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Joined the NX1 club


M Carter
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Booking are kind of blowing up across the next few weeks so I took a shot at the NX1. Got the little power zoom for an extra $200 - $1299 seems like a good price, though it may plummet after the holidays. Waiting for a lens adapter, I have a sack of nice old Nikkors.

(This camera is filed under "I own it, lower budget no-rentals gig gear". As an aside, all the research I've done on video for the web and for ad landing pages suggests if you have a business, you're an idiot not to have a video. Leads and conversions jump from 80 - 300%. Really pushing one-man, corporate stuff for 2016 - I wouldn't mind filling my calendar with some small gigs, and I usually end up re-writing their copy, designing ad campaigns and landing pages, even redoing their site. I'm an agency with in-house video, man!)

First impressions - 

Menu system and custom controls were easy to setup and after an evening of playing around, it's feeling pretty second nature. I have yet to shoot a single still though… but have a nice custom setup, love having the mic volume on the wheel. (Could never remember where it was on my Nikon). (I use an external recorder, but wit several Nikon bodies, line-out from recorder to camera for a scratch track? Stage the gain properly and I often used the camera audio.Hhaven't tried that with the NX, we'll see).

Wonkiness: couldn't find a few things I've read about - realized it doesn't have the latest firmware. Guess these have been sitting in Amazon's warehouse...

Wonkiness 2: Sometimes the EVF (or the display) doesn't come on at powerup, it's one or the other, and the button doesn't work. Toggle the power and it's fine.

Wonkiness 3: No matter how I set things, the fast/slow settings only show "fast" -1080p, etc. I have 120 fps in the menu but I like that the camera will conform the footage. May be a firmware thing?

The AF - fack me, I can use the hell out of this. Not for narrative/editorial work but for events and steadicam - man, I can see using this fairly often. I'll want to test it a lot and see it on a big monitor, but… impressed. I expect to have non-native glass on this most of the time, but nice to have it. Probably get the 2-2.8 at some point.

The autofocus default when you leave video mode - already trained myself to hit delete key (set for AF) and toggle the AF off. Kind of a hassle but now second nature.

The lens stabilization - thumb's up. Again, events and steadicam, godsend. No DIS in this firmware, doubt I'd use it anyway.

LOVE the WB controls - I've got WB set to the down arrow, right by my hand. Easy to grab a custom, and I love the color matrix controls for every preset - unless I'm going pretty artsy, I really prefer most of my look in camera other than keeping the blacks detailed and open.

Really love the EVF. I tried my loupe on the panel, but (A) the evf detector gets confused by the hinge on the loupe and (B) this body is kind of small - my loupe won't slide down far enough without some drilling. I may just skip the loupe for shoulder mount work - it's a great EVF.

Ran some footage through editready, reasonably fast - not much different than converting H264 to Prores in Streamclip, unless I downscale which seems to double the time.

The native 1080 looks very good to me, I guess one of those firmware fixes really came through. I saw a bit of jaggy aliasing that was a bit cleaner with UHD downscaled.

Overall - pretty pleased, but with a touch of genuine sadness - if Samsung is really abandoning this part of the market, it's a shame. The NX1 is simply a remarkable first shot. I know plenty of folks here dismiss it, but man - you're talking about a $1k body. It's got bang for the buck like nobody's business.

 

 

 

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EOSHD Pro Color 5 for Sony cameras EOSHD Z LOG for Nikon CamerasEOSHD C-LOG and Film Profiles for All Canon DSLRs

The AF - fack me, I can use the hell out of this. Not for narrative/editorial work but for events and steadicam - man, I can see using this fairly often. I'll want to test it a lot and see it on a big monitor, but… impressed. I expect to have non-native glass on this most of the time, but nice to have it. Probably get the 2-2.8 at some point.

At the very least, the video AF looks like it'll be great for casual purposes.

There's a focus priority sub setting of accuracy that seems to help. I also switched from face detect to zone focus. Have only done a few test videos but it seems pretty close to the A6000 with these changes. Plus 4K frame grabbability (is that a word?) 

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I'm shooting an event I do as a freebie every year next weekend. Holiday play/concert, little kids. Usually do three cameras, I think I'll shoulder mount the NX1 and the kit lens and see how the AF goes. Can always kick to manual or throw a Nikkor on it, but my testing (er, fooling around) so far says it will be great. Maybe not for a single camera shoot, but since I'm doing the editing, I have a good feel of when to zoom or shift focus and know I'll be cutting to another camera to hide it.

Got a corporate interview and a special-needs school piece next week so I'll give it a good workout. The school will need an 80-200 to keep out of the kids faces, should look nice.

BTW, don't know about pre-firmware updates, but the 120 FPS looks pretty clean to me (and made the Mrs. say "how can you afford that thing?!?"). Not as crispy as the 4k, but usually doing slowmo that extreme I'm gonna jack with the image some as well. Trying to line up a music video to play some more.

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120fps is good at low iso (meaning that you need a lot of light, being the shutter speed to be set at about 1/250). I find it usable up to iso 400. Higher than that and it becomes mushy. I still haven't understood if nx1 applies nr by default to higher iso videos...

Sadly, it's pretty clear for the default NR. If only Samsung could release a last update for the NX1 with the possibility to set NR settings ...

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Glad you got one Michael,

I haven't used my d7100 that much since buying my nx1 back in june.

It's really really good.

Get the latest firmware, You can do this in Camera with Wifi.

The DIS is really really good. Don't discount it yet. Especially with the Nikon zooms I know you have.

I like it a lot with my 80-200 and tokina 28-70.

I actually just found a 16-50 little pocket zoom that you got and am waiting to get that. ( I have no samsung native lenses, only my Nikon mount stuff and other random glass)

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I actually just found a 16-50 little pocket zoom that you got and am waiting to get that. ( I have no samsung native lenses, only my Nikon mount stuff and other random glass)

Kevin's in the house!!!

That little 16-50 is a wicked lens on the NX1. Not for everything, but for the $$, very handy. I can see a lot of scenarios where a tiny AF wide will be great. 

Got my firmware updated, and yes, I'll do some testing with DIS, hopefully another handy tool.

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  • 2 weeks later...

How do you feel about it since you updated it ? 

I've stayed away from 120fps but I shot some 60fps stuff and it was soooo clean. I've learned to keep the dof as shallow as possible for the slow mo stuff. Overall shallow dof gives the cam less to compress = cleaner image. Wish we had a way to completely turn off NR and sharpening though. We need a hacker on payroll or a dope kickstarter lol

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