Feb 02 2012

Samsung NX200 Lightning Review: It Has More Megapixels, But…

Category: Uncategorized — djordan @ 1:56 pm

The NX200 could almost be a DSLR camera, with its giant image sensor and fat lenses. And it’s priced like one $900. It’s not, since it doesn’t have a mirror in its heart—but it doesn’t fit in your pocket like most other mirrorless cameras. HMM!

What Is It?

A mirrorless, interchangeable-lens camera with a big 20.3-megapixel, APS-C-sized sensor. Oh, and the camera has a hefty $900 price tag, although it’s cheaper than the 24-megapixel Sony NEX-7.

Who’s it For?

This camera is designed for experienced amateurs who want to step up their game to a compact, road-ready camera with great image quality and well-designed manual functions.

Design

The NX200 has a tough magnesium alloy body with a bulge on the right side where the battery goes. It fits perfectly in the grip of your hand. That said, remember: big sensor, big lenses. The zoom lenses for this camera aren’t collapsible, so the NX200 is not a pocketable camera, even if you have giant pockets.

Using It

Samsung NX200 Lightning Review: It Has More Megapixels, But...People who know their way around cameras will love the design of the NX200, and newbies will find confusing. The camera has snappy shutter performance and superfast drive, but the autofocus is slow.

The Best Part

Samsung’s customizable iFn button is perfectly placed on the lens we tested, which makes it easy to toggle between key camera settings very quickly so you can concentrate on what’s important: taking photos. Some of the other NX system lenses have an iFn button as well.

Tragic Flaw

Even though the camera’s sensor is capable of great things, sometimes you don’t know what you’re getting with this camera. The camera often makes improper exposure calculations in automatic and partially automatic modes. The metering and the autofocus can both be finicky.

This Is Weird…

There’s a programmable custom button on the bottom right of the camera’s body. That’s great. Unfortunately, you can only map a few functions to it.

Test Notes

• Samsung NX200 Lightning Review: It Has More Megapixels, But...The camera’s sensor performs well across the board, even in low-light conditions despite packing 20.1 megapixels onto an APS-C sensor. All of those tiny pixels could have killed the camera in darker conditions, but the photos remained relatively noise-free at ISO 800 and even sometimes at ISO 1600. Check out our samples gallery here.

• It’s a good thing the camera’s settings are so easy to access because you really need to tinker with them to get the kind of shot you want. This is not a beginner camera, and you better have some patience for metering, metering again, and switching between exposure modes to get the shot you want.

• The camera’s shutter release is sensitive and has quick action. Very satisfying. It’s nice that the camera will peel off up to 7 frames per second, but when you’re shooting RAW, the camera chokes up in continuous mode very quickly.

• The NX200 records massive photos in Samsung’s proprietary RAW format (SRW). Inexplicably massive. They’re 50 MB, which seems a little excessive considering we get 20 MB CR2 files from our Canon 60D.

• The HD video quality is good, if you are shooting a relatively static scene. But as when you’re shooting stills, there is a lag in the autofocus, so if your scene changes or your move the camera, you’ve got to wait for the camera to adjust.

• As long as you don’t turn on the GPS (don’t turn on the GPS) the camera gets great battery life. It never died in the field—including during a week of near constant use at CES.

• The AMOLED LCD is absolutely gorgeous.

Should You Buy It?

No—or I should say—not yet. The camera has a spectacular sensor, its button design is almost perfect, and the menus are logical and displayed on a beautiful screen. Unfortunately, the camera has a serious learning curve. I really like to tinker and take my time when shooting photos so I’ve actually grown to love this camera, but it’s not for everyone.

If Samsung irons out these performance issues and gets the file size on the photos down, the next NX system camera could be one of the best shooters in its class. Until then, the Sony NEX-5 and Panasonic GX1 are the best pro compacts under $1000. Pick the NEX-5 if you care about low-light image quality. Pick the GX1 if you want a compact build and a brilliantly usable design.


