SMGJohn

Panasonic should make a LiDAR adapter that just plugs into the hotshoe and firmware update to their 2018+ cameras and allow it to communicate with the DFD system, Panny boy would make a boatload of money doing that.

As for Fujifilm, in my experience its marginally better than Panasonic, the GH6 is kind of on par with the XH-2 series cameras so long you have contrast and good lighting, problem with Fuji seems like they do not care, they did not fix their IBIS during video mode at all, still horrible, worse than Sony (hows that even possible???) and their AF performance is massively dependant on their lenses, absolutely terrible design if you ask me, a lens should never impact AF performance other than speed of transition thats mostly down to the motor in the lens. 

Fuji cameras all seem made for photography specifically with video being afterthought, but then they release stuff like XH-2s which is a video beast if you ask me, its got the lowest rolling shutter of a semi-professional camera, shoots crazy good video apart from its 4k120 which is very noisy. 
But then you get stuff like poor video AF and poorer IBIS.

Whereas Panasonic nails the IBIS and are absolute feature beasts even their 1 inch pocket cameras are specced to the limit.
Its soon 2023 and manufacturers are bent on making sure no one makes a camera that is jack of all trades, why buy new products when camera that does it all exist? 

Companies leaving China is duo to the rising production costs which is inherent in any Capitalist economy, thats why a lot of phone manufacturers assemble their devices in countries like Malay and Vietnam now duo to cheaper labour power and cheaper land costs. 

Canon which mostly make profit margins in their high end camera segments and lens selection past 10 years probably is looking to move production elsewhere for their lower end offerings probably to countries like Philippines, Vietnam, Malay or Indonesia. 

They essentially need places with stability, a competent workforce, low costs in land, construction and running costs but also very cheap labour, labour costs are the biggest hurdle for big business to overcome. 

Even Chinese companies produce stuff outside of China whenever they can these days, like in Vietnam, Thailand or North Korea which ironically has the best equipment and workforce for production costs comparable to other third world countries. 

Canon and everyone else realise that maintaining production in China in the long run is not good, rise of labour costs means the products will get more expensive, I am sure everyone has seen the rise of prices in technology past 10 years, its mostly tied to the Chinese labour cost rising. 

You can see this trend as well with america and European countries in the 60s and 70s when Japan was the factory of the world, once Japanese labour costs went up, so did cost of products made in Japan, thats when companies moved their production to likes of China and South Korea. 

I suspect Africa will be the next big expansion for Corporations to seek out for their hilariously low labour costs, either that or automation with robotics will become the norm for low cost production. 

Big business aint stupid, they too realise if they cannot keep their costs low as possible to maximise profit, people wont buy their products at certain prices, thats bad business no matter how shoddy made it is as long as the price is right people will buy. 

I recently purchased the Panasonic S5 + battery grip with the Sigma 24-70mm f2.8, fantastic kit for 2200 euros when that stuff is well over 3k in Norway. 
And the camera has no marks and only done 2000 shutter count. 

After playing around with it there some really stupid annoyance with the picture mode that I cannot figure out. When I took some comparison photos with the S5 over the NX1, I noticed that the NX1 images both JPEG and RAW are significantly brighter than the S5 is on the same bloody settings. 

No one seems to know the answer to it, but when I edit the RAW images which are darker than the graveyard at night, once I raise the exposure in Adobe RAW it brightens up to how it SHOULD have looked, now why is that? I have that live preview thing enabled, but this annoys me, NX1 shows me exactly what I am gonna get, but S5 does not even have a proper metering which is also annoying. 

The worst part ontop of it all, is the fact that some picture modes absolutely crushes the shadows in an image, making the JPEGs nothing but preview files. 

Either the camera does not work right, or there some magic setting that I have not selected, knowing Panasonic and how their GH4 worked, that must be it. 

Strangely, the GH4 to my memory at least showed me how the image would look, but the S5 is really strange. 

