Review Date: August 11, 2014
Category: Beginner to Serious Amateur
Photoxels Gold Award – Interchangeable Lens Camera
HANDLING & FEEL
The Samsung NX30 improves on the NX20 with practical features while eliminating those that did not prove too useful. It is slightly larger and heavier than the NX20.
As with any Interchangeable Lens Camera, holding the NX30 is a two-handed affair. The best way to hold and carry the NX30 safely is with your right hand on the grip and your left hand under the camera and around the lens barrel.
On the front, you have the NX lens mount, Lens Release button on the right of the mount, the Depth preview button on the bottom left of the mount, and the AF-assist light/Timer lamp at top left.
A 18-55mm (27-84mm equiv.) F3.5-5.6 III OIS portrait kit lens is included with my review camera. It has a manual zoom ring as well as a manual fly-by-wire focus ring. Turn the focus ring and the screen display enlarges for a better view if MF Assist is turned to ON [MENU – Camera – MF ASSIST – Enlarge x5 or x8]. It’s by far the best fly-by-wire AF yet, with the focus ring perfectly synched to the focus, so that it almost feels like you are using a mechanical focus ring. Throw in Focus Peaking and manual focusing becomes precise. The kit lens is optically image stabilized.
This kit lens has Samsung’s unique i-Function feature. There’s a button on the lens barrel labeled iFn. This button acts, as its name implies, like a Function button: press it and a Quick Menu appears on screen. You can then use the lens focus ring (or Command dial or Smart dial) to set an exposure setting depending on what shooting mode you’re in. The purpose for the lens i-Function feature is to allow the photographer to select an exposure without having to reach for a control button: you can leave your index finger on the Shutter Release button while your left hand makes the exposure selection. [The more I use the lens i-Function feature, the more I warm up to it.]
There is an AF/MF button on the 18-55mm lens to switch to manual focus. Since the zoom is manual, you can zoom in and out as slow or as fast as you wish and zoom during movie recording (the sensitive microphone will pick up the sound of rotating the rings). To mute recording the sound (and thus not record the zooming, OIS and AF sounds), select MENU – Movie – Voice – Off.
A neat feature is that you can pause a movie recording by pressing OK, recompose to a new scene and then press OK to seamlessly continue the recording on the same clip. If you set the lens to MF, you can manually control the focus during movie recording.
You can also select which PASM mode to use, and hence to change shutter speed and aperture, during movie recording. Another neat feature is the ability to fade in or out of a scene in Video shooting mode: select MENU – Movie – Fader – Off, In, Out, In-out.
You can take a still picture during movie recording without interrupting the recording.
The NX30 has a molded handgrip that is very comfortable to hold. The camera feels well balanced and I did not feel any strain while carrying it all day in one hand with the 18-55mm kit lens attached.
Here is another angle that gives a different view of how deep the molded handgrip is. The plastic flap on the side opens up 90° to reveal the HGMI port and the USB and shutter release port.
On the top of the handgrip, you have the Shutter button surrounded by the Power switch, the Metering button, the Direct Link (Wi-Fi) button, and the Command Dial.
On the top panel of the camera, there are Drive dial, the Mode dial, a standard Hot-shoe, the built-in pop-up Flash (which can be used to wirelessly trigger an external flash), the Flash pop-up button. The Stereo Microphone has a hole on either side of the viewfinder hump. Behind the Drive dial and on top of the thumb rest is the dedicated Video recording button. The speaker is on the left side of the camera body, viewed from the back.
The Direct Link (Wi-Fi) button allows direct access to one of 8 functions: AutoShare, MobileLink, Remote Viewfinder, Baby Monitor, Auto Backup, Email, SNS & Cloud, and Samsung Link.
The Drive dial has Single, Continuous, Self-timer and BKT (Bracket). It allows you to directly switch between single frame and continuous shooting. However, if you want to change from Continuous Normal (4fps) to Continuous High (9fps), you have to inconveniently navigate through the Menu – Camera – Drive Settings. It’s a nice to have dial but, given the choice between having a Drive dial or an Exposure Compensation dial, I would much rather have an Exposure Compensation dial here.