Samsung NX200
Price: $900 w/ 18-55mm zoom lens
Sensor: 20.3 megapixel, 23.5 x 15.7mm APS CMOS Sensor
Image: Up to 5472 x 3648
Video: Up to 1920 x 1080/30p
Screen: 614,000 dot, 3″ AMOLED LCD
Gizrank: 3.5

[gizmodo]

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Feb 01 2012

Tamron releases 18-200mm F/3.5-6.3 Di III VC

Category: Uncategorized — djordan @ 9:05 am

Tamron-lens-on-camera_black
Tamron Co., Ltd., a leading manufacturer of optical equipment, announced the introduction of an exciting new lens, the 18-200mm F/3.5-6.3 Di III VC (Model B011). The new high-power all-in-one zoom lens is designed for the Sony mirrorless interchangeable-lens camera series. Tamron, the zoom lens pioneer, brings 19 years of high-power zoom lens development technologies to this new product.

With the 18-200mm Di III VC (Model B011), Tamron has created a high-power all-in-one zoom lens that is compact and lightweight, featuring a 62mm filter and weighing only 16.2 oz., while at the same time delivering superlative image quality. This compact size lets users easily shoot across an extended range—from wide-angle to full telephoto—with just one lens. The focal length coverage is 18-200mm. Converted to the coverage of the 35mm format, this is equivalent to a range of 27mm wide-angle up to 300mm full telephoto. This allows the user to easily take wide-angle shots of expansive landscapes and powerful telephoto images that enlarge the details of distant subjects ll with one lens. In addition, by setting the lens at the telephoto end (200mm) and moving in to the minimum focus distance of 19.6 inches, flower petals, jewelry and other small objects can be shot as expanded closeups.

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Jan 19 2012

$400 Adapter Lets Your Sony NEX Gaze Through Canon Lenses

Category: Uncategorized — djordan @ 12:14 pm

The number of lenses available for mirrorless pro compact snappers is dwarfed by those available for Canon SLRs. But there’s no reason to feel inferior now that Conurus’ Canon EF lens adapter for Sony’s NEX cameras is finally available.

As long as you’re not completely reliant on autofocus, which is rendered unusable with this adapter, for just $400 you can use any Canon EOS lens on your Sony NEX-series body.

The adapter—which supports all other functions of the lens and camera including image stabilization, shooting modes, and EXIF data—has only just become available, but has already sold out. So if you were patiently waiting to finally use your Canon glass on your NEX-series shooter, you’ll have to wait just a bit longer while Conurus “…are manufacturing the next batch immediately.” [Conurus via The Verge]

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Jan 08 2012

Nikon’s $6000 D4 DSLR with an ISO Range from 100 to 204,800

Category: Uncategorized — djordan @ 8:24 am

Nikon’s $6000 D4 might just be the new most deadly lightstalker around with a new 16.2-megapixel full-format CMOS sensor that has (relatively) gigantic 7.3-micron pixels (bigger than Canon’s new 1 DX). And it shoots at up to ISO 204,800. Did I mention it’s better than the D3s in almost every way?

With an expanded ISO range from 100 to 204,800 , it’s a stop beyond the D3s on both ends. More importantly, it takes the range where you can expect a clean shot up to around 12,800, roughly twice as excellent as the D3s.

It’s got a 91k pixel 3D color matrix meter and 51-point AF tracking system (which has 15 cross-type center points, and fun tricks like tracking up to 16 human faces simultaneously). AF also retains its orientation when you change from landscape to portrait, so your focus won’t shoot off to the corner. Autofocus in general also gets a bump, down to -2EV, a full stop slower than the D3S. It shoots fairly fast, despite not having a dual image processor like Canon’s 1DX—10fps even in RAW (though if you lock AF and AE, you can nudge it to 11fps).

But maybe the most important upgrade of all, at least for some where Nikon is concerned, is the D4’s video powers. So yes, it shoots in 1080p at 30 or 24fps (or 720p at 60fps) . But it now uses B-Frame data compression, so you can record h.264 clips for up to 20 minutes continuously. You also have full manual control over exposure while shooting (like previous Nikon DSLRs, you can use AF while shooting, too). And, what might be killer for some people: totally uncompressed HD output through the camera’s HDMI port, along with remote shutter operation for video recording and power aperture, for totally silent adjustment while shooting. Oh and for some extra reach, you can switch from full-frame to Nikon’s DX format (a 1.5x crop factor) or to a 2.7x crop at the standard 1920×1080 resolution, giving you essentially free telephoto zoom powers while keeping your video in full HD. Nikon’s promising “less instances of rolling shutter distortion” to boot.

