Rat thoughts

December of 2013 I bought my first interchangable lens digital camera, a Samsung NX2000.  With my substational tax return the next spring, I invested in a number of lenses for this camera, purchasing 10, 30, 45, 60 and 85mm prime lenses and a 12-24mm zoom lens to go with the 20-50mm and 50-200mm zoom kit lenses.

The NX2000 was considered one of Samsung's entry level cameras, and while it was a nice camera, it lacked some important features that I had relied on with previous cameras, such as a viewfinder.  Samsung also produced mid-range and high-end cameras that use the same lenses, so I was considering an upgrade in the future.

And then my SO bought me an NX1 for Christmas!



This is Samsung's first foray into a professional camera, and in developing it, they had their sights set clearly on the high-end full frame market.  The sensor is still APS-C, but it's the first large sensor that uses Back Side Illumination (BSI), a design that boosts light sensitivity by about 30%.  The sensor is equipped with over 200 autofocus points, more than most full-frame cameras, making the NX1 among the fastest focusing cameras available.  It's one of the few cameras currently capable of shooting 4K UHD video.  They also equipped it with a CPU derrived from one of Samsung's flagship smartphones, enabling an incredible 15 frames per second shooting RAW+JPEG!.  This image processor also gives the NX1 the fastest electronic viewfinder ever equipped on a camera, with a mere 5 ms lag, faster than the human eye can detect.  And they didn't slouch on the build quality, either; this is one of the heaviest and sturdiest mirrorless cameras ever made.  It's ergonomically well designed, it feels really good in the hand and the controls are about the most intuitive and best laid out I've ever seen.



I've added the vertical grip, which makes it much easier to hold the camera sideways.  The grip adds a second set of controls including two command dials, AF ON, AEL and EV buttons and an additional shutter button.  It also provides a second battery, doubling the number of shots per charge up to 1000, and the extra weight helps stablize the camera.



I'm very impressed with the light sensitivity of this camera.  This is a photo of the Great Nebula of Orion, taken with just the NX1 and an 85mm f/1.4 prime lens.



The autofocus is really amazing.  I wasn't planning on shooting a rabbit in mid-flight, I just swung around and hit the shutter as the bunny darted past.  Caught her in mid-hop!  None of my previous cameras could do this.



I'm hoping to buy two of Samsung's newest lenses soon, a 16-50mm f/2.0-2.8 zoom and a 50-150mm f/2.8 zoom.  While I have lenses in these ranges, they are significantly slower, f/3.5-5.6 for my 20-50mm and f/4.0-5.6 for my 50-200mm.

(Oh my God!  He's actually posting something!)

My grandfather was an amateur photographer from way back.  He had all kinds of interesting equipment and at one point even had his own darkroom.  He gave me most of my early equipment and encouraged my interest in photography.

I was given my very first camera when I was about 8 years old.  It was a Kodak Instamatic X-15, the last Instamatic model sold in the US.  It had a single element plastic 43mm f/11 fixed focus lens and a fixed 1/90 second shutter.  It could use Magicube flashcubes, which were a pain in the butt.  It used the 126 film cartridges which produced a distinctive square print.  The camera was prone to miswinding, leading to weird double-exposures if you weren't careful.  I took a number of photos with this camera, but they've all disappeared.

When I was 13 I received a Vivitar Tele 815.  It had a built-in flash (no more flashcubes!  Yay!) and two fixed focus lenses, 24mm and 48mm, both f/5.6, which you selected by sliding a switch.  It used the more common 110 cartridges, which produced a more typical rectangular print but had smaller negatives.  I've only been able to find one print from this camera, a photo I took of Yosemite.

My grandfather also gave me a Minox III "spy camera", but it used a bizarre 8mm film cartridge that was extremely difficult to find and even harder to have developed, so I was never able to do anything with it.

When I was in high school my grandfather gave me his old Canon AE-1 SLR.  It was a real 35mm SLR with a 50mm normal prime lens, but the exposure meter was broken, so he also gave me a hand-held light meter.  I could still use the camera with manual exposure by getting a reading with the hand meter and selecting the appropriate settings.  It was a pain in the butt to use, but it was a great camera otherwise.  It taught me a lot about gauging exposure by eye and the effects of shutter speed and aperture.  I think my grandfather gave me a defective camera on purpose, to teach me to not rely on fancy automatic features.

In college I got tired of having to screw around with the hand-held meter and bought a Ricoh KR-5 35mm SLR.  It was a clone of the venerable Pentax K-1000.  It was full manual with an LED light meter inside the viewfinder.  I bought 4 K_A lenses for this camera, a Samyang 18-28mm f/4.0-4.5 wide angle zoom, a Ricoh 35mm-70mm f/3.5-4.5 mid-range macro-focusing zoom, a Vivitar 70-210mm f/4.5-5.6 telephoto zoom, and a Ricoh 50mm f/1.7 standard prime.  I also had a Vivitar 2x macro-focusing teleconverter, which let me reach out to 420mm, though with the loss of several f-stops.  Although it had a light meter, the camera was still completely manual; you had to set the shutter speed and aperture for each shot using the meter as a guide.