Is it really suppose to act like this? I see a lot of forum posts of people complaining about it in other places, but no real answer to how to deal with this.

Because the exposure metre sucks, I cannot judge how underexposed I am, because the live preview sucks, I cannot judge how bloody dark the image really is. 

This is pissing me off, I even factory reset the camera 3 times. Other than that, ergonomically its quite good, obviously it takes time to get to know where all the buttons are, its not quite as comfortable as the NX1 or Nikon Z6 or Canon R6 but its not far off either, its heavy though which is expected from a full frame, at least it aint heavy and only APS-C like a certain other brand. 

Auto focus is surprisingly workable, its slow at times but it gets there, it does not hunt that much even in low light, thats surprising to me, the NX1 is just criminally good though but even that can loose track at times if you are step dancing in the yard at 1AM.

Is the S5 better than NX1? Yes obviously, but unless I cannot figure out this photo quirks why the Goddamn its making my raw and JPEGs pitch black for no reasons. 

But if all you did was taking pictures, the NX1 is fine, its fine for many many years forward, but it suffers in the video department and really, nothing comes close to the S5 in the video department unless you are willing to spend 3 or 4k euros. 

Also the Panasonic lenses are overpriced, Jesus those prices are eye watering. Thank God for Sigma. 

On 8/25/2021 at 7:16 AM, M_Williams said:

• Nikon Z6/Z6II: (Z6II is worth the extra $500 if you buy new - better AF, dual slots, vertical grip)e
  
  -- Pros: Higher dynamic range, better RAW colors, full frame, amazing lenses that are leagues above Fuji's, superior autofocus to Fuji (some people may argue about this but I returned my Fuji X-T4 after finding its AF (in both S-AF and Continuous) to be extremely underwhelming. Nikon is fast, quiet, and locks on accurately every time. C-AF is great too, even in video mode (better than Fuji, not as good as newest Sonys or Canons). Best ergonomics of any mirrorless cameras, except for maybe the Panasonic S1 which has a beefier grip and more external controls, but at the expense of significantly more bulk and weight. Also, ability to use Sony FE lenses with autofocus using the two adapters on the market. No other system can do this. 12-bit ProRes RAW and BRAW output.
  
  -- Cons: more expensive, bigger and pricier lenses (price you pay for full-frame), no internal LOG profile but Andrew does sell his own faux-LOG profile for the Z6/Z7 here and it's quite good. 4K video is limited to 30fps vs. 60fps on Fuji. MUCH better IBIS. The best of any APS-C or FF mirrorless system along with Panasonic L and the much more expensive Canon RF cameras. Worse JPEG profiles compared to Fuji.

Nikon Z6/Z6 Mark 2 looks like good cameras but, to record LOG or RAW video, you need external recorder bolted on somewhere, and these are not small sadly. 

Fujifilm X-T4 feels ergonomically like trash its also ironically heavier with the 16-55mm F2.8 than the NX1 with the 16-50mm F2-2.8 setup.

I been looking a little over a month now for a camera to replace the NX1, but looking at countless of review samples, testing the cameras out in the store, none of them just feels or perform like the NX1, there always a quirk that bothers me.

Its kind of annoying really, if we had Magic Lantern on the Canon 90D it would be the perfect camera since it has a good sensor to match the NX1. But as usual, crippled by Canon. 

I bought my Samsung NX1 around 2014, and I still own it, in perfect condition.

But the question eventually arise, is there something better at last?

Something with sensor stabiliser, colours to match Samsung but superior image quality and superior LOG ability.

So far, I have only seen Fujifilm X-T4, A7III and possibly Nikon Z6 

People applaud these as ultimate hybrid cameras, but I am not sure if they really can surpass Samsung, in the end they always have some kind of annoying quirk.

Why would I replace the Samsung? Because its not a perfect camera either, all I want is something in the same price bracket with better low light, similar or superior colour science, none of that goulish Panasonic colours or Sony love for orange hue.

