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Will the Samsung NX10 become LKL’s official camera?

Samsung NX10

In the all-too-distant days of my youth, I had a budget SLR camera with a couple of lenses and a collection of filters, and I like to think that I took a few good snaps with it. Life moves on, and priorities change, and after a while I found that instead of taking the SLR with me on holiday I’d just buy those cheap disposable cameras as I needed them: much more pocketable.

When I started LKL, after surviving for a while on the camera built in to my smartphone, I soon realised the need for something a bit more sophisticated. A Canon Digital Ixus has served me reasonably well over the past couple of years. It fits neatly in the pocket, being no bigger than a mobile phone, and is reasonably robust. It goes with me whenever I go to a Korea-related event, and produces OK results in normal light.

But much of the time, the events I cover are in lecture theatres or concert halls, where the light is not good enough. The Ixus tries hard at high ISO settings (my own model only goes up to 800), but the results are inevitably very grainy.

So it’s time to upgrade to something with a bigger sensor, but something which will still fit into my compact manbag which I take to and from work every day. Step in the intermediate “micro four thirds” space between the point-and-press compacts and the SLRs, dominated by the Olympus Pen and the Panasonic Lumix GF1 families: no SLR mirrors, which make for more compact bodies, but interchangeable lenses for flexibility and larger sensors for better images particularly in low light. The two cameras are pretty much neck-and-neck from the performance perspective, with the Lumix possibly having the edge, but the Pen winning hands-down in terms of overall coolness.

Olympus E-PL1 'Pen' and Panasonic Lumix GF1
Olympus E-PL1 'Pen' and Panasonic Lumix GF1

Samsung has now joined the party with its NX10, and the initial reviews (for example, in the 3 April edition of Amateur Photographer) are very favourable: it has a larger sensor than both the Pen and the GF1, has a built in viewfinder and flash, and is competitive in terms of price. It’s not the best-looking machine, but you can’t have everything.

So will the Samsung NX10 become LKL’s official camera? Well, it depends what the Dixons Duty Free outlet at Heathrow has in stock when I’m on my way to Seoul later this month. All these cameras are on the pricey side, so if I can make a decent saving on any of them at the airport, that’s the one I’ll get.

3 thoughts on “Will the Samsung NX10 become LKL’s official camera?

  1. Long-time follower, first-time commenter – hi from Chris in South Korea

    As nice as the ‘in-between’ DSLR-esque cameras are, DSLR are popular for a reason. In the hands of a knowledgeable photographer, they can produce some wonderful shots – and point-and-shoot is about as easy as it gets. A number of professionals go with Canons or Nikons because of their track record, lens selection, and much more. They’re ubiquitous in Korea – most events worth photographing that I attend have non-professionals holding these expensive professional-quality cameras. I’ve had my Nikon D70 for long enough that I couldn’t go back to a point-and-shoot even if I wanted to.

    For the record, my ‘medium-sized man bag’ holds the camera (with a lens attached), an extra lens, a notebook, an extra battery, and usually has room to spare. It’s not ‘compact’ per se – but I get the shots I’m looking for. For some proof, check out my blog (chrisinsouthkorea.blogspot.com) 🙂

  2. I’ve just started using the Samsung NV100HD compact point & press camera, which was the generous gift of the KTO / VANK blogging competition, and I have to say it’s a lot better than my Canon Digital Ixus. Better controls, bigger sensor, better pictures, smaller camera. Maybe I don’t need a fancy camera after all.

    Don’t know why it took me so long to try it out. Well actually I do: it only comes with Windows software. But I found you don’t really need the software anyway. Just take the flash card out of the camera and put it in your Mac and you’re away.

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