UrbanWire spoke to Mr. William Aung, a lecturer at the School of Film and Media Studies at Ngee Ann Polytechnic and a professional photographer, who gave his input on Samsung’s NX-11 camera.
“The NX11 is a great alternative for people who want to enjoy the great image quality of DSLRs but do not appreciate the weight and the size of modern DSLRs. A lot of people mistake NX11 for a micro-four-third. In fact, the camera is a mirrorless body featuring an APS-C sensor, which, in a way, is the same size and quality as most DSLR cameras in the market.
At the back of the NX11, Samsung has its very nice and bright 3.0” AMOLED display screen, which offers brighter images than conventional LCD screens. This does not exactly affect the real image quality; however, most people will be pleased by the bright and crisp AMOLED display right after the shoot.
Even though they are new comers to the market, Samsung already has introduced several great lenses for the NX11 and NX100 series cameras. Their Pancake 30mm f/2.0 and 20mm f/2.8 are great prime lenses fit for portraiture and low light photography. On top of the current prime lenses, their standard kit lens 18-55mm and tele-zoom 50-200 becomes a good combo for photographers who want to cover from the wide to the long tele-photo shots. On top of that, Samsung has promised quite a long list of lenses line-up including their Ultra-Wide Pancake 16mm f/2.4, Macro 60mm f/2.8 and Premium Portrait 85mm f/1.4 by the end of the year.
Being a mirror-less camera, users are expected to use the AMOLED screen at the back of the camera instead of looking thru the viewfinder. However, the electronic viewfinder can be activated by the proximity sensor once the user pulls the camera towards the eyes.
The camera has the simple user interface just like many other compacts and elementary DSLRs. The menus are sleek and easy to navigate around. The built-in image editing modes are also interesting. Though they are not comparable to professional PC image editing programs, they allow you to make minor adjustments such as colour casts, miniature effects, and etc.
On top of many simple and usual features offered by NX11, the Panorama mode is an extremely handy feature, especially for non-Wide Angle lenses. It just needs the user to switch to the Pano mode, hold the shutter button and moving slowly to the side allows to capture amazing Panoramas in a very convenient way. NX11 also features the Sound-Picture mode, which allows to capture images together with a short sound clip. Though the feature seems redundant at first, it is a great tool capturing moments and emotions. Hearing the sounds or the voices during the photo was taken (such as chatters, children’s voices, concerts, etc.) allows you to re-live in these moments.
And on top of it, the NX11 features the common Hot-shoe mount same as Canon’s and some other brands. This allows to mount Canon flashes and other third party accessories such as flash triggers. This makes “strobing” possible, which is crucial for Macro and Portraits.
The size and the weight of the camera is probably one of the top reasons to choose the camera over any DSLRs. It’s very much light weight, and does not create so much attention when taking photos with the camera.”
To see more of Mr. William Aung’s photography and work, go to www.williamaung.com.