Something that is better at run and gun, got AF to match or surpass the NX1, superior flat image to grade but also ability to shoot good colour profiles straight to card if needed.

Only the Fuji seems to be the spiritual successor to the NX1, but is there any other camera to look out for?

On 7/24/2020 at 10:49 PM, sev7en said:

I am wondering that too... I would also see, which one are the suggested settings to have the best dynamic range?

Master Black Levels at -15

0-255

GammaDR with 0.95 greens, sharpness at -10 and contrast at -10

And with the hack you want the video files at 130+ bitrate just to avoid the banding issues you might run into otherwise.
You can always tweak the master black levels and contrast to something like -10 and -5 respectably.

This is at least the flattest profile I ever gotten out of it when it was 80 bitrate I had banding issues in the sky, but increasing to 135 bitrate solved a lot of it.

I tested the methods explained in this thread and I cannot find this supposed superiority, there is a severe penalty to the sharpness, you have a HUGE shift towards green even though I turned the green to 1.90
This is all with manual mode, no automatic garbage going on, all old fashioned adjustment, white balance equal for every image to show you the shift it goes from magenta to green its quite severe. 

There massive loss of sharpness with this method, the noise is far more prominent and here are examples that took me 5 minutes to do with manual focus, 1/30 shutter, 2.8 aperture and ISO of 1600.

Left is the standard profile. Middle one is adjusted ISO down to 800 with RGB boost. Right is the one with the 1.99 RGB levels and no adjustments, you gotta open these real up close and notice what happens, other than the RGB settings every other setting is completely identical. These are JPEG's by the way so video would look just as similar but worse noise obviously.

Again the Left is standard, middle is adjusted level and right is the boost one with no adjustments. 

Notice the sharpness loss in these, the camera was on a tripod with manual focus kept at same level in all 3 shots. 
The details are quite muddled suggesting your lossing something here, its almost like you are trying to extract details but not getting enough light, its exactly what this is. 
I read that some people suggested it gives you 1 - 2 stop extra range, but at a sunny day at 160 bitrate you can already pull a few stops out of the shadows anyway with a LOG like settings or not, this RGB boost seems to present no advantages in those shadow details at all in fact there seems to be a loss of details. 

On 6/16/2020 at 7:21 PM, keessie65 said:

I have sold all my NX1 gear. I love new things, but to be honest; NX1 has a way better grip and I liked that camera a lot. I hacked my NX1 and that improved quality, but the dynamic range had also his limitations, especially on skintones at sunny days (whitening out). I use my camera mostly for filming with vintage and anamorphic lenses. Sometimes I use the camera professional photos for a magazine. X-T4 has a bigger battery and IBIS. Also the smart switch between photo and film is a big plus. I think when X-H2 comes out, I switch again, but then I will keep my X-T4 for photographing. 

How is the Fujifilm colour science compared to NX1? I am struggling to find anything remotely comparable to the in-camera NX1 colours just the one single reason I never got a camcorder for video.

MPC-HC works just fine for me though, you have to remember the only reason why SMPlayer seem to work better is because it has hardware acceleration for H265 built in which MPC-HC older versions lacked but it has it available in newest versions for me anyway, my 15W TDP AMD APU runs the NX1 HEVC files fine. 

Audio can only be recorded through the hotshoe however I recommend you rather invest in a microphone that you can attach to the camera that records internally instead of going into the camera. Røde has one of these I think that you can use with the camera. 

Why do I often find amazing products on sale on eBay with like 20+ people watching and no one buying?

Korean dude sold me a Fujifilm FinePix S5 Pro with original packing and when I received the camera for the price I paid I expected it to be in an "okay" condition but its almost brand new, no marks or scratches only done 39k shutter counts which is criminally low compared to its age.

I think there were like 30 people watching the camera, no one bought it for some reasons and I watched that for a few days before I just decided to go for it.
Surprised with the Tamron lens how sharp it is compared to Sigma but the colours are astonishing for something that is from 2006

@Mattias Burling you should review the Fujifilm one day, the colours are amazing and very analogue character from the good old CCD sensor. 

