Now mirrorless is a raging success. Samsung will be back

[webrunner5]

16 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

Sad to see that Cinema5D is still spreading their damage even today. 
That review in particular along with many others is one reason why I just stopped reading Cinema5D. 
Wonder how many sales of the Samsung NX1 that Cinema5D caused damage to?

 

There is nothing wrong with that review. NX1 was not the second coming of Jesus Christ in every aspect.  The DR and RS on it did suck in Video. My Sony A7s juat about as bad for RS. But a hell of a lot more A7s's sold than NX1's. But both somehow take decent video. Cinema5D has tested all the latest video cameras for DR and none of them are what the manufacturer states in reality. It is like people piss a bitch about DXO ratings. Hell ever camera is tested the very same way. How can there be any bias. You might not like the outcome, but nobody likes to see the real truth no matter what camera it is.

They have some damn talented people on that site. I trust them for video results a hell of a lot more than most sites.

[Trek of Joy]

1 hour ago, Andrew Reid said:

The dynamic range charts are meaningless because when you push for the maximum dynamic range, your colour falls apart and there's no contrast shaping the scene.

High dynamic range makes flat lighting look worse.

It is only useful in a handful of situations.

The NX1's stills and sensor are just fine. I've had results from it to rival full frame.

Considering the 5D Mark III has an absolutely enormous full frame sensor and only 22MP, you'd think it would be further ahead than just 1 stop difference shown in the ISO 3200 result above.

I don't know what you're seeing, but I'm seeing a 28MP APS-C sensor in the NX1 with very usable ISO 3200 and much better resolution than the Canon... at one third the cost with added 4K video and OLED screen and EVF!

Look, all I'm saying is that it wasn't any sort of a game changer on the stills side, and its certainly not as good as some of the FF cameras others are comparing it to - specifically the a7r2 and d850 as mentioned by SR. And its really no better than other APS-c cameras. I shot it alongside the 5d3 and it wasn't anything special, it wasn't better than what I was getting stills-wise with the 5d3 and in some cases it was worse - specifically noise. AF hit rate in low light was another huge difference, the 5d3's AF is far superior. So is the a7r2 that I moved to after selling off the NX1 and 5d3.  I have no doubt Samsung could have solved those issues with future generations by copying Sony's eye AF, but that just doesn't seem to be in the cards.

Of course its much better on the video side - though ML raw closes that gap considerably. If you're delivering in 1080p, the 5d3 with ML raw is a better option IMO. Even upscaled to 4k, the ML raw is still pretty good.

Cheers

[SR]

7 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

Well it doesn't matter, because only the people on here must have liked it because it went tits up.

If your metric of how good a product is, is whether it's still popular or has sold well, we're having a different conversation. Unless you were just being dismissive. I still have mine, and i'm using it as a primary camera for commercial work.

7 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

I always thought it was too much over the top colors, saturation wise.

I can't tell if you're talking about stills or video.

6 hours ago, Trek of Joy said:

No I'm not talking out of my ass. And the NX1 is easily over a stop behind the a7r2. It is what it is, a good APS-c camera from a few years ago that - like all APS-c cameras - lags behind FF from the same generation. The noise is just awful, in both stills and video and there's really no way around it. The d850 has superior DR as well, the NX1 is simply good for APS-c, and on par with Sony's APS-c offerings. Calling it anything else is hyperbole.

But I haven't touched any NX1 files in a couple years. I'll dig some out from an old storage drive and revisit with LR CC to see how they compare to my current lineup of the a7r2/s2 and Fuji XT2.

We've seen the charts. Forget the charts.

No one said its dynamic range in stills wasn't a stop behind A7r2 or the D850 -- I said it does comparably well. 

My point was, I've almost never found a real world situation where that one-stop difference was apparent to me, and I was forced to choose those two cameras, available to me anytime, over the NX1 for commercial work (most in my line never go beyond ISO 200 anyways).

Now, if I had a Canon, and also had access to the NX1, Sony or Nikon, it's a different story. Being able to lift the shadows from dark areas like hair is a BIG DEAL. Canon is brutally unforgivable in that area, even with a perfect strobe-lit, studio-setting situations -- you end up with noise in black hairs, even without lifting the shadows at ISO 100! Any camera that can tackle this is in a different class from Canon, and the NX1 belongs to that group, along with the Sony and Nikon. You have to be fair and give it that.

