Matthew Hartman

This is well done and a good example of what can be done with this camera in experienced hands. Which is true for most systems but the NX1 does have a certain character. Truth be told, sometimes I'm really partial to it, and then sometimes I'm very bothered by it when it's done poorly. Unfortunately, the camera wasn't around long enough to propegate the more pro circuit, so we see a lot of mediocre "test footage" developed by amatuers and enthusists of the camera. A lot of the more pro level early adopters jumped ship right after Samsung pulled out. I don't mean to offend anyone but there's a lot more poor or unenthusiastic examples of NX1/500 footage online than compelling examples such as yours. Your video captures all the great aspects I love about the camera and you seem well acclimated into knowing how to get a really professional grade out of its footage, which for most of us is where the image falls apart. Or, moreover where our inexperience really shows up the most. Color grading is a real skill set. The community could really benefit from some of your technical process and I hope you consider sharing some of it here. One of my problems with the NX1 is it's 8bit color space. Its easy to feel left out of the modern 10bit/HDR/4k 60fps wave that's happening right now. When the camera was released in 2014, it's direct competitors, meaning Sony and Panasonic, did 8bit as well internally. But now the NX1 has been far surpassed in that regard. It becomes harder for me to justify sticking with the NX1 system, especially when I see a lot of banding and artifacts in it's footage in some scenarios. I sorely wish someone hacked or would hack the NX1/500 sensor to at least get those features with an external recorder. It would actually revive a nearly 4 year old camera into being an industry-leading product again without Samsung even having to re-enter the market. It would also give new life to a dying system and save us from the challenges the competitor's can't seem to solve well. I don't want a micro four-thirds sensor, even at 10bit. Still, despite those limitations the NX1/500 sensor is still a solid option even in 2018. One may feel a bit of anxiety about spending money on a dead system, and the industry (not just Samsung) has all but forgotten about this camera even when doing comparison videos with older cams like the GH4 to newer cams, the NX1/500 hardly gets a mention. But even with all that I hardly believe anyone, be that a professional or general audience member, would question your video as anything but professional-grade cinematic. And if they did, they're just pixel peeping or bias, and who honestly cares about that at the end of the day? I'm sure your client was more than happy. Let's face it, that's the look we're all going for isn't it? You've captured it and played to the camera's strengths. Please share with us your process?

I think you got the order of the first two images mixed up? Amazing how much range was actually preserved. Smart Range+ is just for stills correct? Do you (or anyone) have any experience with either Tiffen's Black Pro Mist (or any of their diffusion line) or Schnieder's Hollywood Black magic filters, specifically with the NX1? I'm getting close to jumping to an Ursa 4.6k Pro but want to give my NX1 more exploration as far as pushing it to feel more filmic and creamy. I love the camera, it's weight, size, handling, features and menu are just very pleasant to work with. Besides, I have 4 NX glass. Having that highly detailed 6.5k sensor gives me a lot of bandwidth, but I need the option of subtle detail where it matters and better rolloff in the highlights and shadows, which if you examine footage from say a RED you notice these features. I've been applying a small amount of guassian blur to my footage to help in this effort, which helps with the over sharpness, but it doesn't solve rolloff, which is a big factor of high dynamic range and obviously why REDs and Arris and VariCams are king of the feature film industry. I'm also currently experiementing with Neat Video to help with 8bit banding, but it's so proccesor intensive, at least on my machine. If I could use a diffusion filter in front of my lens, I think it could be an interesting and much less taxing way to go.