3 hours ago, Ed_David said:

And now we have this new CMOS technology that has unique red, blue and green photosites.  The sample images look amazing - Look at that red.

 

https://www.phaseone.com/trichromatic

God, I will have nightmares about the cost of that thing when released, on the other hand the samples look very nice, I will wait for review samples though the advertisers like to Photoshop their images before publish. 

On 12.9.2017 at 5:54 PM, MountneerMan said:

I am not a electronics engineer but I am pretty sure high ISO performance and color rendition are not connected in that way. Meaning the camera designers do not get to make the decision to sacrifice the one for the other.

The NX1 performs great (for its age) at high ISO's. Remember this is almost a 3 year old camera at this point. If you look at the cameras that came out around the same time it performs competitively except against the a7s but that is an unfair comparison as the a7s was built with the sole purpose of having high ISO performance. 

 

I disagree the Nikons seem to do better than the Samsung NX1, I am talking APS-C sensor cameras at the same time of release, the Sammy seem to loose a lot of dynamic range at higher ISO's, yes its got good ISO performance comparable to most cameras but the colour accuracy seem to suggest that dynamic range at higher ISO's had to be sacrificed, you have to consider that in order to capture more light you have to make it extract less information of course the NX1 has a BSI sensor on the top of that which suggests that without BSI it would suffer even greater, the Nikons at the time does not have BSI but they do have lower megapixel count, 24 compared to 28. 
Cramming lots of pixels on the sensor will also mean its less light sensitive as more pixels need more light hence why Sony A7s is only 12 megapixels, less pixels on a large sensor usually means brighter images. 

Not that I am complaining that much, but it reminds me a little of the CCD days, I just wish the dynamic range did not drop so rapidly when hitting 800 ISO.

So I took the camera out in the nature when there was a lot of light hitting the Foveon censor thinking that this behaves a lot like old CCD sensors, if you do not feed them enough light they start to suffer.

As someone suggested I took these at F5.6 to give them both fair chance. Both the Samsung NX1 and the Sigma SD Quattro are shot at ISO 100 and same lens range, same everything including standard picture profiles, nothing is touched on in Photoshop just cropped. turned off Sigma PhotoPro 6 noise reduction when exporting X3F RAW files to JPEG.

And as I suspected, the Foveon was not getting enough light, the Sigma F2.8 lens is definitely nowhere near the premium glass of Samsung F2-2.8 16-50mm S lens. 
The Sigma absolutely destroys the Samsung in resolution and I noticed how the Sigma seem to get more in focus than the Samsung does, straight out the bat the colour resolution seem to be superior on the Sigma but if you turn up colour vibrancy on Samsung raw files they start to match very closely, amazing technology for Samsung part but again CMOS weakness shows, green bias and lack of details in red colour spectrum.

LEFT Samsung NX1 - RIGHT Sigma SD Quattro

LEFT Samsung NX1 - RIGHT Sigma SD Quattro

LEFT Samsung NX1 - MIDDLE Sigma SD Quattr - RIGHT Samsung NX1 Photoshop Match

This is by no means scientific tests but they are field tests and I always believe that field tests show more in practicality than some lab room tests but the Sigma SD Quattro in the right hands and in the right conditions is a superior camera however its not versatile and the NX1 will destroy it in multi use from low light to harsher conditions and so on. 
Still, its a real fun camera to use, its like shooting film, you just have to breath in and have patience the AF system is pretty slow too and its pretty hard to pull focus on the awful sets of display units you have at your disposal. 

Someone mentioned the Fujifilm FinePix S5 Pro, one of the last DSLR's with a CCD sensor, like Foveon these tend to provide a more organic image than CMOS.
I been looking to acquire one, they go for pretty good prices on eBay and in pristine condition from Japan. Just like Foveon though they have shit low light performance and are only good when there is lots of lights or at lower ISO's, the FinePix is suppose to deliver amazing colours however, of most CMOS sensors I think Samsung has the nicest colours however you still notice its CMOS because the way it handles greens and reds and how clinical it is at times. 