Also, which full frame from that generation did you think it lagged behind?

(On higher ISOs, I've found it promisingly good on the rare occasion I've shot with it, when properly exposed - granted I don't think I've shot anything above ISO 800.)

[webrunner5]

I Think I like the Video better than the Photo side of it. Well it is not my metric. It must have been Samsung's Metric to pull it.

 

[SR]

34 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

It went tits up like I said. If it was the best thing since sex it would have sold millions, everyone on here would have one, and Version NX2 with Raw, no April Fools Joke, would have been out. It bombed whether you still have one or not. Samsung did not pull the plug because they were selling them faster than they could make them.

I can't tell if you're trolling. My original comment had nothing to do with sales. You're really going off tangent.

35 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

Personally I think they tried too hard by trying to top every spec out there over everyone.

I'll just let this one sit here.

[webrunner5]

58 minutes ago, SR said:

I can't tell if you're trolling. My original comment had nothing to do with sales. You're really going off tangent.

 

 Why do you keep trying to talk people into buying it, or even liking it. I don't want one, never did. Hell of a lot of others didn't either. And if you think beating a 5 year old Canon 5D mk III is a win I don't know what to say. And Just because Andrew got your hopes up, sorry, they ain't coming back. They are not going to make an ass of themselves twice.

 

[SR]

1 hour ago, webrunner5 said:

 Why do you keep trying to talk people into buying it, or even liking it. I don't want one, never did. Hell of a lot of others didn't either. And if you think beating a 5 year old Canon 5D mk III is a win I don't know what to say. And Just because Andrew got your hopes up, sorry, they ain't coming back. They are not going to make an ass of themselves twice.

I feel like you're talking past me and not actually reading what I said. My first comment to this thread was responding to a comment by Trek of Joy that suggested the Canon 5D3 had better IQ than the NX1, not Andrew's topic.

And what part of anything I said sounded like a sales pitch? On the contrary, you seem to be eager to dismiss the positive experience NX1 owners and ex-owners have had. 

I don't think there's a point to continue this, if we're just talking past each other.

[Robert Collins]

3 hours ago, SR said:

If your metric of how good a product is, is whether it's still popular or has sold well, we're having a different conversation. Unless you were just being dismissive. I still have mine, and i'm using it as a primary camera for commercial work.

Unfortunately this thread is about whether Samsung is going to re-enter the market which is really about 'whether if Samsung introduce a groundbreaking new camera/hybrid' it will sell well or not.

I  remember the NX1 - it got some insanely good reviews (Dpreview and I think the Camerastoretv). I never bought it - lack of lenses (which other mirrorless had at the time and dont have now), it being 'ugly' (obviously not a good reason but we are all tarts at heart) and being 'too big' for an apsc mirrorless were all factors that jump to mind.)

It's like Pentax - excellent cameras that nobody buys. Or Canon for that matter - pretty rubbish cameras that everyone buys (sorry for the offence). I am pretty dubious about the whole concept that Samsung actually has 'groundbreaking tech' in this space just because it had it 5 years ago. But I am infinitely more dubious about the fact - that even if they do - anyone will care.

[Kisaha]

18 minutes ago, Robert Collins said:

Unfortunately this thread is about whether Samsung is going to re-enter the market which is really about 'whether if Samsung introduce a groundbreaking new camera/hybrid' it will sell well or not.

I  remember the NX1 - it got some insanely good reviews (Dpreview and I think the Camerastoretv). I never bought it - lack of lenses (which other mirrorless had at the time and dont have now), it being 'ugly' (obviously not a good reason but we are all tarts at heart) and being 'too big' for an apsc mirrorless were all factors that jump to mind.)

It's like Pentax - excellent cameras that nobody buys. Or Canon for that matter - pretty rubbish cameras that everyone buys (sorry for the offence). I am pretty dubious about the whole concept that Samsung actually has 'groundbreaking tech' in this space just because it had it 5 years ago. But I am infinitely more dubious about the fact - that even if they do - anyone will care.