Man guys, I hate to sound pompous or harsh, but you guys are still thinking kind of small and insulated about this. You're estimating the rate of advancement from past and present models but this will not be the case in 5 years time. The delta is not a steady 45 degrees upward. The incline is more like 80, and reaching towards 90 with each day that passess. Forget 10bit, forget RAW, forget HDR, 8k, and all the current conventional buzzwords (which will become known as limitations in due time) floating around. When you add an AI to something, you crack open pandora's box and I don't mind sounding like the crazy guy sitting on the park bench because the probability of being validated in time is quite high. I've seen and experimented with tech that the public is not even aware exists. What you see released to the public is not the extent of all a tech company has to offer at that time. Oh no, they're sitting on bigger stuff, and dialing it in. There are some frightfully brilliant minds out there that approach and solve challenges in a very different way than most of us. They're usually doubted and sometimes even mocked until they break ground and us dum-dums catch up to the bell curve and finally get it. Don't be surprised if what you know as "camera" today is vastly different in the future and to the extent of which technology enables us to be "super-human". The only constant here will be the ability to tell a good story. But don't be surprised if an AI bot figures out how to tell a better one and in much less time. In some ways the technicalities of the physical aspects of the trade will be far more approachable and immediate, but you best keep that creative brain nice and sharp. Anyway, enough preaching. Let's just get on with it.

I absolutely do. All my settings are ticked for performance too. I'm importing NX1 footage.

I think is is a rather prescriptive way to view the challenges of today as being actual challenges in the future. There's nothing to say bit rates, codecs, LOG, RAW, ISO, mirrorless vs. mirror, rolling shutter vs. global, or shutter speed altogether all will even be factors to consider in 2023. Personally, I think the paradigms and conventions in which we currently interact and think about technology are going to rapidly shift, even 5 years from now. The delta on this is greatly exponential and technology leaders are already thinking 5-10 years out. In some cases some companies are sitting on technologies today that would make most of us crap our pants either in joy or horror. Working in these sectors companies are working really hard to make screens become irrelevant. Filmmaking is not about the camera. And it never will be. The filmmakers of yesterday would (and do) argue the merits of celluloid film, because that's the technology they used to develop their art and passion for film. It becomes an emotional attachment of sorts. An identity. We are doing the same here with camera's associated with Hollywood level production because many of us have busted our chops using them. But if someone told you 20-30 years ago people would gravitate towards a platform were content takes an actual dip in image quality and compelling narratives, would you have believed them? I would have never imagined it myself. You're thinking about the future with the convention of today and that's a false pretense. Technology in five years will be five times the rate of speed that it is now. The best advice I can give the more mature filmmakers among us is to be open and ready to suspend disbelief, else become irrelevant at the rate of 5x.

For me it's hard to tell. I work in the tech sector and there are a lot of technologies coming online that could serve the film industry particularly well. I think the bigger question for me is how will the industry react to new paradigms? I think in an evolutionary sense, the approach of filmmaking has stayed relatively unchallenged and unchanged as we have wrapped current technology around the current ways of how we think about filmmaking. But let's say for giggles and grins we get to the point of an having a tiny camera implanted into your eye that can transmit a signal, which btw does exist to aid the blind, albeit in rough form currently. (The video signal is projected on the back of the brain same as a functioning retina) Suddenly, you are the camera and the way you frame the world is immediate and you are the film and audiences tune into your perception? Or maybe they are the film and shape how it progresses using you as the container? Maybe audiences will reject narratives altogether and actually live out their dreams and fantasies instead of live them vicariously through someone else's vision of the world? Remember, film in it's original intent was an answer to the limitations of sharing visual stories in it's time. Just cave paintings were a limitation of technology for the caveman. What has now become an established art and craft, started out as solving a technological challenge for inartistic purposes. If you're a filmmaker you should invest in the skill of storytelling, not the technology, because it's too unpredictable and exponential to rely on. What was fine to rely on in past decades will be less and less reliable as technology moves faster and faster. In the immediate I definitely see a trend for smaller and smaller footprints with increased quality in output and more intelligent automation. Technology is already at the point where huge machines are not needed to capture great technical content. I see cameras getting ever smaller and crews getting smaller too. It's a really simple equation. If one could have Alexa/RED quality in a form factor that fits in the palm of your hand why would you ever choose to use a heavy and cumbersome machine that needs a ton of accessories and a crew of people to help give it the quality and fluidity of seeing the world through the human eye? If you have any sense and instinct about you, you wouldn't. Unless you're just a nostalgic fool and love the art of complication. (Some do, no judge)

Must be because that's definitely not the experience I'm getting.