On 4.9.2017 at 8:51 PM, Kisaha said:

NX1's AF was the second best back then, not that further away from Canon's, and still I prefer it from Sony's for video (so in my opinion, it is still the second best!). Samsung was nothing to Canon back then, the smaller players were afraid the most (Olympus, Fuji, Panasonic mainly; Sony was worried, and Nikon would have been doomed). Olympus and Fuji haven't the resources to fight Samsung, Nikon can't compete in the new digital age, and even Panasonic is much smaller than Samsung.

Sony is powerful, but Samsung had some amazing R&D breakthroughs, and the capacity to manufacture EVERYTHING you need for a photo/video camera (CPUs, RAMs, lenses, Super AMOLED touch screens, everything). First 28mpxls BSI sensor (A7Rii was the second big sensored BSI actually) etc etc.

Samsung just decided that they didn't want to compete on a declining market, and pro video/photography was a long shot. NX1 was too late in the game.

It is just a pity that we didn't see a NX1mkII, they did the first version SOOOOO good, without any prior real practical experience. The NX team had some truly talented and passionate people (just check some of their older corporate videos), something that a huge capitalistic and autocratic mega-trust, couldn't allow to exist.

Samsung keeps hiring old Japanese engineers, designers and other talented people who are "honourably" fired from Japanese Corporations because the new generation must replace the old.
And this is the result, Samsung is destroying Japanese Corporations, Sony fired a lot of elderly extremely talented people and Korean Corporations fished them in. 

Having tried several cameras it seems that Samsung NX1 and NX500 trades high ISO performance for superior extremely high colour reproduction. 
So while having very bad ISO performance in general with huge drops when reaching 800 ISO and beyond, the colour reproduction at lower ISO is superior to most cameras I have tested so far, even the Sony big megapixel beasts cannot seem to keep up. The Sammy's do what other CMOS bayer sensors struggle with the most, capturing accurate autumn colours.
Even Sigma SD Quattro with Foveon censor seem to struggle very hard to keep up with Sammy censor.

1 minute ago, Ed_David said:

I think boost saturation level in the sd quattro to match it.  To really do a good test (not like I am good at that  - You should bring a color chart.  Shoot with the sigma at 100 ISO, the other camera at it's recommended ISO, same lens (as much as you can) and go from there.  I think of course, you would have to rent the removable lens quattro to make it work.

It's crazy, and maybe it's me, but I can't find a single A/B test on the internet besides one really quick one to compare foveon and cmos bayer pattern

Its the removal lens camera, SD Quattro is their latest high end camera, I heard a lot of praise for the image quality it makes, however I cannot seem to find it any better than the Samsung NX500 or NX1.
Saturation is already insane compared to what I usually use on my Sammy cameras. 

Maybe Samsung just have an exceptional high tech sensor with colour reproduction prioritisation in exchange for high ISO performance.
I will do some more tests, I prefer real world tests and its a good time to be testing these cameras as its closing in on autumn that means lots of nice colours that CMOS bayer seem to struggle heavily with.

If anyone got any good advice I be happy to listen to what I am doing wrong if I am doing wrong.

I recently acquired a Sigma SD Quattro from Japan just to have some fun alongside a 17-50mm Sigma F2.8 which for the price is okay lens.

I put it up against my Samsung NX500 and I just do not see it, what does this camera do better than my Samsung? It seems Samsung has exceptional colours out the camera as well albeit the profiles fall flat so I boosted them in bridge but other than that everything else is straight out the camera, DNG/RAW to JPEG with no edit except a crop, both cameras using standard colour profile which should not matter as neither seem to translate that to the RAW file. 

Both using F2.8 and 28mm range, I used the middle section. 