The camera has the best ergonomics ever made in this planet and I own (-ed) cameras from the Pentax Spotmatic, Canon AE-1 and I am still using for pro work most of the cameras in the market (in the last 10 days I had to work with the Canon C100/5Diii/A7sII/GH5) and I am still do not think of letting go my 4 NX cameras, I am crazy, or just happy using this equipment?

At the time (2015), Samsung had a very good collection of lenses, with only a few gaps, and a lack of very tele lenses which some do not use anyway. Only Fuji had more lenses, and even Fuji lacked some of the Samsung ones, the problem wasn't the lack of lenses for most people, the problem is that they stopped producing more, while they had 300mm, 2.8f ready for production, and some other lenses in the final stage of R&D, sadly it didn't happen, but I am happy to own 7-8 NX lenses, that cover everything I do, from 10mm fisheye, which no one else does natively - not even Fuji, to 200mm. That is all I need, honestly, and have taken me so far. 

 Is smaller and lighter than the GH5 and the new Fuji H1. In my opinion, just perfect for an APS-C PRO body, the best ever made. I am wondering if you consider the Sony boxes as pretty, because they are flat out ugly, but not ergonomic at the same time. It took them 3 generations to reach the level they are in today, which still is behind what Samsung did in 2014 with their first generation.

We care, we own, we use, we saved money using the same system since 2014-2015 while other have changed 1-2-3 systems since then.

@webrunner5 sorry, but your opinion means nothing, like all the rest that never bought to the system and make words out of nothing. If you have never used one, how can you judge? 

also, the camera is from 2014 dude, so why it is weird to compare it with a camera of that age? also, that camera cost more than double the price and is a full frame one, so it should be superior in everything, but not only isn't vastly superior, it looses in most usability, modern features and video specs.

A 2014 camera came into this era, and still been competitive of better than even the modern ones, with a few gems of lenses, and a sidekick (NX500) that you can even use as a B cam, or every day "pocket" cam (with one of the excellent, tiny pancakes, and ultra sharp pancakes) like the 30mm/2f) and that's that.

Another fact. I did a photo shooting to some friend'ss events, professional photo/videographers, the one owns Sony, and the other GH5, both of them and their families loved what I gave them out of the camera. Color Science is something we do not talk much when we talk about NX, and you know what? because we do not have to, unlike some other brands that still can't fight the yellows or the greens.

[Robert Collins]

1 hour ago, Kisaha said:

We care, we own, we use, we saved money using the same system since 2014-2015 while other have changed 1-2-3 systems since then.

@webrunner5 sorry, but your opinion means nothing, like all the rest that never bought to the system and make words out of nothing. If you have never used one, how can you judge? 

I really understand the point you are making but sadly in the business world the 'exact opposite' is true.

Samsung has already shown that the opinions of those who consider the NX1 the 'best ever' hybrid dont 'count' because there are 'not enough of them' to keep the camera in production. And honestly if 'only' opinions of people who have bought and used the system arent worth anything you are rather heroically ruling out 99.9% of the demographic which rather explains the problem.

The biggest problem that Samsung faces is 'NOT' that it produced crappy cameras that nobody wanted to buy, it is that it produced 'best in class' (by several more independent sources) cameras that 'nobody wanted to buy'. 

[Kisaha]

1 hour ago, Robert Collins said:

I really understand the point you are making but sadly in the business world the 'exact opposite' is true.

Samsung has already shown that the opinions of those who consider the NX1 the 'best ever' hybrid dont 'count' because there are 'not enough of them' to keep the camera in production. And honestly if 'only' opinions of people who have bought and used the system arent worth anything you are rather heroically ruling out 99.9% of the demographic which rather explains the problem.

The biggest problem that Samsung faces is 'NOT' that it produced crappy cameras that nobody wanted to buy, it is that it produced 'best in class' (by several more independent sources) cameras that 'nobody wanted to buy'. 

I could talk theoretically about rocket science, but I have never use, or made one, so there is a 00,00001% of the demographics know more than me, does that make their opinion less valuable than mine? I am not trying to convince them that they do not know how to make a rocket on their forums and I still have a university background (4 years full time Bachelor degree, didn't finish the last year) and real work experience in engineering and internal combustion engines.

