Oh dear, my quixotic hunt for a lightweight and compact large-sensored camera with a fastish normal lens has once again aroused my necrophilic tendencies. The Nikon J5 did not sate me. Why this perverse hunger? I blame the demand that drives the camera makers to ever-beefier products. The demand, but not you. I know you are not part of the undifferentiated mass. How much does a megapixel weigh?
The NX3000 prised from the earth, still looking remarkably fresh for a dead camera.
Prologue
My quest obviously points towards Micro Four Thirds, but that reasonably sized sensor turns out to be a red herring. In 2013, Panasonic explored extreme compactness with the 204 gram Lumix GM1, followed by the 211 gram Lumix GM5 in 2014, followed by… nothing. The GM5 remains a cult camera today despite some fairly serious issues (that could be addressed now) because Panasonic abandoned the line.
This is the GM5, the last (and one of the only) enthusiast cameras that really pushed the envelope of how small Micro Four Thirds could go. It was introduced in 2014, apparently a market dead end.
之乎, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Olympus (hollowed be thy name) did something wonderful by making its EM-5 III lighter than the EM-5 II, which is why I own it, but it’s still a bit chunky for a coat pocket at 414 grams. The Olympus Pen-series cameras started out impressively small and light, but they have bulked out over the years, to the point where they hardly make sense given the sacrifice of the viewfinder.
And then there’s the M43 lens issue: this is where the real opportunity for compactness lies, since the immutable physics of casting an image circle of a given size cannot be magicked away by Moore’s law and better battery chemistry. But Olympus only makes one pancake lens, which is wide and slow. Panasonic’s 20 mm f/1.7 (87 grams) is more interesting to me but it’s kind of wide and has famously sluggish autofocus.
What about Sony, the destroyer of worlds? Its mirrorless E mount APS-C cameras started by mapping out promising sub-300 gram territory in 2010: hail the NEX C3 (225 grams), 5N (269 grams), 5T (276 grams), and non-NEX A5000 (267 g). The last Sony to hold the line was 2014’s A5100, at 267 grams. Now consider the current line-up of Sony’s most compact mirrorless bodies: A6000 (344 g), A6100 (396 g), A6400 (403 g) and A6600 (503 g). The lightest of those, the A6000, is “current” in name only, as it was actually introduced a few months before the A5100 in 2014.
But even if you feel like buying a seven year old camera, there are no pancake normal lenses for the Sony E mount. You have slowish wide options, the f/2.8 16mm and 20mm, and then there’s the 35mm 1.8, which is fairly light (150 grams) but a stack of pancakes long. And strangely, no third parties have filled the gap. I would almost believe there’s some optical roadblock — I don’t understand lens design well enough to know one way or the other — except that someone has built a reasonably fast pancake 30mm lens for a mirrorless APS-C system. You just have to do a little grave robbing if you want to use it.
Alas, Poor Samsung, We Hardly Knew Ye
Samsung entered the DSLR market in 2005 through a “partnership” with Pentax. I use quotes because it seems like said partnership consisted of Pentax using Samsung sensors, and Samsung rebranding Pentax cameras as Samsungs, and changing the color accents from green to blue. I was aware of this at the time because my first DSLR was a Pentax K10D, and the Samsung version looked like the evil twin version of the same camera. The Samsung lenses were also identical, but were branded “Schneider Kreuznach,” which was probably the first time I realized brands could be pimped out with impunity. Anyway, it was beyond me who would rather buy a DSLR from Samsung (better known as a maker of televisions, phones, refrigerators, air conditioners, memory chips, medical equipment, office buildings, and container ships) than a camera from the storied Pentax. Apparently I was not alone in this because the partnership fizzled out a few years later and Samsung struck out on its own.
Here are a Samsung and a Pentax SLR from the partnership period. I’d forgotten that at least they reworked the button shapes.
The company launched the NX mount in 2010, a mirrorless APS-C design that confusingly began with a camera that looked like a fully-mirrored DSLR, the NX10. Later that year Samsung introduced the much smaller NX100, which still weighed over 300 grams with a battery (its loaded weight is misstated as 282 grams in some sources: that’s actually without a battery). The NXx00 line gradually got heavier, but Samsung then introduced the NXx000 series, which kept things under 300 grams. With these innovative, slim cameras, Samsung soon displaced the hidebound legacy camera makers who clung to their DSLRs, eventually becoming the leading producer of ILCs.
Just kidding! I remember being puzzled by the NX cameras. Not that they were terrible, or even bad. But there was someone else making innovative, slim APS-C cameras at the same time, and they seemed just a little better in pretty much every way: Sony’s first NEX cameras came to market in 2010, and very quickly got an edge over their Samsung counterparts. I bought a NEX 5n, and I don’t even remember considering an NX alternative. (Let’s just take a moment to reflect on the fact that the two competing mirrorless systems were branded NX and NEX. OK, let’s move on.)
The E-mount lens lineup was also more complete. I was more of a zoom guy back then, and I was impressed with the metal bodied NEX kit zoom (it was all plastic inside, but whatevs). Sony made quite a few lenses, and third parties were quickly on board. And the Sonys had Sony sensors, which were already starting to kick ass.
The last two NX bodies, the DSLR-shaped NX1 and the smaller (but still over 300 gram) NX500, built around a new Samsung 28 megapixel BSI sensor, seem to have been genuinely compelling. But by then the stink of death was on the system. Samsung exited the market, I guess to focus on cell phones, as if anyone would want to take pictures with those.
