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

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

• 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.

View the gallery

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]

The Nikon Coolpix P310 is another point and shoot—except it’s completely gorgeous. The boxy design is a matte slate of black perfection. Everyone line is clean, every centimeter accounted for, every button well-placed. Make more things like this.

Inside, the P310 is no dinky shooter: 16 megapixel stills, 1080p video recording, an assignable front function button, full manual controls, image stabilization, and a swank f/1.8 zoom NIKKOR lens. By my god—it’s so small! What you’re looking at is only 4.1 x 2.3 x 1.3 inches—easily pocketable. But I don’t want to keep it in any pocket. I want to look at it. Boxy is beautiful. More angles. Cameras shouldn’t resemble spaceships. Check for it next month at $330. [Nikon]

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.

RONKONKOMA, NY, Jan. 27, 2012 – With great sadness, Sigma Corporation of America today announced the passing of Sigma Corporation’s founder and CEO Michihiro Yamaki. He died of liver cancer in Tokyo, Japan, on Jan. 18 at the age of 78

“We are deeply saddened by this loss,” said Mark Amir-Hamzeh, president of Sigma Corporation of America. “Mr. Yamaki was an industry visionary, and his leadership and enthusiasm has been the driving force behind our company’s innovation for more than 50 years. We’re sending our deepest condolences to the Yamaki family, and our entire Sigma family around the world, during this very difficult time.”

Yamaki founded Sigma Corporation on Sept. 9, 1961 with the development of the first-ever rear attached lens converter. At that time, most photo enthusiasts believed that a lens converter could only be attached to the front of a camera lens and the 27-year-old optical engineer turned conventional optical theory on its head. Sigma Corporation celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2011 with Yamaki still at the company’s helm.

Throughout his years in the photo industry, Yamaki has been focused on producing high-quality, high-performance photographic technology at moderate prices. His goal for the company has always been to make outstanding image quality accessible to all photographers. To this end, he grew the family-owned organization into a leading researcher, developer, manufacturer and service provider of lenses, cameras and flashes. The company is now known as the largest, independent SLR lens manufacturer in the world, producing more than 50 current lenses that are compatible with most manufacturers, including Sigma, Canon, Sony, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax and Sony.

In 2008, under Yamaki’s direction, Sigma Corporation purchased Foveon, a California-based company that’s renowned for developing the X3 image sensor technology. This patented, three-layer image sensor captures all primary RGB colors at each pixel location arranged in three layers to deliver outstanding, high-resolution, high-definition images with impressive three-dimensional detail and rich gradation. Last year, the company announced the arrival of its SD1, a groundbreaking, 46-megapixel direct image sensor camera, offering more megapixels than any other DSLR currently on the market. Sigma Corporation continued its theme of addressing gaps in the industry and the needs of photographers by kicking off 2012 with the launch of its new, Digital Neo (DN) line of lenses for Micro Four Thirds and E-mount camera systems.

In addition to his inventions and photographic foresight, Yamaki made many other contributions to the industry in his 78 years of life. He served organizations such as: the Japan Photographic Enterprises Association, Japan Machinery Design Center, Japan Optomechatronics Association, Photographic Society of Japan, and Japan Camera Industry Institute. He has also been honored with the “Person of the Year” award from The Photoimaging Manufacturers & Distributors Association (PMDA), the “Hall of Fame” award from the International Photographic Council (IPC), and the Golden Photokina Pin for his longtime contribution to the imaging industry.

About Sigma Corporation

For more than 50 years, Sigma Corporation’s expertise and innovation has driven the company’s core philosophy of “knowledge, plus experience, plus imagination,” with an emphasis on producing high-quality, high-performance photographic technology at moderate prices. This family-owned organization is the largest, independent SLR lens manufacturer in the world, producing more than 40 lenses that are compatible with most manufacturers, including Sigma, Canon, Sony, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic and Pentax. Sigma Corporation also produces digital SLR cameras and high-definition digital compact cameras. The company is headquartered in Japan, with offices strategically located throughout Europe, Asia and North America. For information, please visit www.sigmaphoto.com.

While the recent 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (January 10-13) was the setting for a number of new but somewhat evolutionary camera introductions, Fujifilm decided to take a revolutionary step in their recent evolution by introducing a completely new interchangeable lens camera system.

The Fujifilm X-Pro1 was designed for wedding, portrait, commercial and fine art photographers, and follows closely in the retro styling made famous by the X100 and the X10 cameras—solid and well built.

The X-Pro1 is not a rangefinder but instead a step up for compact interchangeable-lens cameras offering an advanced Hybrid Multi Viewfinder providing your choice of both and Electronic Viewfinder (EVF) and Optical Viewfinder (OVF).

