Marco Tecno

..and Vasile doesn't live here anymore!

Hey gang, over the last month I upgraded my camera gear to 4K with a used NX1 and NX500 (replacing my old trusty GH2 and a6000). Since I regularly make videos for the Carry Trainer YouTube channel, I thought I'd start a thread here to share my experiences with these two camera's.
First, I tried both versions of the Samsung firmware. The Kino-Seed hack worked on my NX500, but not my NX1. Anyway, I settled on Vasile's nx-on-wake mod... it is worth the little extra work to install.
For the picture profile settings, I am generally following the recommendations from Andrew Reid's guide. For the NX1: Gamma DR, .95 Green 0-255 Luminance Level. On the NX500 I don't see any video controls... the picture profile is set to standard. As Reid suggested, I set resolution to 3840x2160 with a 24p frame rate.
Getting started testing my gear, I found my Fotodiox adapter wasn't triggering the sensor on the Samsung camera mount. Since I only use vintage manual lenses, I decided to just super glue the mount sensor down and avoid any future hassle (see attached photo). The glossy spot with the glue on the bottom of the mount is covered by the adapter, in case you were wondering about my sloppy work.
I did my first shoot with these cameras last week, Dec. 19, 2016... filming a few new Carry Trainer episodes. I work as a one-man band on multi-camera shoots, usually running two or three cameras. The classic Blackmagic Cinema Camera 2.5K remains my A Camera. The NX1 is now my B Camera... and the NX500 is the C camera. Anyway, on set I quickly discovered my NX1 couldn't handle the 210 MB bit rate. I dialed the NX1 back to 180... then it worked flawlessly for two hours. Battery life was good. Surprisingly the NX1 was only down to 50% battery at the end with 100GB of 4K video on the SD card. Meanwhile, the 64GB SD card on my NX500 filled up really fast. I was only able to use that for about half of the filming session.
I'll wrap up this first post with my transcoding experience. I do my editing with the free version of DaVinci Resolve, so transcoding the H.265 is a must. I used After Effects to line-up all the clips and rendered them to HQ DNxHR (I use windows). 98 GB of video off my NX1 SD Card grew into 433 GB worth of DNxHR footage. As a point of comparison, I came away from that same filming session with 370 GB of RAW footage on my BMCC. So serious 4K video eats up a lot of hard-drive space.
In my next post I'll talk about how the NX1 footage looked in the grading process...

Not really cameras to get excited about... luckily the article was a good fun read and spot on!
Would love to see you do a G80 VS E-M1 Mark II face-off next up! Battle of the sensor stabilized MFT cams.

Well... some bad news, the source I got 29mm from seems to be a typo, it seems the flange is only 20mm, which is still more than M mount, but that is very little space for the adapter.  It will definitely have vignetting, lots of it ^_^.  Maybe not too bad at some focal lengths though, not sure on that.  When I'm back home I'll check out the protocol as best I can, no need putting in any time until I do that.  Maybe the chip won't even be working, the camera shop I got it from had nothing to try it out on. 
The NX-Ls have arrived ^_^.  Unfortunately they came through Q-post on this end, but luckily my brother was still home and was able to pick them up for me, only made it by like two days as he is flying here tomorrow.  I asked him to bring one with him so I'll get to use it on this vacation ^_^. 

Kino, I wouldn't need encryption as well. Rather I'd kill for the 4k cropped video option from nx500 to be implemented in nx1...any chance for this?

I recently bought the a6300 and as nice as the image is, I don't really think it's any better than the NX500. However, I sold my NX500 last year, for a profit. The most impressive aspect of the a6300 is the image quality mixed with the Super 35mm. With the hack opening up the 2.5K with the NX500, I'm curious to learn how the IQ is compared to the 4K? Unfortunately, I have not found many examples on YouTube or Vimeo... any thoughts or examples from the regulars?

Makes me want to rebuy a NX1. Well done. Love Porto!

Wish someone who worked in Samsung camera department would accidentally leak the developer tools

Kino, I wouldn't need encryption as well. Rather I'd kill for the 4k cropped video option from nx500 to be implemented in nx1...any chance for this?

I'm just wondering why the numerous very specific Sony articles are not marked as sponsored (they offer almost no real critique, just praise).

Its the big problem with the internet in that most people don't want to pay for information to be created.  So we see sources that should be unbiased or impartial (or at least be biased towards providing for and protecting their readers) having a higher level conflict of interest in that while their readers are important long-term, in the short term they aren't the ones keeping the lights on.
The video the DPreview article mentioned is actually old news -was released by Canon in August.  ScottDW has done canon PR videos in the past -he did a pretty good one using the XC10, and this was another canon sponsored video.  Most of his non-PR stuff is shot on a RED, and I'm pretty sure he is not ditching his RED for an 80D.
I am not a subscriber but there are ReidReviews and Luminous Landscapes which have a subscription model for quite in-depth and supposedly unbiased still camera reviews.  Not sure if there is anything for cinema.

