camera for street photography only, which is unfortunate because it’s really quite versatile. I’m definitely not a street photographer, yet to my delight, I found it to be an incredibly satisfying camera.

A lot of unexpected things happened this year, and not all of them were bad. I got to know my family better, even over FaceTime, I spent more time with my pets, and I caught up on projects that have languished for years. I also discovered a camera that brings me joy and reminds me of why I started taking pictures in the first place. That feels like a pretty good way to start 2021.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Gear of the Year 2019 – Dale’s choice: Laowa 15mm Zero-D

20 Dec
Photo: Dan Bracaglia

I feel like I’m stretching the rules a wee bit for my 2019 gear of the year by choosing a lens that was technically launched a couple years ago. However, Venus Optics released the Laowa 15mm F2 Zero-D in Nikon Z-mount and Canon RF-mount this year, and since I’ve been using the Nikon version I’m going to call it a 2019 product.

Before you protest, let me review the rules for our gear of the year selections:

  1. The gear you enjoyed using most this year.
  2. If there’s any ambiguity, refer to rule #1.

OK, with that out of the way let’s do this.

If you’ve been visiting the site for a while you may have noticed that over the past few years I’ve become a keen aurora borealis photographer. No matter how many times I see the northern lights I never get tired of them. It’s addictive, and I mean that in a good way. In the process I’ve experimented with a lot of different gear in an effort to find my ideal kit, and I’m really loving this Laowa lens.

Processed to taste in Adobe Lightroom.
ISO 10,000 | 2 sec | F2

I should clarify what ‘ideal’ means in this context. What it doesn’t mean is absolute technical perfection. I know there are hardcore astrophotographers who care very much about technical perfection, and for good reason, but that’s not me. My goal isn’t to create technically perfect images. It’s to create art, to tell a story, to share a unique experience with others.

Yes, I want good technical quality, but I also care about factors like weight, cost and my enjoyment when using the equipment. Why? Because like everyone else I have a budget. Also, when I photograph aurora I often carry three cameras (‘carry’ being the operative word), but that means I have to carry three lenses, three tripods, yada yada yada… It starts to add up pretty quickly, so keeping things on the small side is really helpful. My back appreciates it more every year.

Processed to taste in Adobe Lightroom.
ISO 5,000 | 6 sec | F2

One of the advantage of mirrorless cameras with short flange distances is the ability to create smaller lenses at wide focal lengths, and the Laowa leverages this fact. My other favorite lens for this type of work, the Sigma 14mm F1.8, is both larger and heavier.

In terms of absolute image quality, I think the Sigma 14mm F1.8 – which I picked as my gear of the year a couple years ago – is a bit better. It’s also slightly brighter. The downside? It’s pretty freakin’ big. Three of them in my pack would be noticeably heavier and more crowded than three Laowas; enough so that it matters to me.

The Laowa 15mm F2 (left) is significantly less bulky than the Sigma 14mm F1.8 (right).

Another thing I love about this lens is its build quality. I would describe it as feeling dense; despite its all metal construction and small size it’s still a bit heavier than it looks. It reminds me a lot of my old manual focus Nikkors, including the very nicely damped focus ring.

Speaking of which, it’s entirely manual focus, but I’m shooting the night sky and it’s not like the stars are running an AF test on a bike. (I’m not suggesting Richard Butler isn’t a star in his own right, but you know what I mean.)

Is it perfect? No. There’s definitely vignetting wide open, and even for a couple stops beyond, but the lens profile in Lightroom does an admirable job of correcting it. If I really needed perfection corner-to-corner that would bother me, but I don’t.

Processed to taste in Adobe Lightroom.
ISO 5,000 | 2 sec | F2

Similarly, there are some minor ‘angel wings’ on stars in the corners due to coma, but all things considered it’s not bad. Fortunately, most people aren’t focused on the stars in my photos, but rather the lights.

I’ll admit there’s one thing that drives me bat**** crazy. The metal lens hood doesn’t lock into position securely enough, and the slightest bump knocks it out of alignment, which is easy to miss in the dark. This results in some occlusion of the image in a couple corners. I did it by accident a couple times at first, but I’ve trained myself to be ever vigilant.

Processed to taste in Adobe Lightroom.
ISO 5,000 | 4 sec | F2

Some will argue that the wide angle Rokinons are better and even more affordable. Maybe they are, but in my experience it depends a lot on the particular copy you get. For what it’s worth I own two of them, and neither is as good in the corners as the two Laowas I’ve used.