Same here. I was very excited by this news in that DR is way more optimized as an app than Premiere, but no go for me either on similar specs as you. Just sound for me too. ? Back to proxies. ? From my research you have to break into the 1080/1080ti realm to get smooth h.265 playback in any NLE. I'm looking at several Cyberpower PC systems right now. Glad to hear the 1080ti is performing. My 1070 8GB gives me about 15fps on 1/2 in Premiere. Forget adding a Lumetri channel.

This is the power of a 6.5k 28mp sensor. You can do a similar thing with RED cameras.

Grazie Luca.

I forgot to mention that we need to redirect our efforts other than trying to convince Samsung. Not for lack of trying, but that ship has sailed. If and when Samsung is ready to do so they don't need any convincing from the outside. They will do it and they will deliver it like an uppercut from Mike Tyson. I have the 2016 NX hacks and they are very solid. I think we'll have the best (but not guaranteed) success trying to get those guys to take another active look at the Tizen OS. The problem, which working in tech as leading UX Designer I definitely get it, is that Tizen is a very proprietary, not exactly an open source OS. Samsung locked it down and I'm not even sure it's documented all that well to boot. What it does expose to developers is very limited, hence the hacks, which are workarounds. We would need a top hacker on this and to be clear the hacks would be very, "hacky" in operation to say the least. But I would pay good money for RAW 10bit output either internally or externally which should be capable. My guess is it would be external for heat restraints and slower memory cards. I can get a reliable 200Mbps with the birate hack on a 300Mbps Lexmark SD. I actually could go higher but I'm unable to get consistent results. Not a good issue to have on set. At one point I got about 10 seconds of video pushing it to 300Mbps with all other camera features off. The file size was reminiscent of RAW output. BTW, those of you considering going external via hdmi to something like a Atmos Shogun Blade, dont, you will not get any perceivable quality gain. You can do the same thing by transcoding to a 10bit compression codec from the native h.265, but again your actual gains will be miniscule, as I'm sure Reid can attest to. The h.265 codec is an amazing codec in it's own right, considering it's 4.2.0 8bit color space, way more resolvent and less aggressive on data than h.264, but also processor intensive. Its clear Samsung wanted to future-proof the top-tier NX products as more and more consumer grade computers are only now in 2017 coming on the scene that can actually handle it, which in 2014 wasn't the case. My 2014 ASUS ROG with i7 dual core/8 threads (I think 2nd gen) 32GB ram, 3GB Nvidia 560m GPU, SSD cannot handle 4k h.265 even at 1/4 quality in Premiere. This is not a weak laptop by any means and it has served me well. It handles other high bitrate codecs and proccesor heavy tasks just fine. It laughs at them. I'm actually selling the laptop and going back to a desktop system if anyone is interested? I'm not as mobile as I thought I would be. Its in peek condition, zero or damage of any kind (I baby my gear) running Win10 Pro, the SDD and 16GB is relatively new, the other 16GB was purchased in 2016. Like I said, it runs most everything I throw at it, including processor intensive applications like physics/fluid sims in Maya 2017, except for that darn h.265! I suspect some of the issue is Premiere's unoptimized code. I ultimately want to move into a proxy-less workflow, as I'm heading into more feature length work and man, what a PITA when you have a lot of coverage. I'm willing to let it go for $750 or best offer. U.S. ship only. This is a good deal. It retailed for roughly $1,300 when it was new without all the upgrades that doubled it's output. In some cases it even performs better than my newer ASUS ROG machine with a Nvidia 1070 8BG GPU I use at work. Also it has a nice 17" 1080 screen and a full hdmi port for a second monitor. Pretty darn quiet in most/normal applications. Great heat management. PM me for pictures. Also would trade for a NX1 body or S lens in good condition.