You can conveniently set self-timer from 2 sec. to 30 sec.
There is an intervalometer. Yipee!
The Mode dial has AUTO, PASM, C1, C2, iFn (Lens Priority) mode, Smart (Scene) mode and Wi-Fi. The Mode Dial can be freely and conveniently [notice how often we use that word] rotated in any direction with your thumb and is stiff enough that it will not be easily and inadvertently moved out of its current selection.
Do not confuse the iFn on the lens with the iFn (Lens Priority) mode on the Mode Dial. The Lens Priority mode has undergone a change in what it used to do (on the NX20: select Scene mode using the focus ring) and now allows you to press the iFn button on the lens and select i-Depth, i-Contrast and i-Zoom. In other words, it allows you to adjust depth of field and contrast, and use digital zoom. For i-Depth, what it does behind the scene is actually change aperture. Samsung seems to be unsure exactly what Lens Priority mode should do on its cameras — and I would venture to say that most photographers would probably rather see something more useful on the Mode dial.
Startup time (from Power ON to LCD ready for capture, i.e. time-to-first-shot) is about 1 sec. when Sensor Cleaning is disabled at Start-Up and about 3 sec. when Sensor Cleaning is enabled at Start-Up. Shot to shot times is about 0.9 sec. (@ 11 shots in 10 sec. in M mode, 1/125sec., AF on).
TIP: Disable Sensor Cleaning at Start-Up [Menu – Settings – Sensor Cleaning – Start-Up Action – Off ] and enable it at Shut down [Menu – Settings – Sensor Cleaning – Shut down Action – On ].
In good lighting, there is no practical shutter lag and AF is fast and precise. In low lighting, AF is about 1 sec. and locks precisely. I like and find Selection AF to be really useful; it uses the OK Button and Smart Dial to quickly position the (resizable using the Command Dial) AF Frame at 19 x 12 = 228 focus areas (at the smallest AF Frame size), almost to the very edges of the screen.
TIP: If you are having difficulty getting focus lock, turn on Selection AF [Menu – Camera – AF area – Selection AF] and resize it [OK – rotate Command Dial] — and see if your AF success rate improves considerably.
TIP: If you like to use Selection AF as I do, don’t forget to link AE to AF [Menu – Camera – Link AE to AF Point – On] which will tell the meter to take its reading wherever you’ve moved the AF Frame to, the reasoning being that you probably want the area under focus to also be correctly exposed.
You can save an image in the RAW file format. It takes about 4 sec. to write a RAW image to memory card (though you can take the next one in about 1 sec. or less). You can also select to save a RAW+JPEG (Super Fine, Fine or Normal).
At Picture Size = Super Fine, a 20.3MP JPEG image is compressed down to anywhere between 1.5MB and 13MB. A RAW image occupies anywhere from 21MB to 34MB!!!
Included in the box is a rechargeable Li-ion battery BP1410 that can take about 360 shots or 145 min. of 1920 x 1080 60fps video (Samsung’s standard) on a fresh charge. A Travel Adapter recharges a depleted battery in-camera in approx. 200 min. The Travel Adapter uses the USB cable to recharge the battery.
The Samsung NX30 uses the SD, SDHC and SDXC card (up to 128GB).
On the back of the camera is the fully-articulating 3.0-in. 1.03M-dot Super AMOLED Swivel and Touch Display: it flips up and down 270° and pivots 180° horizontally so it can face it forward for a selfie. It is a touch panel, so it is super easy and convenient to simply touch the screen to tell the camera where you want to focus (and to take the picture, if you so desire).
One major difference between a traditional-mirrored DSLR and a mirrorless DSLR is usable Live View on the mirrorless. Live View on a traditional-mirrored DSLR is too clunky and practically unusable, and the LCD is used mostly for viewing images in Playback. If you like using the screen display to compose, then you will love the AMOLED display on the NX30.
