Still Swimming with the big boys... Rated #9th 2017

[noone]

9 hours ago, Matthew Hartman said:

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.

Thing is I get to choose.

If I want to control light and I can and my camera(s) are still good for that but my primary interest IS available light that is often at ISOs that most cameras can not do.

For video, that is simply recording songs that the bands I am photographing do live for the most part and that often includes the lighting as part of the "show".    

[Matthew Hartman]

7 hours ago, SMGJohn said:

However, I cannot find an official statement by Samsung that they closed their camera division. No one from Samsung ever came out and told they were officially abandoning cameras, I do not get why people keep saying this, its only tabloid news sites whom keeps spreading the same old over and over again, I keep seeing stupid rumours from newspages even today saying Samsung may be closing the camera division for good.

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".

[Matthew Hartman]

2 hours ago, noone said:

Thing is I get to choose.

If I want to control light and I can and my camera(s) are still good for that but my primary interest IS available light that is often at ISOs that most cameras can not do.

For video, that is simply recording songs that the bands I am photographing do live for the most part and that often includes the lighting as part of the "show".    

Right on man. Sounds like fun.

[SMGJohn]

4 hours ago, Matthew Hartman said:

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".

Yes, its hard to predict the matter whether Samsung may reenter, but its a possibility and as I personally have seen, I have to disagree with people relaying on their smartphones, its become a new "trend" if you want to buy fancy big spec cameras it seems. 

And the Samsung NX Mini is a genius camera, I still see those around being used from time to time, frankly not everyone have the money to fork out for a top of the line smartphone just for the camera.
While Canon and Sony sales may be dwindling, compact small form factor cameras seem to be a hot selling and even the camera store in this tiny town of 20k people is selling them a lot, how much it is going in the bigger world I do not know but Samsung was LEADING the race with the best small form factor cameras from the NX1000 to the NX300.

Someone even hacked the NX3000 I think to shoot 1440p video, pretty amazing back then when only GH4 was the big 4k player in town. 

[Kisaha]

18 minutes ago, SMGJohn said:

Yes, its hard to predict the matter whether Samsung may reenter, but its a possibility and as I personally have seen, I have to disagree with people relaying on their smartphones, its become a new "trend" if you want to buy fancy big spec cameras it seems. 

And the Samsung NX Mini is a genius camera, I still see those around being used from time to time, frankly not everyone have the money to fork out for a top of the line smartphone just for the camera.
While Canon and Sony sales may be dwindling, compact small form factor cameras seem to be a hot selling and even the camera store in this tiny town of 20k people is selling them a lot, how much it is going in the bigger world I do not know but Samsung was LEADING the race with the best small form factor cameras from the NX1000 to the NX300.

Someone even hacked the NX3000 I think to shoot 1440p video, pretty amazing back then when only GH4 was the big 4k player in town. 

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.

[SMGJohn]

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.