Experimenting with NX1

[neosushi]

Hi to all of you,

I thought I'd regroup some of my experiments with Samsung's NX1. I'm trying to get better with this camera as I would like to use it on a documentary project - which involves a cinematic look.

I first used the NX1 when I had to shoot a 20min movie (mostly interviews and landscapes) for a client a little bit all over the world - will share the link when my client uploads the video on his Youtube. 
My first reaction was quite enthusiastic but as the early adopters know, they were a few glitches, that we had to deal with :

- In the transcoding step: it was very slow, and there could be some heavy macroblocking and/or loss of information in the dark areas
- The exposure drift problem (Have some of these in interview scenes - they're really annoying).
- The autofocus that was too quick
- etc. 

Most if not all these issues were fixed by Samsung with their updates, and iffmpeg and Editready had tons of updates since, improving the workflow A LOT.

I recently did a few experiments: 

1st : With a friend - photographer - we bought an adaptor for Leica M lenses (which is more precisely a mount, than an adapter since you have to remove samsung's mount and some plastic, very close to the sensor area). We could only fit one Leica lens so far, but loved the result.

2nd : I was very unhappy with the skies that I had shot a while ago in New York. There was so much banding in them. I don't know if the firwmare changed or, if the transcoding is cleaner, or the ability to record in 0-255. But things have improved a lot. 

I'll try to keep this page alive with the various test that I'll run. If you have some ideas, please don't hesitate to ask. I can't promise I'll have time to test everything, but I'll do my best !

Here are the links :

Leica M test: https://youtu.be/RXfLqVOQig8 

Blue skies: https://youtu.be/2COkbUi82zM

 

[ricardo_sousa11]

Transcoding will soon be a thing of the past with the new H265 support from Adobe. The banding on the skies, for me, thats the worst part, but I guess without transcoding it should be fixed. This camera is a serial killer IMO, destroys everything within the price range, and above, its a gorgeous little camera ! I still havent used it for photography yet, since im currently waiting for the arrival of my 30mm f2.

 

Great tests  

[racer5]

The skin tones and colors in the first video, really nice. Warm, pleasing and right in the sweet spot. The rolling shutter gives it away otherwise I'd believe it was a high end camera.