Petition to keep NX alive!!!

[cojocaru27]

Hey, someone put some effort into creating a petition for keeping NX line alive.

He even got an answer from Samsung Korea Ceo in which was requested for a better number of people to sign the petition. BUt overall the feedback was positive. If we can show Samsung that we are many, if we all stay together, maybe we'll have a chance if not for a NX2 at least for some new updates for NX1.

Let's take a bit of time and sign the petition. It only takes 2 min.

Thanks

https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/samsung-keep-nx-alive

[Andrew Reid]

"It's now 2017 and the NX system is still alive and going strong. In some cases, the NX cameras still offer technology still missing from other manufactures to date. Think about how impressive this is? That's how ahead of the curve you were."

Very true!

The technology was an incredible achievement. If they wanted to just do an NX2, an update, I am sure they could swing the factories back into action.

Problem is, they have to justify the business plan to the Samsung board and CEO, who has his eyes on sales numbering in the millions.

I hope Samsung can see the advantage of doing a smaller scale brand prestige project with the NX2, ahead of a full frame camera launch in the future that grabs a big chunk of the market.

[Saddam]

Just signed the petition today. Hope we will get firmware update for our much loved NX1 and maybe an NX2. Now it has nearly 16k signs. Whoever didn't yet please sign the petition.

[MountneerMan]

I signed the petition about a year ago.

I am happy to hear they got a response from Samsung.

My question is would you guys be willing to trust Samsung again after leaving us hanging like this? and if not what kind of commitment would be needed from Samsung for you to trust them.

 

For me, I would need to see a 2-3 year lens release roadmap schedule similar to what Sony did. It's not that I need a lot of lenses I just need to know they are committed to developing the line and that an NX3 would follow after the NX2.

 

Actually, who am I kidding I like my NX1 so much I would probably buy an NX2 no matter what lol. I can only imagine if they made the NX2 today it would probably have some ridiculous specs like 4k 120p and 1080 @ 480

[Juxx989]

This is BS but this guy has quite the imagination 

 

[Marco Tecno]

haha, wishful thinking to say the very least.

[lebigmac]

That's what Samsung Support has said today regarding another NX1 firmware update: 
 

Samsung Support USA  @SamsungSupport

We certainly appreciate your interest in our products! Unfortunately, we are unable to speculate about the release of future updates. The likely hood of an update for this model is slim. But we are all about making our products better. Please stay tuned to the page, and we will post publicly when an update becomes available. Thanks! ^Darius

[Matthew Hartman]

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. 

 

 

[Kisaha]

@Matthew Hartman very well said.

when I was searching a small mirrorless camera for everyday use with a good pancake, a cheap uwz, and the ability to adapt my old lenses, I went with the NX300, and I loved it, except the terrible video of that camera, the menu system, wireless and full touch screen implementation, was better than anything else. The brown/silver design was so retro/modern-cool! The build quality -except the program dial, was stelar.

When I wanted to get a more modern camera, with very good video features after my early Canon years, NX1 was so much better than anything else, that wasn't even close.

I like them so much, that I have 2 NX1/1 NX500 and 1 NX3000. The money I spent are less than what a A7Rii cost back then, and all the native lenses I have (7-8) are almost as expensive as the Sony 24-70. 

Ergonomically, the NX1 is the best camera I have ever used. I am working with a lot of cameras, and is a pity that people will never know that once was such a camera on production.

[Juxx989]

@Matthew Hartman Yes I know...

It was strange how much value Samsung brought to the table for such a low price and it was ignored..

That bald dude from Camera Labs completely ignored it... Philip Bloom had one still of it and never looked at it again until he was bored 2 years later and did a auto focus test.

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 see it like the Tucker cars of last century... They made a Superior car in the 40's they were the fist to have windshield wipers, seat belts, etc standard but all the other companies Ford, GM, conspired to take them down.

Sony defiantly kicked into high gear when they saw the threat... they released like 4 bodies back to back... I think Samsung forced their hand thats why all their cameras have overheat issues because they weren't quite ready yet.

I think we should create some kind of  a bounty for incentive to get us some raw video...

