When reviewing cameras, I like to put them through some real-life rigors. So, when my editor handed me the Samsung NX 300 a week before my friend’s Wild West-meets-Pinterest wedding at her family’s ranch in New Mexico, I figured a weekend in cowgirl country presented a great opportunity for some tests.
The NX 300 is one of Samsung’s current entries in the world of compact interchangeable lens cameras, a segment full of small, mirrorless cameras with retro looks that evoke the feel of old Lomos. On the inside, though, it’s very modern: 20.3 megapixels on a 23.5mm x 15.7mm sensor, a maximum ISO of 25600, and RAW capabilities.
My review unit came with both the 18-55 mm, f/3.5-5.6 kit lens and a 45mm, f/1.8 fixed lens. I used both, utilizing the kit lens’ wide-angle, stabilized lens for sweeping landscape shots and swapping in the fixed 45mm lens for low-light shots and portraits. The 45mm lens was released in conjunction with the NX 300, and Samsung advertises it as the first 3-D lens system that can capture still images and video. The 3-D option is a nice touch, but it’s a useless feature unless you have a 3-D TV to view the photos. If you don’t want 3-D but need a wide-aperture NX lens, Samsung makes a cheaper 2-D-only version of this 45mm (The 3-D-capable lens is about $470, while the regular version is around $290).
Despite its small size, the NX 300 isn’t designed for amateurs seeking point-and-shoot functionality. There are no familiar “scene mode” icons on the controls, and while it does have a handful of specialty capture tools, the camera doesn’t boast the “novelty” features you see on other compacts. The interface uses a combination of touch screen and tactile buttons. To focus, you can either use the physical lens for manual focusing or tap-to-focus on the screen. Same goes for manual exposure controls. You can either press the “iFN” button on the lens or “fn” button on the body to open up the touch screen exposure menu or you can use the various physical buttons and scrolling wheel to choose your aperture, shutter speed, and other variables.
The 3.3-inch OLED screen on the NX 300 is only maneuverable enough to tilt the screen up or down. It is not fully reversible — sorry, selfies enthusiasts. The 768k-pixel display is detailed enough to examine the details of the images as you take them. The touch screen is responsive, but not too sensitive, making its keyboard surprisingly functional.
Because the NX 300 was pretty much made to be paired with Samsung’s demanding 3-D lens, the camera is fast when set up with that particular lens. It is running the same DRIMe IV image processor as the Galaxy Camera NX line, but isn’t using an Android operating system. The result is a quick user experience.
When following around the real wedding photographer for my friend’s post-nuptial portraits, I found that the lens flare on the NX 300 was a distracting purple. This was especially devastating in my situation because, as everyone knows, lens flares are a wedding photographer’s bread and butter. The detachable flash did not cast the most attractive glow on my subjects at night, either. On auto, it tended to blow out the subject while leaving the background dark. After adjusting a few things in Manual mode, I was able to slow down the shutter speed and bring out more background light (typical of a “Night Portrait” setting on a point-and-shoot.)
For modern digital cameras, good optics and a clean capture interface are not always the biggest selling points. In the age of smartphone photography, a digital camera needs to connect to compete. And the NX 300, a “smart” camera, does connect.
Using the NX 300′s Wi-Fi signal, I was able to upload photos to my iPhone as I took them. After that, I could edit the photos and share them on the social network of my choosing. In my case, the photos were uploaded to a Wedding Party account in real-time over 3G, and the happy couple could share the pictures as they wished. The NX 300′s Wi-Fi capabilities also allow it to automatically upload photos to a PC or cloud storage on Picasa and SkyDrive, as long as there’s an internet connection to be had.
The NX 300 also offers Samsung’s on-camera editing tools. Just like my last run in with a Samsung Smart Camera, I was underwhelmed by the performance of these tools, opting to upload the photos on my iPhone and edit them there instead.
As far as battery life goes, the NX 300 holds up quite well. Despite my worries that its large screen would drain its battery, the camera lasted the whole wedding day (and then some) as I shot photos and shared them via Wi-Fi.
To test out the NX 300′s video, I recorded my friends riding horses in full daylight. The image quality was great, but even with the 18-55mm lens’s optical image stabilization, and heavy fencepost-leaning on my part, the video was a little shaky. The audio was also pretty rough, too. I understand that an outdoor environment is not conducive to clear audio, but all I can hear in my video is brutal wind noise.
As a package, the NX 300 isn’t bad. But it’s similar to a rig you could assemble by combining other devices. The sensor and lenses can create top-quality images and video, and the OLED display provides a clear view of images. But is that enough to replace your current camera, or to convince you to steer away from the comfort of a Nikon, Canon, Panasonic, Sony, or Olympus? The on-camera sharing tools are superfluous — you can do the same thing with any camera through a Wi-Fi-enabled memory card — and its novelty capture tools aren’t great. Modes like “beauty shot,” “light trail,” and HDR are frankly not awesome enough to warrant the amount of lag they seem to create. And that 3-D lens … it seems more like a gimmick to get you to buy a Samsung 3-D TV than to actually create something worthwhile.
Still, the NX 300 was great as a traditional camera, which is what matters most. It let me shoot some gorgeous photos of the wedding, and allowed me to upload the photos to the internet in real time. So even if I dropped my camera in the horse’s water trough, the bride and groom could still share their photos on Facebook. Because that’s what getting married is all about, right?
Aperture test two.
Aperture test one.
An example of strong backlighting.
Some details.
The lens flare of the kit lens once more.
This shot was edited in-camera using Samsung's software. It's a mixed bag.
Horses, of course.
Here you can see the purple lens flare of the kit lens.
The NX 300 performs a night-time slow exposure.
The smart focus function had a hard time finding the human's face, but the horse is crisp.
The tilting screen lets you get shots close to the ground like this one.
The kit lens at 55mm
All sample shots by Lauren Crabbe for WIRED
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