The Ricoh remained my primary camera for almost 15 years until I bought my first digital camera, a Pentax Optio A30.  It was a 10MP 1/1.8" CCD compact with a 38-114mm equivalent f/2.8-5.4 zoom lens.  It had excellent macro capabilities, better than any of the cameras I had afterwards until my DSLM.  It also had a fairly large sensor for a compact.  I used to carry it around in my pocket all the time until the screen broke a couple years ago.

In 2008 I bought two cameras.  The first was a Panasonic TZ-5, a 9MP 1/2.33" CCD compact with a 28-280mm equivalent f/3.3-4.9 zoom lens.  Although it is considered a compact, it was more than double the thickness of the A30; I couldn't carry it in my pocket, so I attached a small case to the strap of my netbook messenger bag.  I still carry this camera with me whenever I take my bag.  It's still vastly superior to any phone camera and has decent zoom.

The second camera I bought in 2008 was a Panasonic FZ-18, an 8MP 1/2.5" CCD bridge camera with a massive 28-504mm equivalent f/2.8-4.2 super zoom lens.  This was my primary camera until just recently.  Despite being 6 years old, and comparatively low resolution, it has a zoom comparable to my current DSLM with its longest lens.  Like an SLR, it can shoot in RAW format and has full PASM capability.  This is the camera I used to shoot many of my rabbit photos.

As nice as the FZ-18 was, by 2013 it was beginning to show its age, and with a crop factor of 5.6, it was lacking a bit in the quality department.  Just before Christmas Costco started selling the Samsung NX2000.  It had better specs than the similar Canon EOS-M and was a lot cheaper, so I bought it.  It's a 20MP APS-C DSLM (Digital Single Lens Mirrorless, similar to a DSLR, but without the bulky reflex mirror & pentaprism).  The kit came with a compact 20-50mm f/3.5-5.6 mid-range zoom, a 50-200mm f/4-5.6 OIS telephoto zoom lens and an external pop-up flash.  I've since bought 6 other lenses, a 12-24mm f/4-5.6 wide-angle zoom, 10mm f/3.5 fisheye prime, 30mm f/1.2 standard prime, 45mm f/1.8[T6] 2D/3D telephoto prime, 60mm f/2.8 macro-focusing OIS telephoto prime, and an 85mm f/1.4 telephoto prime.  My favorite lens is the 85mm, which has a magnificent DOF.  However, I usually leave the 30mm lens on the camera when I put it away; it's the smallest and lightest lens I own, it's a standard lens (i.e. no magnification) so it's good for quick snapshots and it's simpler and faster to use than the mid-range zoom (precisely because it has no zoom) and has a 2-1/3 f-stop wider aperture (f/2.0 vs f/4.5).  The camera has the ability to connect to my Samsung phone so I can use it as a remote viewfinder or to upload pictures.

Now I'm looking at upgrading to the Samsung NX30 or NX1.  The latter will be Samsung's first professional-level camera, but I'm not sure if pushing an APS-C sensor to 28MP is a good idea.  It's also got a professional-level price tag, $1200.  The NX30 is Samsung's current high-end offering and is nearly half the expected price of the NX1.  It uses the same 20MP APS-C sensor as the NX2000 (entry level) and NX300 (mid-range) cameras, but has a proper viewfinder (the NX2000 has no viewfinder at all, just the screen), a higher-resolution rotating screen, integrated pop-up flash (freeing the hot shoe for accessories), faster shutter, faster drive and faster hybrid autofocus.  Which ever one I decide on will be able to use all my existing NX lenses.

My camera can take save images as both JPEG and RAW at the same time. In this example, the JPEG is on the left and the RAW on the right.

JPEGs save much faster, take up much less space, are usable just as they are, can be opened by just about anything and Windows can automatically display a thumbnail of the image. The biggest drawback of JPEG is that it is a lossy format, and working with a JPEG just makes things worse.

RAW files, on the other hand, contain the unprocessed data directly off the image sensor. They are higher quality, offer finer control, are generally 12 or 14 bit (vs JPEG's 8 bits) and are lossless. The drawbacks are its enormous file size (7 times larger than JPEG on my camera) and a proprietary format that might be difficult to open in the future.

In this particular image, notice the sky is a truer blue, there is more contrast in the clouds, the ground haze is more visible, the tractor wheels and clouds are whiter and the grass a bit greener on the RAW side.