Is it the best wide angle lens I’ve ever used? No. Do I love using it? Yes. It’s not the right lens for everyone, but it’s certainly a great lens for me, and that’s why it’s my gear of the year.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Gear of the Year 2018 – Dale’s choice: DJI Ronin-S

30 Dec

When it came time to select my 2018 gear of the year, my first inclination was to think about cameras and lenses. After all, we’ve seen some great ones in 2018, and that would have been an easy path to follow. No doubt, I could have picked something both technically impressive and fun to use.

However, when I really thought about what product had the most impact on the quality of my work this year, both at DPReview as well as for my own projects, it wasn’t a camera at all. Rather, it was the DJI Ronin-S camera gimbal – a tool that allowed me to significantly improve the quality of my video work using the cameras and lenses that I already had.

Anyone who has shot much video knows that camera movement can be as important as composition.

Anyone who has shot much video knows that camera movement can be as important as composition, and while most cameras now include some form of image stabilization, camera-based stabilization systems can only do so much. Gimbals provide more latitude to create movement, but usually add some complexity to your shooting workflow. With the Ronin-S, I feel like I’ve found the Goldilocks combination: a great gimbal that fits so seamlessly into my workflow that I barely notice.

I was impressed with the Ronin-S almost from the moment it arrived in our office. After a few weeks of testing I was confident enough to choose it for a larger project: a documentary film I was shooting in the Peruvian Amazon.

Filming with the DJI Ronin-S in Iquitos, Peru. Photo by Matt Fraser

Like any filmmaker, I wanted to get the best results possible, but I also had some pretty strict requirements. Since I had keep my kit compact and easy to carry, I decided to shoot on a pair of Panasonic GH5s. I needed a gimbal that would work well with these cameras, could be easily reconfigured for different camera setups in the field, and which could quickly adapt to different shooting conditions on the fly.

The subject of my film was The Great Amazon River Raft Race, a 180km race down the Amazon river on rafts made from balsa logs. Over the course of this multi-day event I had to keep cameras rolling in conditions that included crowded street markets, unstable boats, and and all the rain that comes with Amazon thunderstorms.

The wide variety of shooting conditions certainly put the Ronin-S to the test, and it came through with flying colors.

I immediately came to appreciate just how quickly I could set up a camera in the field. With a bit of practice, I could balance a camera and lens combination in about a minute, which the Ronin’s auto-tune feature would then fine tune in just a few seconds.

In this b-roll clip from my film, I was shooting from the back of a 3-wheeled ‘mototaxi’ driving down a fairly rough road. The footage isn’t bounce-free, but it’s much smoother than I could have produced shooting hand-held.

The strong motors in the Ronin-S also made it possible to use zoom lenses without adjusting balance or recalibrating the system. As a result, I was able to use a single zoom lens for most of my primary filming – something particularly helpful in a location where it seems like everything around you is actively trying to contaminate a camera sensor. The ability to quickly switch among different gimbal settings at the touch of a button also saved me on more than a few occasions when the story took unexpected turns.

However, the feature I probably appreciated the most on the Ronin-S was remote camera operation, including remote follow focus with focus peaking.

As an aside, it’s worth noting that the Ronin-S can provide various levels of remote camera control, and the level of functionality differs a lot by camera model and lens. Fortunately, DJI has done an excellent job integrating it with the GH5 I chose for this project.

I’ve been asked a number of times why I didn’t use autofocus. While it’s true that the video AF on many cameras is impressively good today, it still doesn’t provide the level of control or predictability I want when filming. In contrast, I found the remote follow focus on the Ronin-S to be very precise, predictable, and easy to use.

In this b-roll clip, I was shooting from a small, moving boat with three other people in it. The camera movement came out much smoother than my experience in the boat led me to expect.

Ironically, the one thing I was actually worried about turned out to be a non-starter. With limited access to power, I had concerns about how long the Ronin’s battery would last, but it never let me down. After a full day of shooting, my arm was borderline useless while the Ronin-S had hours of power left in reserve. So much for the superiority of man over machine.

The final area where I have to give the Ronin-S high marks is what I’ll call “Dale’s jungle survivability index.” I’ve worked in the Amazon before, and electronic equipment just doesn’t do well there. It’s hot and humid, and can be very wet, dirty and muddy. It’s damn near impossible to properly clean or dry equipment in the field, especially when you’re out for multiple days at a time. I’ve had equipment failures on previous trips, but the Ronin-S took everything I could throw at it and never blinked. It’s a solid piece of equipment.