@Kisaha I think this is the healthiest way to count your losses, whilst looking at the future in a more positive way. The truth is, there are plenty of NX camera's and glass still in circulation, albeit less than in 2014-2016 and I personally haven't seen a lot of mentions that these products are even close to nearing the end of their build life. The magnesium build, the OS, the proccesor chip, the sensors, the glass and machinary in the lens systems (which I believe were outsourced and rebranded by a big lens maker) were built pretty robustly. Like I said before, Samsung was definitely trying to put a stake in the ground. I've owned other Samsung products that were considered mid-range, and as functional as they were they didn't have premium builds by a long shot. Samsung reserves this for their top-tier offerings, say like the recent Galaxy line of smartphones. World class. @Juxx989 "I think directly or indirectly the other companies(canon, sony, etc) made it clear to big reviewers that they would not appreciate coverage of Samsung NX1 and maybe they would forget to send you the next product for review or forget to invite you to the next swanky New York sony event.." I would venture to say this is most likely a real thing. Even in the cases where the reviewer claims impartiality, you have to remember these companies are sending them free gear in exchange for a favorable outcome. They're not doing it because they like giving away free product to seemingly cool people. And even if a company does not explicitly imply favor, the reviewer knows that if they give a product a poor enough review, or praise a competitor's brand too much, this could pontentially hurt their chances of receiving more gear from said company in the future. For a lot of top tubers, this is the very backbone of their channel, hence income. When your livelihood is on the line, of course you're going to lie a little. I think most of us would. The key is not seeming extreme or too obvious with it. And you'll notice that channels that do don't last very long. A "favored" view here, a couple dings on secondary less important features here. This gives the illusion of being impartial and the manufactures chalk it up to the price of doing business, which is still going to be less costly than hiring an advertising agency to drive a full scale marketing campaign. These manufacturers, including Samsung, are only concerned about brand perception as it relates to sales, not as it relates to trying to give you a quality product because they personally care about you or your own business. No one should be naive about this, and yet consumers wrap up their indentities into these products, and really blind themselves. The only time this formula is broken is when a CEO or other top executive takes a personal interest or pet liking to a product and wants to share that with the world, which is what many suspect the NX line and more specifically the NX1/500 to have been of the previous CEO, which demographically speaking was more intimate and familiar with "older" tech and reportedly loved photography. The RED camera was one of these pet projects by the then CEO of Oakley, a popular sunglass/surf/skate brand in the 80's/90's, who again was very fond of videography and wanted to and had the resources to shake up things in the then celluloid dominated film industry. But these are largely outliers. As impactful as they can be, they tend to be very rare as business objectives are not the driving catalyst.