Speaking of light, it’s lighter. Or at least it feels that way. It’s the first thing we noticed when we picked it up. And it didn’t come at the expense of build quality, since the D4 has the same magnesium alloy chassis build, just trimmed down in areas where it could afford to go on a diet.

It’s got a new 3.2-inch 921k dot LCD (up from 3 inches on the 3S) and an Ethernet port for better connectivity, though we’re not sure if it’s quite as capable as the 1DX’s Ethernet hole.

Ergonomics and usability have improved some, too. There are now two AF buttons for when you’re shooting in portrait, and all buttons are backlit, for better usability in the dark. The D4 has two memory card slots, which are optimized for standard cards as well as the new CompactFlash XQD memory cards, making it the first pro camera to adopt the new format.

It’s good to see Nikon taking aim at videographers who have felt a little out in the cold in refreshes past.

[Nikon]

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Mar 23 2011

Mastering HSL Controls in Lightroom: 3 Great Resources

Category: Photoshop & Lightroom, Uncategorized — Ethan G. Salwen @ 8:56 am

HSL_1_01The HSL controls in Lightroom (stranding for “Hue, Saturation and Luminance”) give us the power to make amazingly subtle (or dramatic) nondestructive edits to specific colors within an image. Very, very cool.

By giving us three different ways to adjust eight distinct colors, the HSL controls offer a way to work in specific areas of image — based on where those colors are found — with an amazing degree of finesse. This is a kind of localized control that not too long ago could only be performed by creating complex masks in Photoshop, although even then the control was less sophisticated.

The HSL controls are very, very cool and should be well understood by all photographers. However, learning to use HSL (at least for me) is not an intuitive process. Really mastering HSL requires good instruction.

Whatever your current HSL I.Q. is, you will likely benefit from one, two or all three of these resources.

#1: Video Demo of Basic HSL Functionality. In “Using HSL in Lightroom 3 Hue Saturation and Luminance” Mark Dickinson shows us the HSL sliders in action, showing us how to quickly play around to understand the importance of the red, orange and yellow controls for adjusting skin color. If you are new to HSL, Dickinson’s five minute video will help orient you to the possibilities before gaining a deeper understanding of what’s going on.

#2: Clear, Concise Explanation of Controls. In “Using Lightroom’s HSL / Color / Grayscale Panel” Martin Evening provides an explanation of HSL functionality that is clear, concise and in-depth — all at once. Adapted from Evening’s Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Book, The: The Complete Guide for Photographers and focused on helping us make “fine-tuned color adjustments in Lightroom,” this article is perfect for photographers who want the HSL skinny with no fuss.

#3: In-Depth HSL Understanding. Writing for X-Equals, Michael W Gray has done us a wonderful service by dishing up a brilliant, clear, in-depth three-part series on the HSL controls in Lightroom, from conceptual underpinnings to practical usage. Filled with fantastic graphics — that you can download to “play along” — you’ll find:

Mastering HSL in Lightroom – Part 1 of 3 — In depth exploration of “exactly what the HSL is and how it is used,” showing a range of effects on an X-Rite Color Checker. Really sweet. (Gray, in true über photo nerd from calls this the “basics of HSL.” If you’re not an über photo nerd, try to stick in there, as this information really is should be basic for serious photographers, even if it really is advanced.)

Mastering HSL in Lightroom – Part 2 of 3 — Gray shows us the importance of starting with camera profiles (an interrelated and important topic) and then helps us start using the HSL controls in a basic manner. (If you get lost in Part 2, still head to Part 3, which will help you make sense of Part II.)

HSL_3_13Mastering HSL in Lightroom – Part 3 of 3 – With “basics” (focusing on color correction functionality) covered in Parts I and II, Gray helps us see how to get more creative with HSL by cross processing and making color monochromes. These creative techniques — pushing controls to extremes — help us better see how the fundamental work. Very cool.

HSL Control Learning as Ongoing Process

Gray hits HSL learning on the head when, at the end of Part III, he says, “I would like to restate that the HSL is one of the most straight forward tools, but at the same time the HSL is so nuanced that it takes a long time and a lot of practice to be able to jump right in and carry out your desires.”

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