I’ve had equipment failures on previous trips, but the Ronin-S took everything I could throw at it and never blinked. It’s a solid piece of equipment.

Sure, I have a few minor complaints, such as having to leave the entire system assembled just to charge the battery or the fact that the rubber seal over the battery’s on/off button keeps falling off, but those aren’t showstoppers.

Ultimately, what makes the Ronin-S my 2018 gear of the year isn’t the fact that it’s a camera gimbal – after all, those have been around for years – but the fact that it’s so flexible, configurable, and easy to operate. My footage looks better as a result of using it, and I won’t hesitate to use it again for future projects.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Gear of the Year 2017 – Dale’s choice: Sigma 14mm F1.8 Art

01 Dec
Sigma’s 14mm F1.8 Art lens makes it easier to get shots like this.
ISO 5000 | 2 seconds | F1.8 | 14mm

Over the past couple years I’ve developed a strong interest in wide-field astrophotography. Specifically, I’ve become passionate about photographing the aurora borealis, commonly known as the northern lights.

The aurora is Mother Nature’s own special effects show, and it’s one of those things that makes you stop to just appreciate the magic of the universe. No photo, IMAX screen, or VR headset will ever replicate the experience of standing under the sky when she flips on the light switch, but maybe that’s why I’m so drawn to aurora photography in the first place: it requires me to go to where I can experience the magic in person.

There are a lot of good lenses out there for this purpose, and I’ve used quite a few of them including the legendary Nikon 14-24mm F2.8, the Rokinon 14mm F2.8, the Venus Optics Laowa 15mm F2, various 16-35mm F2.8 variants, and even Sigma’s own 20mm F1.4 Art, but once I tried the Sigma 14mm F1.8 it was game over. I knew I had found the one.

ISO 1600 | 3.2 seconds | F1.8 | 14mm

One thing you learn quickly when shooting aurora is that you need fast, wide lenses. Fast because you’re shooting at night (duh). Wide because the aurora typically covers a large portion of the sky. It also makes it easier to include some landscape to provide a sense of place. This is where the Sigma 14mm F1.8 Art lens comes in.

What makes this lens so special is the fast F1.8 aperture. That’s 1.3 EV faster than an F2.8 lens. Put another way, wide open the Sigma 14mm has a 2.5x light gathering advantage over F2.8 lenses. That’s huge.

One challenge when photographing the aurora is that it can dance around surprisingly fast at times. Even at high ISO values an exposure may be on the order of several seconds, making it difficult to capture the intricate structure you often see in person. That’s part of the reason time-lapse sequences never look as good as the real thing.

ISO 3200 | 5 seconds | F12.8 | 14mm

Using the Sigma 14mm, however, I can cut my exposure time significantly. Where the Nikon 14-24mm F2.8 might require a 6 second exposure, the Sigma lets me get away with 2.5 seconds. Still not enough to freeze the action, but enough to reduce the degree to which patterns and structure in the aurora get averaged out.

Conversely, there are times when the aurora moves slowly and I’m not too concerned about shutter speed. In that case, I can lower my ISO significantly, say from 6400 to 2500, in order to get higher quality images.

But wait, there’s more! This lens even makes it easier to focus in the dark. I typically use live view to focus on a bright star. Sounds easy, but sometimes it’s not. The extra light at F1.8 makes this easier, making shooting more fun.

Blah, blah, blah… That all means squat if the photos don’t look good. Thankfully, this lens has great image quality.

ISO 6400 | 1.3 seconds | F1.8 | 14mm

Wide open there’s some comatic aberration, which causes point sources of light near the edge of the frame to look distorted, but unless your viewer is pixel-peeping they probably won’t see it. I suppose if I were an astro purist, and the stars were the main subject of my photos, I might get a bit persnickety about this, but I’m not, so I don’t.

There’s also noticeable vignetting wide open, but it’s a smooth transition to the edges, and I’ve generally been able to correct for it effectively in Lightroom. Again, astro purists will probably cringe at this, but for aurora photos it works great.

If there’s any significant downside to this lens, it’s that it’s both big and heavy. This is one place where Sigma’s ‘Make the best optic possible and size be damned’ design approach is visible. Put a couple of these in your pack and you’re going to feel it. (Then again, some of those other lenses I mentioned above are pretty big as well.)

I’m looking forward to doing a lot more aurora photography in the future, and I’ll be doing much of it with this lens. It’s going to take a lot to displace it from my camera, which is why it’s my 2017 gear of the year.