I'm the guy that launched the petition. I would say at this point the system is obviously toast. I still own and use my NX1 to date. It is still a viable camera, and still as underrated as the day it was released. I've heard from several South Koreans that the transfer in management is what actually killed the previous camera business. Basically, it was a pet project by the much older previous CEO before his nephew took the reigns, and obviously showed us he had no skin in the game. I'm sure it was widely seen as "forward-facing", but in my view it was very premature. We could have had an NX2, maybe even NX3 by now and although it wouldnt have been as profitable as say their appliance and smartphone offerings, it will still bring in a considerable amount of cash and more importantly kick back by reputation to their other products. I'm sure many Samsung employees that worked on the NX system were just as disappointed as it's customers, as it was obvious they were striving for excellence and to cause a stir within the industry. You don't cram all those features (in 2014) into a body when your competition is still shooting muddy 1080p (ahem Canon, Nikon, Sony) if you're not trying to put a stake in the ground. With exception of Mr. Reid, a lot of camera pros were pretty hostile towards Samsung's lineup, and couldn't decide if it loved or hated the camera. The exit gave them more fuel to put down the system, and gave the industry yet another excuse to move at a snail's pace. The NX system was headed towards excellence and household name status. That is what Samsung does. Had it not been for the change of leadership, there's no doubt in my mind that it would have been a leader, if not THE leader and bar for all other manufactures to live up to. I've owned very few Samsung products that were faulty. Some may not like the name or have preconceived ideas about the quality of Asian markets/products (most cameras are Asian born) but at least where Samsung is concerned they are a giant, not just in South Korea, but globally. I'm not sure why the skeptics were so skeptical, but their cynical attitude certainly didn't help matters. What it did do in part was made sure that innovation remains slow and incremental. So thanks. I watch YouTuber's like Tom Antos, Film Riot, Film Courage, Curtis Judd, and many more along this vein. How is it all these channels are acutely aware of the GH4 but have no idea the NX1 line even existed? It never shows up in their gear recommendations past or present, which I believe shows a telling pattern. Tony Northrup, The CameraStoreTV, Matt Granger, Max Yuryev, and Rocket Jump Film School did actually review/use the NX1 and their responses were generally positive. Although the guys at CameraStoreTV were actually more on the fence but they did dedicate two whole segments to the NX1/500, albeit slightly sarcastically. DigitalREVTV did a asinine video review of the NX500 which was basically as one commenter put it, "An 11 minute long bash because it was a Samsung and not Apple". But that Brit is a cynical muppet and Canon/Apple fanboy anyway. But it serves as a good illustration of how many pros received, more like perceived the entire line. What I never understood is how on one hand you could sing the praises of the GH4 and yet dismiss the NX1/500, which in my professional opinion was and still is the better camera of the two. In some regards it wasn't even comparable. The NX system is that anomaly camera/lens that we're not likely to see again anytime soon. If you own any of these products I advise you to hold on to them. Don't worry about the detractors, they most likely never even used the camera. We need to re-petition our hacker community to further investigate opening up the power of the NX1/500, and I would suggest employing them in this effort full stop through crowdsourcing/donation. I would not count on Samsung themselves to resurrect the business or even offer another Firmware update. I and others have done our due diligence on behalf of the NX community in to let Samsung know our love for the NX1 system and our frustration in "their" decision to pull out. I put this petition in front of a handful of Directors, both past and present, using my influence and connections as an ex HTC and Microsoft employee, having worked on projects in cooperation with Samsung. Unfortunately, I'm sorry to say "they" have chosen to broadly ignore our pleas. Employees and shareholders are different beasts, at a certain level it's to be expected. This is how it goes in general. That being said, those that know the beast that is Samsung knows they can be unpredictable at times and pull out a wild card. Translated, I wouldn't hold my breath, and yet I wouldn't count them out in the future either. They will act if they see a value prop for their business and they have the capacity to compete at the drop of the hat on a global scale. I learned one thing in creating this petition. Those that own or have used the NX system absolutely love the hell out of it. You will hardly see a comment (about 928) that expresses a mundane reaction to these products. That truly says something about the quality and innovation of the product AND the gap of this quality and innovation in the market right now. It's awesome and interesting to see people from all over the globe echo this similar sediment. Its a true community.

Also, thank you, thank you for letting your dark scenes be dark. I feel like in the gimmicky high ISO craze, suddenly we've become concerned about taking darkness away. The darkness is as much a storytelling tool as the light. We don't always have to see the detail lurking in the shadows. Let it be a mystery.