Besides the unusually sturdy construction and extensive use of machined metal parts, the key to its quality is the completely new APS-C 16Mpxl “X-Trans CMOS” sensor.

As the only digital camera manufacturer with true film experience, Fujifilm looked deep into the structure and mechanics of the way digital images are most often created and determined that they could introduce a more “organic” and higher quality look by changing the rules a bit.

Most traditional image sensors use a 2×2 color array of Red, Green and Blue filters arranged in a tight, repeatable pattern.  This is called a Bayer array (named after its inventory Dr. Bryce E. Bayer) and it is the most common way of providing color information to an essentially color-blind CCD or CMOS sensor. Complex calculations that we take for granted are handled in the various processing engines of cameras and read these pieces of information, interpolating them to provide us with what we consider to be a color photograph (or at least the file which we view and ideally share with others on screen or in print)

A big weakness of this design is that a moiré pattern or color fringing appears when this very regular array is superimposed with an image that also has a pattern (think fabric or numerous wires supporting a suspension bridge). And the way this is most often minimized is by incorporating a low-pass optical filter into the sandwich of elements that makes up an imaging sensor.

Fujifilm’s solution is to make the color array 6×6 and incorporate some more randomness into the color filters (very much like the randomness that makes film images so sharp and smooth, but also free of moiré).  In doing so they were able to completely remove the low-pass optical filter from the system.

I have seen the results with my own eyes and it’s pretty remarkable.  Sample comparison prints show a clear advantage of the “X-Trans CMOS” vs. a traditional Bayer CMOS (albeit with prototype cameras). Toss in some extra Fujifilm magic via the new EXR Processor Pro and the XPro-1 appears to out-resolve much larger sensors—at any ISO!

The XPro-1 features extensive capabilities to process in-camera using a wide selection of dynamic range and color settings, with a full simulation of essentially all of the Fujiflm film types. And while the camera will ship with Silkypix software I’m hoping Adobe and others will be able to deal quickly with this new color matrix so I can incorporate Raw shots from the XPro-1 into a more standard workflow.

Of course the best image sensor wouldn’t be worth much without some good optics and the Fujinon lens design team was able to put their best efforts into the development of the XF Lens system and X-Mount.

Starting with a fresh view, the engineers decided an extremely short lens flange to sensor distance would be critical.  By reducing the spacing to a minimum, light transmission could be maximized, focus travel could be shortened (as would shutter lag time), and they could adjust lens designs for optimum coverage of the sensor.

Apparently nothing was taken for granted as there is generous use of exotic ED glass and aspheric element. They even went so far as to redesign the lens aperture to provide a smoother more circular shape with minimum refraction knife-edge blades. Plus, what looks like a light baffle inside the body actually also provides a step for each different lens to mate with and register so there is a greater physical connection than just the mount itself.

Ten gold plated contacts provide redundant transmission of data and power between the lenses and the body so that autofocus and exposure are precise (and future expanded communication is assured).  The lenses feature full and 1/3 f-stops, and a matching milled-alloy lens hood is thoughtfully provided for each lens.

The initial launch (sometime in February or March of 2012) will include three fast but compact lenses: 18mm f/2, 35mm f/1.4 and a 60mm f/2.4 Macro (think 28/50/90mm full frame 35mm equivalents give or take a millimeter or three).

This brings us back to the viewing system. Obviously the image can be displayed on the bright 1.23Mpxl rear LCD, but placing the camera up to your eye not only helps you with your creative vision, it also adds that extra stability of a third point (including your two arms) to make sharp handheld exposures.

All pertinent exposure information can be seen through the eyepiece and, like a traditional optical viewfinder, it’s possible to see the frame line of the lens with some space all around to tell what’s moving into or away from the field of view of the lens. A dual magnification system and continuously variable frame lines give a good indication of what you’ll see in the final image.

But if you prefer greater framing accuracy (especially for near objects and when using the 60mm Macro up close) flip a lever and the optical viewfinder (OVF) switches to a 1.44 Mpxl electronic display (EVF).  This is similar in design to the X100 but of higher resolution and with the extra features necessary to deal with multiple focal lengths.

Speaking of which, the internal menu already shows equivalent frame lines for a variety of other focal lengths plus the ability to manually adjust for anything in between.  This will come in handy when the announced Leica M adapter is available (and given the dimensions of the X-mount system it’s conceivable that adapters could be made for almost any brand of lens).

To get maximum results, though, I’d suggest staying with the Fujinon lens system. Fujifilm has already announced plans for a 14mm (21mm equivalent) super wide and an image stabilized 18-72 f/4 (27-108mm equivalent) to be introduced later this year., and 2013 promises a 28mm f/2.8 pancake design and 23mm f/2 (42mm and 34mm equivalents respectively) for primes, and two more image stabilized zooms 12-24 f/4 and 70-200 f/4 (18-36mm and 105-300mm respectively).  It’s possible some of the specs may change by the time these lenses are released and it’s not clear if the zooms will use the OVF in addition to the more practical EVF.