While some may say its unfair to compare 19 megapixel to 28 megapixel, remember that Foveon captures true RGB colour but yet does not have the colour resolution of a NX500 funny enough both cameras are best at ISO 100 - 200 and starts degrading the further you increase ISO.

NX500 - SD Quattro DNG - SD Quattro X3F

Maybe I am doing something wrong, I got the latest firmware on both cameras too or maybe I just do not see it. 
Someone shed some light on this? 

Samsung cameras are quite popular in Europe so I have no idea why they really exited, I fear that it really was because that #%("?¤=% president decided to merge the camera division with the smartphone division, lately smartphone cameras from Samsung have suffered because of this and it seems to have been a floppy strategy.

Perhaps they will reenter the camera section again, believe it or not, its not very fun to just scrap an entire product line like this for no real good reasons, there were millions going into that camera division and it was far from unsuccessful. 

You should contact Samsung support while you can, they still service these cameras under warranty. 

I wish you did a test with Samsung NX1 using bitrate hack seeing how it does improve 120fps 1080p footage substantially. 

On 4.8.2017 at 10:10 PM, lucabutera said:

SD UHS III 624MB/S

http://www.diyphotography.net/new-uhs-iii-sd-card-spec-offers-blazing-transfer-speeds-624mbsec/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Diyphotographynet+(DIYPhotography.net+-+Photography+and+Studio+Lighting)

Too bad NX1 only does UHS II but it would be great to be able pushing the UHS II reader in the camera to the limit.

12 hours ago, lucabutera said:

Unbelievable!
My SanDisk Extreme Pro SD Card is just for shooting Full HD video !!

https://www.sdcard.org/consumers/choices/speed_class/index.html

Yeah I never personally had good experience with SanDisk. 
They wont give you warranty if you use them in dashcams either, which I wont use a brand that wont let you use them in your dashcam because remember using them in a video camera is almost as punishing as a dashcam, you want reliability and it does not speak good when the company admits their cards are no good in dashcams. 
Lexar and Toshiba will let you use them in dashcams and they come very high in lots of punishing reads and writes. 

Camera will only do reliably 140mbps with autofocus + audio + lens stabiliser.

So far I never seen anyone do a proper test with 140mbps vs 250mbps or 300mbps.
I was thinking about doing one but since you practically have to disable everything in order to shoot above 200mbps, it was never worth it for me.

I would suggest if you tried yourself, go find something with lots of contrasts, and then do 140mbps, 160mbps, 200mbps, 250mbps and 320mbps if you can get  it working that fast.
Then start pulling some shadow to and zoom in on the details, I got the Lexar Professional 2000x, if you cannot do this I might spare some time and try. 

If you plan on getting a faster SD card, look at this review, Lexar is still the King but Toshiba is catching up, SanDisk is awful reliability issues.
https://havecamerawilltravel.com/photographer/fastest-sd-cards/

On 25.7.2017 at 6:39 PM, andre2you said:

One of the things I like about Sony is the eye-AF,  does anyone know how does the face detection compare between the Sony's and the NX1?

You cannot compare these two, the NX1 wins hands down, its using Samsung famous autofocus technology they put in their smartphones.
What happens is that the NX1 focuses after eyes, its got some extremely intellectual computing going on were it focuses after eyes, I done some insane shit with this camera and I never lost focus that it did not recover from quickly.

On 21.7.2017 at 4:39 AM, Kisaha said:

I have a NX3000, and I can't even find the sevice menu, to unlock unlimited time limit! If you have any info about it, please share. Great little camera by the way, and it's video much more organic that NX300/NX30, huge imporvement. I use it as a permanent "action" camera with the fish eye on it.

"from NX1000 to the NX300" NX500, NX500 was the last of this great series of compact mirrorless.

Only thing I can find is this: https://github.com/ge0rg/samsung-nx-hacks

The NX3000 is apparently really hard to hack to begin with, and the service menu is locked away from what I read about it, what a shame really even the NX1000 you could access the service menu.