Haha, I stumbled on your video on my own and posted a link in a new separate thread. I'm very impressed AND I like the style and flow of the narrative in this trailer. It is very shall we say, "French"? Some of the footage is a little soft, I'm not sure the technical reason behind that on your end. I watched it on my 55" 4K TV and it doesnt hold up well. It's almost as if there's condensation or vasoline on your lens. I know for myself I have the opposite challenge, meaning I always have to add slight Gaussian blur to my footage to warm it up, and match other cams. The NX1's 6.5k sensor resolves an incrediable (and unnatural) amount of detail. Some critics think the footage is oversharpened, but that's incorrect. It's actually highly highly, detailed, downscaling a 6.5k image to 4k, there's a difference. Even recent cams in the mid range don't resolve this much detail. This can be both the strength and "weakness" of NX1 footage. You want a crisp image, true, but you dont want that crispness where you don't want it. If you compare RED footage to NX1 footage, you'll see RED footage is soft in areas you want softness, giving it a creamy, silky property, highly sought after, yet you still get high detail in areas you want detail/sharpness. Of course, since you get more DR and more color depth, you also get smoother gradients. You CAN work the NX1 footage to emulate the RED look and feel. Where the NX1 falls apart is it's 4.2.0 8bit color depth. You can aviod the common banding issues by avoiding gradients in certain colors/hues. Also, the NX1 grades quite well for not being 10bit as long as you don't push your black levels too far. Personally, I think subtlety in grade is key. High contrast footage is usually the dead giveaway that something was shot on a DSLR/DSLM and find a lot of grading advice given online actually not good advice at all. A bit of monkey see, monkey do, that the inexperienced don't know to question. However, if I put my general audience glasses on it doesn't matter. Your trailer still looks visually stunning and the storyline looks very intriguing. You have a good sense for using natural light to your advantage and your trailer was cut beautifully, which is not as easy as it looks. Also, when we love (a spouse, lover, child, etc) we also inherently suffer it's enivitable demise, the two are interlocked by the law of impermanence. I feel like you captured the essence of this. To escape this cycle of suffering we must let go of the constant wanting and move into a realm of acceptance, or letting go of the control we fool ourselves into believing we have. Simple in theory, almost impossible in practice.

Super impressed. One thing I want to mention is that the level of professionalism shown above has more to do with a good story, believable characters, good locations, composition and lighting than the camera. In fact, you don't want your audience to even think about the camera, or any other technical aspect, you want them engaged in your story.

BTW- some NX1 slow motion inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/user/playmobilindustry

Right on man. Sounds like fun.

I was in the same camp but I recently saw someone here post a link to an official statement announcing they are closing their entire digital camera division. It was a S.Korean publication. That being said, Samsung has a tendency to word things vaguely, and sometimes open-ended. This could be a factor of poor translation but as an American I have a hard time putting their statements into proper perspective. The way the article was worded seemed like Samsung felt that they could no longer compete in this space because in their view, consumers were dropping DSLR, mirrorless, and point-and-shoot cameras in favor of smartphone camera technology. They even sighted Canon losing business in this metric too. While I agree these findings could be very possible among your average consumer, it sure leaves hobbyists and professionals out of the equation, and I feel that's very, very unfortunate, and way too reactive to the natural peaks and valleys of supply and demand. The above being said, I personally suspect that if the market shifted Samsung will shift with it. I've seen this happen time and time again with most of their product offerings. Right now, they are hyper focused on their smartphone, VR, smart home and smart appliance technology. But there's nothing to say that this will always be the case in the foreseeable future. Look at Olympus and Fuji. Almost went into damn near obscurity and then low and behold we now have new offerings from them in the pro space. What I find interesting is that Samsung still officially advertises their NX products AND continues to update their Camera Manager app. However camera and lens firmware updates have frozen for over a year now. I suppose these are low level efforts on Samsung's part. But is it a strategy to keep the door open with consumers should they decide to re enter the market? This is why I put together the Keep Samsung NX Alive petition. It was in effort to demonstrate to Samsung that there IS still a demand for their NX cameras. Is 1,500 signatures in a span of almost 2 years enough of a demand for Samsung? I don't know. What I do know is that I tried like hell to reach the proper people in charge of that division and have not received and ounce of correspondence back. This could mean so many things, and with all the legal controversy at Samsung headquarters in recent years, it's very hard to read into it. I also know that if you read the almost 800 comments attached to the petition you quickly see a central theme. People love the shat out of the NX1/500 and Samsung's glass. As Enna Park, a huge Samsung NX1 pro and all around great guy from South Korea once told me, "Samsung boss is a chicken heart".