A pull down screen (minus pulldown animation) displays Screen Brightness (can be modified), Storage and Battery level and the following camera settings: Drive, Photo size, EV, Quality, ISO and Movie size. Note that none of the settings (except the screen brightness) can be changed on this screen.
Above the AMOLED screen is the 2.36M-dot electronic viewfinder (EVF) which is tiltable: you pull it all the way out and tilt it by up to 80°. The EVF at rest thankfully protrudes away from the body quite a bit, so you don’t have to crush your nose against the AMOLED screen (and smearing it with the dreaded oily nose prints). You can also use the EVF pulled out; on my review camera, the EVF stayed conveniently right in place when pulled out completely and you need to push it against some tension to slide it back in. When you pull it all the way out and angle it up at one of three positions, it also remains in place. A Proximity eye-sensor automatically switches the display from the AMOLED screen to the EVF when you bring your eye up to the viewfinder, and back to the AMOLED screen when you move your eye away from the viewfinder.
The upward tilting EVF and fully-articulating AMOLED screen are great for low-angle shots. The up-tilting EVF is also a comfortable way to peer into the camera at eye-level when your subject is sitting. It can also appear less intimidating to a shy subject that you seem to be looking down and not straight at her/him.
Both the AMOLED and EVF unfortunately do not gain up (or just very slightly) in low light.
All the controls are on the right side of the AMOLED screen. Right under the thumb rest is the EV adjust (Exposure Compensation) button. Next are the AEL, Menu, and [Quick] Fn buttons. The Smart Dial (Four-way controller) rotates to select a setting in Menu and the various modes and also has UP (Disp), RIGHT (AF), DOWN (ISO), and LEFT (WB). The middle button is OK/Selection AF (when that option is chosen in AF Area). Below that are the Playback button and the Delete/Custom button.
The EV (Exposure Compensation) adjust button needs to be pressed and held down while you rotate the Command Dial. It is conveniently located under the thumb rest but is recessed and not easy to locate by touch alone.
The Fn button brings up a Quick Function screen and allows you to set Exposure Compensation, ISO, White Balance, Picture Wizard, Metering, AF Mode, AF Area, and Flash. You can save your settings as a Custom Mode and then access it via C1 or C2 on the Mode dial.
You can do limited customization of the Preview, Custom, AEL and Direct Link buttons [Menu – Manage Custom Mode Menu – Key Mapping]:
| Preview: | Optical Preview, One Touch WB, One Touch RAW+ |
| Custom: | Drive, AF Area, Reset |
| AEL: | AEL, AEL Hold, AFL, AEL + AFL |
| Direct Link: | AutoShare, MobileLink, Remote Viewfinder, Baby Monitor, Auto Backup, Email, SNS & Cloud, Samsung Link |
Playback is the stangest thing I’ve ever encountered: the images display in reverse order. When you press LEFT (usually PREV), you get the next image; when you press RIGHT (usually NEXT), you get the previous image. The images are also labelled numerically wrong, as in, the last image is given number 1 and the first image is given the last number (of images you have taken so far). I don’t remember encountering this in any of the other Samsung cameras and this should definitely be rectified in a firmware update.
If you shoot RAW+ (i.e. RAW+JPEG), there is sometimes a noticeable delay to navigate through the pictures in Playback (almost as though, the camera is loading up the RAW images).
There is however no lag when autofocusing or shooting. The NX30 is very fast and focus locks precisely even in low light.
The metal tripod mount is in-line with the lens axis and you should be able to change battery/memory card when the camera is on a tripod.
The Samsung NX30 is a well built mirrorless DSLR with all the important functions accessible from a dial or control button. It’s extremely well thought out with very good handling and build. It’s quite intuitive to use and the enthusiast photographer will find lots to like in the handling and ease-of-use of the Samsung NX30.
Next: Samsung NX30 User’s Experience
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