Samsung owned more than the 00,1% of the mirrorless sales, at least in the years they were active. Do not forget that we are talking for 2010-2015. High used prices saw that there still is interest while most cameras of that time (NX1 was 2014, NX500 2015) can be had for nothing at all.

The NX line was the pet project of the owner, then the old man died, and his son decided that its better to earn billions through mobile phones, than loosing millions on a saturated market, with too many players, for too few customers. I didn't like it, but I believe they made the right decision.

The reality is that I am sticking to those cameras for at least a year or 2 more. They are complete hybrid cameras, with nothing lacking, until I saw the complete transformation and stabilization of the market, and until I see Canonikon unfold their cards.

Battery consumption and no overheating? check. 73min continuous video recording? check. H265? check. Best 100/120f footage in APS-C land? check. Best workhorse APS-C lens (awarder by DPR at that year, when Samsung was dead) 16-50mm with amazing stabilization and 2f-2.8f (not even Fuji has one, not 2f, not stabilized, and 30% more of the price) check. Normal to low prices in everything? check. Many, good and cheap pancakes? check. 4KDCI, whatever? check. mod/hack scene with things, apps, advanced bitrates that Panasonic and others implemented on their latest cameras? check. Still highest megapixel count in the industry? check. Still best ergonomics in business? check. Menu system? check. Best touch screen OS, simplest and most comprehend able even for new users? check. Build quality? (the GH5 we were using yesterday, in 8 months they are starting to loose their skin and some buttons already are not working properly) Check. Color science? Check. FilmConvert compatible? check. DIS+OIS = Dual I.S? check. Super Amoled touch screens? Check. Cheap and common media use? Check. and I can go on and on for some more time.

and I have full working experience with most of the cameras in the market, the kind of experience that if you fail, you do not eat or provide to your family, so I am pretty sure about my statements above. If you take things from this camera, and that camera, yes, they are differences, especially today, in 2018, but if you are trying to build a wholesome camera, NX1 is still near the top.

Now, I would like to have the 10 bit of GH5? yes. The ISO performance of A7sII? yes. Ok, it doesn't have those, but it has all the rest, and I can live with no 10bit, when my most used camera of the last few years is the C100mkII, and I can live with fast lenses and 1600ISO, when the first 15 years of my career, 1600ISO was unheard!

 

[DBounce]

I would love to see Samsung return with a killer camera. I am certain if they wanted they could crush everyone from Arri down. And sell the dam thing at a reasonable price. Hell they could probably even make anamorphic mainstream... if they were determined to. But I doubt they will. It's just not a big enough market to get them excited.

[webrunner5]

23 minutes ago, DBounce said:

I would love to see Samsung return with a killer camera. I am certain if they wanted they could crush everyone from Arri down. And sell the dam thing at a reasonable price. Hell they could probably even make anamorphic mainstream... if they were determined to. But I doubt they will. It's just not a big enough market to get them excited.

I am sure they Could do it, but with this new 4K BMPCC and the Sony A7 mk III at the prices they are it would be even more risky now. We don't know if the next GH6 will come out cheaper because of it than the GH5. Will it force Canon, Nikon to really change the price now of their new Mirrorless stuff. I think both of these recent announcements have to effect the market pricing pretty big time going forward.

I think even Sony has put themselves in a tight box with the A7 mk III pricing. Is a better EVF and better LCD worth 1000 bucks more? Is the A9 worth 4 grand now new? They now have 4 FF cameras fighting for the same market in a sense now. Is the A9 worth twice the price of the A7 mk III now. Doubt it. To a Pro it is, but how many are they going to sell to them?

And now with Fuji picking up the pace in video with the X-H1, which I am sure Samsung could beat specs wise, but still the market is not as forgiving as it was a few years ago. I don't see how you can sell a APSC camera now for even 2 grand, let alone m4/3 cameras at that price. I just don't see an opening for Samsung in any market, APSC, FF or less. The mirrorless camera market soon is going to be packed with all kind and brands of bodies. It is going to get really ugly soon.