Both the mechanical controls and the menu access are very direct, and to make it even easier to navigate, the XPro-1 has a “Q” quick menu button that does just that—it opens up a series of twelve of the most often used menu features which can be selected and adjusted without having to dig deep.

A bit larger than I expected, the body itself is still smaller than a DSLR and the lenses are much smaller than their 35mm equivalents. I found it easy to hold but especially so when I added the optional HG-Xpro1 Hand Grip.

Dedicated accessory flash units common to the other X-series cameras work and a new EF-X20 flash was designed just for this camera. In addition, a hot shoe on the top and a PC connector on the side provide compatibility with other flashes and flash triggering devices.

Fujifilm has been very responsive to photographers worldwide with respect to the development of this camera system and refinements with firmware upgrades to the other X-series cameras.  I know I am one of many looking forward to the final shipping version to test and see how the XPro-1 really delivers.

Pricing TBD.  For more information go to: http://www.fujifilm.com/products/digital_cameras/x/fujifilm_x_pro1

Sample images are available at: http://www.fujifilm.com/products/digital_cameras/x/fujifilm_x_pro1/sample_images

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]

If you’re used to shooting with an everyday DSLR, the Nikon D4 is like holding fully-automatic machine gun for the first time.

It’s beautiful, simple to use, and elegant. And the Fuji X-Pro1 is rightly going to end up in a lot of camera bags when it hits the streets.

What impressed us the most was just how easy the this gorgeous mirrorless camera is to use. Aperture is controlled by a ring around the lens. Shutter speed is controlled by a dial on the top of camera. If want the camera to automatically control these features? Just set them to “A.” Simplicity itself.

A hybrid viewfinder lets you toggle back and forth between the viewfinder and the rear display. Perfect for taking overhead shots. All the camera’s display options are visible in both the back display and in the viewfinder, so you don’t have to pull the camera away from your eye while adjusting settings. Our only beef with the X-Pro1 might be that the autofocus won’t be as snappy as we’d like. If you’re used to a nice point-and-shoot or DSLR’s speedy autofocus, this could be frustrating. But hey, beauty always comes at a price.

Oh, speaking of which: X-Pro1 should be ready at the end of February for around (*gulp!*) $2400. [Fuji] ]]> http://blog.aftercapture.com/2012/01/12/fuji-x-pro1/feed/ 0 http://blog.aftercapture.com/2012/01/10/samsung%e2%80%99s-zoomy-wi-fi-camera/ http://blog.aftercapture.com/2012/01/10/samsung%e2%80%99s-zoomy-wi-fi-camera/#comments Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:21:39 +0000 djordan http://blog.aftercapture.com/?p=4458

It’s not news that smartphone cameras have gotten so good that even tiny, excellent point-and-shoot cameras for all their benefits can seem, well, a little unnecessary. Samsung’s WB850F hopes to change your mind with an incredibly zoomy lens and improved Wi-Fi integration.

Your smartphone doesn’t and probably won’t ever have optical zoom, and if that’s something you’re looking for, the WB850F gives you a 21x optical zoom. That’s way more zoom zoom than its competitors.

The other key selling point on the Samsung WB850F is Samsung’s sweet Wi-Fi features. Wi-Fi isn’t new to Samsung cameras, but it’s worth noting how well the SH100 played with your other toys. Samsung’s Remote Viewfinder application, for example, allows you to use your Galaxy S or Galaxy Tab as a remote control the SH100 camera. Similarly the built-in Wi-Fi makes it easy to share your photos and videos on Facebook, Picasa, and YouTube directly from the camera.

Samsung’s new “SMART Wi-Fi” technology builds on what the SH100 offered adding auto back-up and making it easier to ge your photos wherever and whenever you want them. Once you’ve synced your PC with your camera one time, your photos will automatically back-up every time your camera and your computer are connected to the same network. You can also set your photos to upload to Samsung’s AllShare Play cloud locker service or Microsoft SkyDrive. Another cool incoming feature is Samsung Mobile Link, which makes it easy to port your photos over to your Samsung phone, tablet, or internet connected TV.

As for the key image quality and performance specs the WB850F has a 16.2 Megapixels CMOS—most likely a 1/2.33″ sensor—1080/30p or 60i video, and a 3.0 VGA AMOLED display. The specs are nothing to go bananas over, but hey, it’s a lot better than what’s on your phone, and as for the lens, there’s really no competition. There will also be two lower-end models with the same connectivity features. The WB150F has a 14.2 megapixel sensor and 18x optical zoom. The ST200F has a 14.2 megapixel sensor and 10x optical zoom. Both shoot 720/30p video. [Samsung]