Ive said it before NX-1 can take 28mp RAW photos @ 15fps = 420mb of information a second

If you could some how tell the camera to only record 8mp RAW still(every 4k frame is 8mp) @24 fps = 192mb of information per second

You know the hardware could do it!

EOSHD was pretty much the epicenter of the NX1 buzz/cult... I was just about to drop $900 bucks on a Canon 70D and then Andy dropped the Lisbon video... Doh!

 Today only like 6 of us on average post on here weekly. The dream is dead. 

Or is it?

 

[Kisaha]

Samsung had only 1 professional camera, and 7 months later had another consumer camera, and then nothing. 

They just didn't believe that market was profitable enough, and they fold early. They did the cynic thing, which my cynic side - not my romantic one - believes that it was the most appropriate and profitable for them.

Sony on the other side, released almost a dozen pro bodies (including their dSLR range), and they are trying hard to overcome the more established players, and still haven't succeed completely. Still Canon is number 1, Nikon has a chance or 2 to save the game, in some markets Olympus is number 1, Panasonic produces excellent - full of features a la Samsung - hybrids and Fuji is the dark horse, but with a few chips that play well.

I won't be sorry when the trip ends, I am happy for the ride, and I am still going strong. I have everything I need for photography for the next few years, and for most video jobs, why do I have to feel sorry about it?

One day, an active adapter between NX and my next system would be great. I am sure that will be a market for NX glass, even after all the cameras are obsolete, some of the NX lenses will still be classic, and there are going to be a lot of those on eBay.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

[Matthew Hartman]

@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. 

[Matthew Hartman]

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.

[Matthew Hartman]

UPDATED the petition to include some recent filmmakers using the NX1 for their productions. 

https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/samsung-keep-nx-alive

[IronFilm]

I went ahead and signed it 

(why hadn't I earlier???  )

On 9/26/2017 at 7:44 AM, MountneerMan said:

I signed the petition about a year ago.

Maybe that was when signed it... and forgot?! :-P 

On 9/26/2017 at 7:44 AM, MountneerMan said:

My question is would you guys be willing to trust Samsung again after leaving us hanging like this? and if not what kind of commitment would be needed from Samsung for you to trust them.

 

For me, I would need to see a 2-3 year lens release roadmap schedule similar to what Sony did. It's not that I need a lot of lenses I just need to know they are committed to developing the line and that an NX3 would follow after the NX2.

I wouldn't mind if they didn't release any more lenses (just bring out a new camera ASAP!!), especially if the NX2 has IBIS. 

As I could just use the few NX system lenses I have now already, plus Nikon adapted lenses. 

On 12/9/2017 at 6:58 AM, Matthew Hartman said:

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. 

The innovation and experience from making an NX2/NX3 would have also had positive flow on effects for their Smartphone camera development as well. 

[IronFilm]

On 12/10/2017 at 5:59 AM, Kisaha said:

Nikon has a chance or 2 to save the game

One of those chances is if they release a "Nikon N300", their 4K cinema camera. 

Ah, if only!

On 12/10/2017 at 11:40 AM, Matthew Hartman said:

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. 

In a way, the entire company of Blackmagic Design is a "pet project" of their CEO/owner!

But it shows that approach of throwing the kitchen sink it while cutting prices low, can make the business rich and successful. Maybe more should try it. 

[Matthew Hartman]

14 hours ago, IronFilm said:

One of those chances is if they release a "Nikon N300", their 4K cinema camera. 

Ah, if only!

In a way, the entire company of Blackmagic Design is a "pet project" of their CEO/owner!

But it shows that approach of throwing the kitchen sink it while cutting prices low, can make the business rich and successful. Maybe more should try it. 

You're not going to get this from Sony and Panasonic, or Canon or Nikon for that matter. They're too big and ppl gladly throw money at their iterative shit so there's no incentive to grow or change. 

The "smaller" companies like Blackmagic are still hungry and have something to prove, for the time being. That was the position Samsung was at in 2014 as well. And we all know RED is outside the realm of affordability for 90% of us so they can continue to be a successful niche.