Sigma 14mm F1.8 Art sample galleries

Sample gallery

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Astrophotography sample gallery

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Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Gear of the Year Part 4: Dale’s pick – Samsung NX1

18 Dec

Before anything else, let’s address the elephant in the room: for my Gear of the Year I’ve just selected a camera whose future appears a bit dark. As in ‘Luke, I am your father’ kind of dark. The Samsung NX1 was the camera that some photographers saw as A New Hope for the future, but there’s a disturbance in The Force with signs that the Dark Side might prevail when it comes to Samsung’s camera business. 

Some might find my lack of faith disturbing, but I have a bad feeling about this…

It wasn’t an easy choice. On the one hand, how could I choose a product that has more clouds hanging over it than the DPReview offices on a December day in Seattle? On the other, there’s a bunch of engineers somewhere who built a serious kick-ass camera that continues to impress us with its features, quality, and performance. So, yeah… I’m going with the Samsung NX1.

What I love:

  • Best in class image and video quality
  • Excellent design and handling
  • My favorite EVF of any still camera
  • Outstanding AF performance
  • Continuous improvement through firmware updates

“You must unlearn what you have learned…”

To provide a bit of context, I’m historically an SLR shooter, though I’ve gone through my share of rangefinders, compact cameras, and other random stuff that converts light into images. For the past several years I’ve relied on a system built mostly around one manufacturer’s products that I could trust day-in and day-out to work reliably and predictably when I had to get it right the first time (in my case Canon). 

But in recent years I’ve also been using a lot of mirrorless cameras, particularly Panasonic’s GH series, for video work. I love the idea of what mirrorless cameras can do, and in particular I love the flexibility they provide for shooting video. However, mirrorless cameras never provided the level of performance that I needed for some projects.

Cloud City: the Space Needle rises from a foggy Seattle sunset.

Samsung 50-150mm F2.8 S lens, ISO 100, 1/1250 sec. at F5.6

Enter the Samsung NX1. I’ll freely admit that little more than a year ago Samsung was barely on my radar as a camera manufacturer. I knew Samsung made cameras, but like that guy who shows up to every party but never gets noticed, Samsung’s products lurked in the shadows where I conveniently looked past them. Then Barney asked me to review the NX1 as one of my first assignments at DPReview.

I was blown away. The NX1 was the first mirrorless camera that made me forget that I wasn’t shooting a DSLR. And that was using a camera with pre-production firmware.

Don’t misunderstand – I’m not implying that the pre-production NX1 was perfect. The camera had a nasty habit of crashing and re-booting into German, menu items occasionally went walkabout, and a couple of lenses sometimes decided that they would no longer autofocus. But despite its flaws it was fun to use and hinted at great things to come.

Samsung fixed most of those annoyances with a firmware update, and I spent the next month shooting the NX1 almost every day, sleeping with it under my pillow to absorb its goodness, and pushing the video to its limits.

All was good in the world. Several weeks later I was ready to publish my review, but three days before it was scheduled to go live on our site Samsung released another major firmware update. That changed everything.

Samsung 16-50mm F2-2.8 S lens, ISO 4000, 1/125 sec. at F2.8 

With the updated firmware the NX1 was practically a new camera. It added numerous video features including additional frame rates, gamma curves, and other custom settings. Autofocus improved significantly for both stills and video, and new customization options gave users an additional level of control over the camera. 

My review was toast. A couple months later, after re-testing the entire camera again and writing a new review, we were ready to go to press one more time when… wait for it… Samsung released another firmware update. Fortunately, this update wasn’t as dramatic as the previous one, so we made an editorial decision to go ahead and publish anyway lest we repeat the process in perpetuity, but you get the idea.

I share this backstory because it highlights one of my favorite things about the NX1: Samsung seems (seemed?) intent on not just innovating a great product, but on a program of continued improvement. These weren’t just minor firmware updates, but things that significantly impacted the performance and value of the camera.

“Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?”

But as we all know, a camera is not just about electronics and firmware. It’s also about hardware. It needs to be well designed, solidly built, and most importantly it needs to feel right in your hand.

That last item is a bit nebulous and hard to define, but anyone who’s been shooting for more than a few years knows the feeling of picking up a camera that just feels right. I’m convinced that Samsung did the unthinkable and actually involved photographers in the design of this camera, something I can’t say about every model that comes through the DPReview offices. (And you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy, I assure you.)