Thanks for the support.
If people don't agree with me on this, then I will at some point also cave in and do a run of big advertisements splashed on the site and regular sponsored articles. But if my readers say they're NOT fine with this, I won't. Simple as that. So speak up for the indies... not many advertising-free places left now on the internet.
It wasn't supposed to be this way online.

When I worked for them I had my suspicions they would try and suppress the strident tone of my reviews when it came to Canon's shortcomings in video.
Now it's plain for all to see what is going on there -
https://***URL removed***/articles/9717214609/filmmaker-scott-dw-trades-his-pro-video-gear-for-canon-eos-80d-watch-the-results
I will be sure to get my fix of Canon PR marketing there from now on and of Ebrahim's latest forum frauds.

Kino, I wouldn't need encryption as well. Rather I'd kill for the 4k cropped video option from nx500 to be implemented in nx1...any chance for this?

Kino, I wouldn't need encryption as well. Rather I'd kill for the 4k cropped video option from nx500 to be implemented in nx1...any chance for this?

Hate to bring it back, but NX1 has a perfect touch screen implementation since a long time ago, just found in Philip Bloom's AF megathon as the third technology, just after Canon's Dual Pixel and a6300 and I have one year more warranty in my camera, and 20 months for my 16-50 2-28f lens, and the whole kit costed me 1500€. It is not like it is a mythic/cryptic creature of the old times to just ignore it in every sentence.
I expect the next Fuji to have touch screen, and work better than Sony (which barely works anyway, also battery consumption, heat management were handled better by Fuji, even if you have to add 300-400€ for the grip and batteries), but let's face it, there is a camera that does most things right, RIGHT NOW (and for 2 years now) and some of us earn our bread from that!
Just for your information, I go now!

Kino, I wouldn't need encryption as well. Rather I'd kill for the 4k cropped video option from nx500 to be implemented in nx1...any chance for this?

An idea came to my mind. There are more and more companies designing EF to [other systems] intelligent adapters, but none designing one for NX.
 
This is apparently due to samsung discontinuing its products. At least that's what a couple of those companies replied to me, when I asked about a future product designed for NX.
 
That's the idea: would it be possible to ask them "how much" would it cost to develop and produce such an adapter, and try to fund it ourself, via a crowfunding campaign? Personally, I'd be ready to buy one, as long as it costs as much as the ones for - say - sony F cameras.
 
What about you?

I'm very, very happy I own the NX1. Even happier now that no new camera still matches it as an overall camera system. With the 180mbit hack and the new arouke's luts my footage is more than great, for my own standards.

Fact is that BNC 2016 is: 1) Olympus 34.5%  2) Sony 24.8% 3) Canon (! With the EOS M2 mainly!) 13.6%
So, the fact that is the first (second actually) try on video is a big thing for them, and the market.
GH5 is going to be big, but after the X-T2, a6500, M5 and M1-ii releases, Pana is a bit late in the game.
That gives Sony time to have a really good APS camera in the summer(September?) because they must be working on a new body for some time now (both APS and full frame).
We don't even know GH5's release date, and I seriously doubt that it will be cheaper than the Olympus, here in Europe.
Everyone's buying time to Sony, to dominate the market in a couple of years.

Not blown away by anything out of the camera so far and since my own hands on with it I've been shooting with the Panasonic G85 and realised it is by far the better deal.
The stabilisation doesn't seem much better on the E-M1 II compared to that camera for video.
The price - is it worth double just to shave 0.2x off the crop factor in 4K?
The ergonomics - I feel the Panasonic menus and controls are less convoluted somehow.
E-M1 II doesn't seem to have an advantage for ISO 3200, 6400... unchanged since old E-M1
Don't remember being blown away by the EVF compared to the G85 at half the price either.
Main difference is the higher bitrate codec and less rolling shutter.... but neither are a particular problem on the G85 either.
Both are very good cameras for video but right now I am leaning towards saving $1000.
Not least because the GH5 is around the corner which gives the E-M1 II a useful shelf life of about 2-3 months for your $2000.

Who said the GH5 will be?

So whatever it is what you are testing
How are the noise levels comparing it to a GH4? As on the GH4 iso1600 was unusable for me. Hopefully on this new camera there will be a massive improvement on this department. And how about the Dynamic Range, is it small upgrade or quite good? And finally is it still the same codec or could we expect something different like h265?
 
Thanks!

Perhaps it's the i/o controller and sd that heat up that much? I noticed the sd being really warm after 8-10 minutes of recording at 180mbit.

Camera shuts down when it gets too hot, I tested this by simply turning down the number for when it should shutdown in case of overheating with that Dev menu you can access with 1.40 and below. 
Yes a shame no one tries to unlock even more or hack it for real like magic lantern, but there a huge amount of great cameras coming in 2017 effectively making it pointless to hack the NX1 unless you really want to as a side project or something.
Strange how no one from Samsung camera department has leaked any developers tool