Samsung NX30 Smart Mirrorless Digital Camera with 18-55mm Lens, 20.3MP, 3" Touchscreen LCD, HDMI/USB 2.0, Wi-Fi & NFC, Black

2014-10-29T21:00:00

EVF is quite small (compared to e.g. similarly priced Olympus E-m10 and likes). Also, diopter adjuster just can't help me get the sharp picture (I need 0 and it works perfectly on every other camera I had). In fact, even the numbers shown in EVF are not sharp. On top of this, neither it adds gain or increases the fps in low light which makes it really hard to see the image. Don't remember the gain and refresh rate in Nex6 but certainly it's got much better EVF. What I remember is Fuji X-E1 which has EVF light years ahead of this one, making me see in the dark with such a great EVF. Second major thing is Autofocus. I don't know how much light it needs to use Phase Detection. Under evening indoors light or morning not so bright conditions it uses CF which is simply horrible. It hunts a lot and software fails the lock even when in focus. I can actually see the image coming into the focus but the camera continues to hunt. Horrible AF software. On top of that, I see the AF simply misses even if it locks on subject (Subject is not as sharp as it should be). Maybe the software has a bug and it locks few inches from the subject (will need to test more). Picture preview shows the bare picture only and I can't put the histogram there. That means I always need to press Play to see the picture. On top of that, when shooting using EVF and you move back to see the image on LCD, the preview goes away and the camera is in shooting mode again. This is the ultimate failure - even if not important enough it tells you the camera was never evaluated by anybody who can call himself a photographer. There is no way to quickly adjust Flash compensation. This is ironical given all the "customization" buttons that I just can't assign to what I want. There is iFn+ mode (that drops iFn mode) that lets you assign three buttons. But things you can assign are nothing useful. On top of that, iFn+ mode is actually iFn hold + additional button. So, there was no reason not to have original iFn functionality (press and release)even if iFn+ is enabled, yet it's not there. Very messed-up controls. E.g. type of AF (CAF, SAF etc) vs fancy AF stuff (touch, face detection) are all over the place and I don't even see those in the menu - depending on the shooting mode you'll have one menu accessible from main screen one menu accessible from Fn button etc. Then in the same shooting mode it might be on the LCD or not... Overall, there is just too much fiddling - if confused how to execute this camera, they were supposed to do what Olympus did with their Super Control Panel - all your shooting info is at most three clicks away. Not ideal but no reason for Menu digging anymore... I don't quite see a single usable thing Samsung took from either Fuji, Olympus or Pentax... While Samsung actually did something on their own, iFn for example, it simply is not good enough. Sony RX100 has Fn+Control Ring thing that works better than iFn. I thought it's bad but now I started appreciating it. In fact, even the cheapest and dirties buttons assignment I've ever seen (Sony Nex 3N - right button lets you assign few functions) is better than this. Where this camera shines is the LCD and flash recycle. LCD is 3:2 and matches sensor so it really offers a good preview of your shoots. On top of that, flip LCD and fast flash recycle time makes this camera almost ideal for my needs - waist level kids shoots. More than half of my shoots are w/ flash, looking at LCD under some angle. Horrible cameras from Sony (16:9 200nit dim LCDs on Nex6, recycle time of 5 sec on RX100 and extremely weak flash on Nex) just don't offer anything that suits me. However, Rx100 MK3, with its much improved flash recycles time, might be my final choice (I am trying to find a good Wifi camera - Rx100 works because it's small, NX30 is in the game because it's light). Overall, NX30 is a good camera for 500$. I really don't see what why should it cost more. given there is Olympus E-M10 (or even Fuji X-A1 since this one has unusable EVF anyway)

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