Absolutely. It's my vision, I'm in control of how well (or not) I craft my image/scene. This is my rate, and my techincal requirements. This philosophy is hardly anything new. I don't typically place myself in artistically-circumstantial situations out of my control, largely speaking. There's always the tendency for small fails here and there, but those are usually logistical unknowns. Again, I'm the artist. If I have no control in what I place in my viewfinder, who does? If I have a shoot scheduled outdoors and it suddenly rains and clouds block all my golden hour light, I wait, or adapt the setting to the narrative. I don't shrug my shoulders and capture subpar images because I feel like I should be shooting something or because my camera has near militaristic capabilities. Now, I'm not ignorant to the fact that not all shooters are cinematographers shooting narratives in a mostly controlled and planned environment. Some have to document the moment as it is because it doesn't typically repeat itself or reoccur often. Sports, weddings, nature, I get it. But these subject matters have been captured long before digital ISO was a seed in anyone's mind. Ask yourself how this was done in those times. And I bet you will conclude it was done with really good logistical scouting, planning and set up. What high ISO has done is it allowed the removal of darkness as counterpoint to lightness as a narrative. It's traded a technological advatange in for an artistic disadvantage. Our we merely documentators? Is a good image about technically "seeing in the dark", or using darkness as a tool to envoke an emotional response and give light more meaning and context? You as the artist and curator of your vision must decide. Each to their own indeed.

That's the main difference, but another distance is the rib style of where you turn the lens to pull focus. Cine lens's have more of a geared ribbing for follow focus systems. AND cine lens are prime focal lengths. And on a minor note Cine lens's look freaking cooler.

Without companies like Samsung who have extensive research and development labs and endless funds to experiment, don't expect huge technological leaps in the product cycles of current top manufactures. In my opinion, Samsung not only did themselves a disservice by "closing" their digital camera business, they did a disservice to their existing and potential customers and the entire industry as a whole. Look how much Samsung has influenced Apple over recent years?

No personal offense to you friend, but low light cinematography is largely a gimmick in my mind. If one learns to properly light a scene there's no need for insane ISO values. With lighting moving into the realm of LED and portable there's just no excuse anymore. Who would have thought that light gathering sensors respond to...light.

Let me propose this thought in the meantime. Was there ever a time in which 120fps @ 1080 was suitable or widely accepted by an average audience? I think it's important to remember in the face of ever evolving technology that "good enough" doesn't simply go away just because "better" comes along. I'm as guilty as the rest of you for wanting, possibly even lusting over the latest and greatest camera tech. And certainly when you hit the professional circuit many operators and even some clients will judge you solely based off the equipment you associate yourself with. But I have to remind myself that a great many times my 2014 camera (NX1) has helped me achieve great success and continues to do so in 2017, and this will only stop when the camera becomes physically nonoperational. The point is, creativity isn't beholden to the current state of technology. Creativity exists on it's own. The technology can help express that as a tool but technology is not creativity itself and can achieve nothing on it's own. Like many of you, I want all the power and features of Arri and RED products, but under $2,000. No one WANTS to pay $50k for just a camera body. They pay that price because there is no alternative. We are incrementally getting close to this ultimate goal, and I would argue had Samsung stayed in the digital camera market that would have raised the bar for competitors. 4k/60fps would have already been the current standard by every manufacturer. But we're not quite there yet and without companies like Samsung raising the bar, ("like" meaning huge R&D departments) we will continue to see incremental movement in this area from the likes of Panasonic, Sony, Olympus, Fuji, Canon, Nikon, etc., etc. Consequently it also happens to be a marketing tactic. But should that prohibit any of us from expressing our creativity and ingenuity in the meantime? Hell no! We already have exceptional quality today. Think back just 10 years ago with tape based camcorders? Let the haters hate. You and I have pretty images to create.

I'm not sure how well the dedicated 60mm macro is but if you want macro capabilities in the meantime on any NX mounted lens you can purchase an adapter, even with electronic comm to the camera: https://www.amazon.com/Fotga-Macro-Focus-Extension-Samsung/dp/B00FQBWXW6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1500504759&sr=8-1&keywords=nx+macro+extension+tube https://www.amazon.com/Unpre-Focus-Macro-Extension-Samsung/dp/B01IQZWRWO/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1500504759&sr=8-4&keywords=nx+macro+extension+tube I've purchased the first one and it works perfectly fine.