And it appears Blackmagic and Sony are willing to just about give their stuff away to grab and keep market share. And it also shows how little money is needed to make one of these cameras and still make money doing it. Unless Samsung has some total groundbreaking camera like the 4K BMPCC in a APSC size I think it would be suicide.

 

[Damphousse]

On 4/22/2018 at 7:32 PM, Andrew Reid said:

Samsung will be back.

That's kind of a nebulous statement.  Who knows what will happen 20 years from now.  Maybe they will be back.  Anything is possible.  But as for right now?  I doubt they are going to be back any time soon.  Consumer electronics is a rough business.  I said it for years that the camera market couldn't support so many players... at least not profitably.  And I certainly called out the issues with Samsung while a small but vocal group of people were fanboing the NX1.  As I predicted Samsung exited the interchangable lens party in short order.

Now the BMPCC 4k is months away from launch.  If they couldn't last with the NX1 years ago they certainly aren't going to last very long in a post BMPCC 4k world.  $1,300 with full Resolve, raw, false color, recording via USB C, 5 inch touch screen, etc?

On 4/23/2018 at 7:04 AM, ntblowz said:

On my recent trip to Japan, two of my mates (one is doctor one is key animator) upgraded their phone to take better photos, money is not really a problem to them, but they rather spend on new phones than getting a new camera.

Camera is surely going to be more niche in the future, pretty sure Samsung saw it waay before.

SLRs have always been a niche thing.  It's not like in the 80s a quarter of households had a Canon or Nikon SLR and a couple of lenses.

I don't know why people think just because these cameras are digital the majority of people are even interested in them.  People with smartphones have no desire to go out and get some bulky (yes even mirrorless is bulky) device for $1,499 and pay through the nose for some lenses just to take pictures.  Given a choice between that and and a couple of iphones, an ipad, and a netflix subscribtion for a year we know where the money is going to go.  How many single items do most people commit $1,500+ dollars to?!  House, car, maybe TV (if they are a guy).  Well I guess Apple fanbois buy overpriced laptops and desktops for that much but most people don't spend $1,500 at a go on one item.

29 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

And it appears Blackmagic and Sony are willing to just about give their stuff away to grab and keep market share. And it also shows how little money is needed to make one of these cameras and still make money doing it. Unless Samsung has some total groundbreaking camera like the 4K BMPCC in a APSC size I think it would be suicide.

Agreed.

[ND64]

Canon and Nikon have legacy advantage, Olympus/Panasonic have advantage of a well established and very well supported mount, Sony has advantage in sensor tech and huge IP assets in that field. What's gonna be Samsung advantage? Higher framerate? Thats far from enough. 

[Trek of Joy]

20 hours ago, SR said:

Also, which full frame from that generation did you think it lagged behind?

From a stills standpoint it clearly lags behind the d810, d750, d610, a7r and a7 - all released before the NX1. On the stills side its really no better than the a6000 IQ-wise. I still stand by my original comment on this matter - it didn't redefine photography at all. It was simply a good APS-c camera as shown below.

20 hours ago, SR said:

My point was, I've almost never found a real world situation where that one-stop difference was apparent to me, and I was forced to choose those two cameras, available to me anytime, over the NX1 for commercial work (most in my line never go beyond ISO 200 anyways).

Now, if I had a Canon, and also had access to the NX1, Sony or Nikon, it's a different story. Being able to lift the shadows from dark areas like hair is a BIG DEAL. Canon is brutally unforgivable in that area, even with a perfect strobe-lit, studio-setting situations -- you end up with noise in black hairs, even without lifting the shadows at ISO 100! Any camera that can tackle this is in a different class from Canon, and the NX1 belongs to that group, along with the Sony and Nikon. You have to be fair and give it that.

The DR curve is different with Samsung, it does have more information in the shadows at the expense of clipping highlights easier - going from memory, that was my experience. I shoot over 800 a lot for event work in dimly lit rooms or outside at night, so for my real-world situation the Canon files were cleaner at higher ISO's. Plus Canon has faster lenses, which helps a lot. Had Samsung released a few faster lenses it would have been easier to live with, but they didn't.