Not only does the NX1 feel great in your hand, but it’s solid. Maybe not solid in a ‘I can use my Nikon F3 to pound nails into a board’ type of way (and really, what is anymore?), but it’s certainly tough enough to stand up to typical professional use.

At one point I took the NX1 on a winter shoot where the temperature hovered in the range of 0 to 5 degrees F (-18 to -15 C). Based on previous experience with mirrorless cameras I fully expected to run into trouble at some point. I didn’t. Like the Energizer Bunny the NX1 kept going, and going and going… Everything just worked, including the EVF and touch screen, for several hours in sub-freezing temperatures. I gave in before the camera did.

Some like it Hoth: Even after a couple hours outdoors working at 0? F (-18? C) temperatures, the NX1 continued to operate normally. In this case, the camera outlasted me.

Samsung 50-150mm F2.8 S lens, ISO 160, 1/500 sec. at F2.8

Speaking of the EVF, it’s one of the standout things I love about this camera. It’s clear, bright, and has essentially zero lag. You won’t mistake it for a true optical viewfinder, but it works so well that 1) I don’t care, and 2) after a short period of time I simply forget about it and just get on with shooting. I know other cameras have EVFs with similar specs for resolution and lag, but somehow Samsung has managed to make the EVF experience on the NX1 exceed the sum of its parts.

“She may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts, kid.”

The other thing that almost makes me forget I’m using a mirrorless camera when shooting the NX1 is it’s performance. I’ve shot cameras with 10 fps shooting speeds before, but even so the NX1’s 15 fps is scary fast. As in ‘you could easily tell if Greedo shot first’ fast. (Did he? Share your opinion in the comments!) And with 28MP of resolution to play with you would have plenty of detail to examine closeups of those blaster shots. Combine that speed with an AF system that, somewhat incredibly, is able to keep pace and it’s a blast to shoot with.

I say almost because high speed shooting isn’t quite perfected yet. The screen briefly freezes on each exposure, making it a tad difficult to shoot continuously while panning with a subject, and the best part of the AF system – ‘Tracking AF’ – can only be invoked from the touch screen, but overall it’s as good as almost every DSLR I’ve used, and better than most.

Samsung’s 28MP sensor doesn’t really provide any additional detail beyond the standard 24MP found on most APS-C cameras, but in terms of quality it’s right up there with the best of them, including the very impressive Nikon D7200. I also love the fact that I can push exposure in post several stops with almost no penalty to image quality, a feature I’ve leveraged to underexpose in order to preserve highlights.

This photo from Channel Islands National Park in California is actually a single frame of 4K video from the NX1. (Samsung 50-150mm F2.8 lens, exposure unrecorded)

I mentioned above that I do a lot of video work, something that has pushed me into using two parallel camera systems in recent years. In principle, the NX1 could replace both systems. Its video is as good as my go-to workhorse, the Panasonic GH4, but in a package that provides the performance of a high-end DSLR.

In fact, in my perfect world where I can use one system for everything, the NX1 comes remarkably close to meeting almost all my needs.

If we can momentarily ignore that whole ‘Will Samsung even be in the camera business in a few months?’ thing, I’m still not completely convinced that I could make a wholesale switch to the NX system as it stands today. Samsung still doesn’t have as many lens options as competing systems – though some of their lenses are outstanding – and the company hasn’t managed to foster a strong third party ecosystem of tools and adapters similar to what we’ve seen for mirrorless systems from Panasonic and Sony. As much as I like the NX1 these are real limitations.

Laugh it up, fuzzball! Samsung 50-150mm F2.8 S lens, ISO 640, 1/500 sec. at F2.8 

“Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future.”

There are no shortage of rumors about the future of Samsung’s camera business, and believe it or not we here at DPReview don’t know any more than you. But I think I speak for the whole team when I say that we would be disappointed if Samsung didn’t continue to pursue this market, especially since the company has been one of the most innovative in the business of late. Notably, the NX1 won DPReview’s 2015 Innovation Award amid some very credible competition.

Some people have suggested to that Samsung tried its luck in the camera market but never completely committed to it. I’m not convinced that’s the case, but my advice to Samsung is to be bold and heed the words a great philosopher who said ‘Do or do not. There is no try,’ and stick with it. However, in the event that the NX1’s future is not long for this galaxy, my hope is that it doesn’t go quietly into the starry night, but instead continues to live on in some form or inspires other manufacturers to make products that push the limits of what’s possible.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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