You can disregard any chart, but the DR wedge clearly shows the noise, and for me that was noise I didn't like. Its in the video files as well. And Sony is better still with the a7r2 - which arrived about 8 months after the NX1 was available in my area - I would call those cameras from the same generation. Even at base ISO's Sony's have more information in the highlights - IMO the DR curve is distributed more evenly compared to the NX, but that's a personal thing.

I don't shoot strobe lit studio anything, so my comments are as a mostly natural light shooter. About the only time I have lights is a small 3-point kit for interviews. As always YMMV.

I shot both side-by-side for awhile before moving to the a7r2, so I have some event files buried in a hard drive somewhere. I won't keep clogging up this thread, feel free to bash me with PM's.

Cheers

Chris

The photography side of things is still a main driver in the ILC world. Its the reason Canon is still #1, Sony is making headwind and Samsung is gone. They just didn't resonate with enough photographers to make it a viable system, there was no presence in the pro market, and quite frankly the marketing message wasn't very good. They pushed it out and let it twist in the wind. It shouldn't have been a h265 only camera either, but that's another argument. Spec sheet stuffing isn't the driving force in a camera purchase for casual shooters - which make up a much larger portion of the buying audience compared to enthusiasts buying 5d's, a9's and expensive glass.

I still disagree with this thread, Samsung sold about 315,000,000 phones last year. As I mentioned earlier, Olympus forecasted about 500,000 ILC's for FY2017, it would take years and multiple generations for Samsung to reach just half that.

I would like to see their sensor and processing tech in another camera to break up Sony's monopoly (outside of Canon's larger sensors) in the camera sensor realm. Fuji, Olympus and Nikon could really benefit from sourcing their sensors from someone other than Sony.

[Robert Collins]

7 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

And it appears Blackmagic and Sony are willing to just about give their stuff away to grab and keep market share. And it also shows how little money is needed to make one of these cameras and still make money doing it. Unless Samsung has some total groundbreaking camera like the 4K BMPCC in a APSC size I think it would be suicide.

Sony is in a fairly unique position in that it is 'the' sensor manufacturer which essentially means it can say breakeven on the camera and make money on the sensor or breakeven on the sensor and make money on the camera. They get even more flexibility because the 'marginal cost' of a sensor is low but the price (based on the 'average cost') is high.

And honestly when you have a 20 page thread on EOSHD about 'the battle of 3 M43 cameras' when the obvious winner is Sony who is providing the same sensor (apparently designed for security cameras) I dont think we have to worry that Sony is 'giving away' their cameras because my guess is that they are making decent money one or another.

Blackmagic, on the other hand, I am not sure about. They seem to be promising an awful lot for very little to me. To see what I mean, take Olympus as an example. Olympus has lost money in digital cameras in every one of the last 10 years except one (2011 from memory). Its gross margin in this business is extremely high (over 50% when Apple's is around 38%) but they still lose money. And it seems to me that Olympus cameras basically offer a whole lot less than BM for a whole lot more.

[sanveer]

On 25/04/2018 at 3:17 AM, IronFilm said:

Sad to see that Cinema5D is still spreading their damage even today. 
That review in particular along with many others is one reason why I just stopped reading Cinema5D. 
Wonder how many sales of the Samsung NX1 that Cinema5D caused damage to?

 

That's the sole reason I stopped visiting the site too. It smacks of too much bias. They have brands that they glorify, and others they try to run to the ground.

 

[IronFilm]

On 4/26/2018 at 11:23 AM, Robert Collins said:

And honestly when you have a 20 page thread on EOSHD about 'the battle of 3 M43 cameras' when the obvious winner is Sony who is providing the same sensor (apparently designed for security cameras) I dont think we have to worry that Sony is 'giving away' their cameras because my guess is that they are making decent money one or another.

This. Whoever wins...  Sony wins!

 

 

[astrobunny]

I gotta say that I own an NX500 and there isn't any other camera I would even consider owning - except possibly the NX1 for its viewfinder, built-in flash, and 15fps. But I prefer very small equipment and I don't see myself ever moving on from the NX500. There is no other camera that compares with the chief features I require - fast, accurate focusing, 9 fps, 28.8 mp crop sensor,  4K video - to name a few.