It was, by Samsung’s standards, an impressively long commitment to a camera system. Five years and over a dozen cameras was better than the four cameras that emerged from the Pentax partnership, though at least those owners could easily cross back to Pentax when Samsung moved on: they weren’t stuck with lenses for an orphan mount. Those who jumped on Samsung’s first 35mm SLR bandwagon weren’t so lucky. The Samsung SR 4000 was introduced in 1997 with a proprietary mount. It was the first and last of its name. One and done. I didn’t know about the SR 4000 when I ignored the NX cameras, but it seems that as usual a student of history would have had some clues about the future.
The Samsung Summicron
So why am I nattering on about the NX cameras now, all these years after the last one was shipped? Because my thirsty wandering through the desert of bloated cameras and optically-perfect, boat-anchor lenses led to me an oasis that I had hitherto missed: Samsung’s 30mm f/2 lens. This works out to a just-slightly-wide normal, with a field of view around 45mm-equivalent. And the kicker: it weighs just 68 grams, and protrudes a tad more than 20 millimeters past the mount. On paper, this is the lens I’ve been looking for.
How small is the Samsung 30mm f/2 lens? Here it next to Nikon’s f/1.8 normal prime for its 1 system, which had a 1-inch sensor, roughly a third the area of the NX system’s APS-C sensor. Weird, right?
Tracking one down would have been tricky (eBay was showing silly prices, and mostly out of Russia) but I got lucky on the French version of Craig’s List, called leboncoin. Someone was selling one just outside of Paris for a hunge, if I was willing to take the train out to Neuilly, which apparently I was. The lens appears to be unused. The guy who sold it to me had, I believe, a Russian accent. I had my Samsung Summicron (no lightning from Wetzlar has struck me yet).
The NX3000
Unlike a real Summicron, the 30mm was made for a dead mount. Catnip to me, of course. The upside is that you can get a camera for it pretty cheap. I settled on the NX3000 because it was the last of Samsung’s lighter-weight semi-entry level cameras. It uses the second-to-last sensor for the system, a 20.3 megapixel CMOS. On paper, it looks basic but not too basic. It has a PASM dial, which I took as a good sign. A tilt-up screen, a design I love. A single control wheel around the D-pad, which, OK. I found one on leboncoin for 200 EUR, including the two kit stabilized zooms, which I sold off (yes, amazingly, you can still sell them), effectively making the camera cheaper than free. The body showed no signs of being used, but I did have to spring for a generic battery because the original no longer held a charge.
When I had my lens, my camera, and a working battery, I took a few new-toy-around-the-house shots to get a feel for this corpse I’d dug up. This is not the lightest camera I’ve ever held, but I’ll wager it is the lowest density: in the hand it feels like a hollow mock-up. I’m not complaining, mind you, since the whole point of this exercise is lowering weight, but it bears mentioning. I wish Samsung had taken some of the air out of the camera, but then people would have complained that it was too small to hold.
Here you see the NX3000’s top plate, with precious little to offer. Also pictured is the kit 50-200mm zoom, which shows you why putting a big sensor in a small camera doesn’t necessarily result in a small package. Compactness is largely about lenses.
I’m not going to give the NX3000 an exhaustive knob-feel treatment. Let’s just say it’s mostly par for the course. The PASM dial actually has nicely damped detents. The single control wheel has reasonable clicks, though the link between turning it and changes to settings is tenuous. It’s not nice, but this is the world we live in, even today. The screen has a smooth feel when you flip it up. It will actually go all the way up so you can use it for selfies, if you’re one of those people. The shutter sounds like a dropped milk carton (empty), but at least it’s not too loud. Power is a button, not a switch, which belies the promise of that PASM dial.
But poking around the apartment, I was cautiously optimistic. Focus seemed reasonably quick and confident in good light. I did, however, notice that it slowed down and became less reliable in low light. Now, contemporary reviews of the camera also noted this, but I forgot that the definition of “low light” has changed in the intervening years. Now, “low light” is something like, “a starlit night with a very thin crescent moon.” But in 2014, low light was something much brighter. Back then, you might not want to perform surgery in low light, but you could definitely read in it. Then, unlike today, low light was something that people lived in.
Here’s one of the kids that lives in my apartment. At ISO 1600, he looks pretty clean, not counting the bolognese sauce. What first looks like noise-reduction softening is actually missed focus — the camera focused back around his ears, so his face is a little blurry.
This would be a problem if this was supposed to be my real camera, but I already have one of those. This was supposed to be my lazy-carry, out-and-about camera, and since I have young kids, I’m usually not out after dark. For the same reason, high ISO performance was not a big concern.
Soon enough, I went out with the family to the Jardin de Plantes in Paris, which had an outdoor exposition of gaudy models of prehistoric creatures made of brightly-color fabric stretched on wire frames. At night they light up, but of course I was there during the day. Pretty quickly, I realized that the NX3000 and I were not going to get along.
There are a few problems problems. First off, I can’t see the screen in daylight. In sunlight it becomes a black mirror with just a suggestion of a scene on it. Plus, I guess I’ve gotten used to cameras with eye level finders, and forgot that a 3-inch screen, when held at a distance that I can easily focus my eyes on, looks like a wading pool seen from a high dive.
That kid again. This is with cloudy white balance, but the jpeg is cool and green. At least you see that the 30mm f/2 allows for some real subject separation.
And then there’s that single control wheel, which I would use to select aperture, being a very type A person. As I alluded to before, you would have to turn it very…slowly…and…very…carefully to get a one-to-one relationship between setting and motion. What did I expect from an entry-level camera from 2014? We forget things, I guess.
Finally, there’s focusing. I tried a mix of point focus and face/zone focus, because you can’t have face and point active at the same time, which bugs me. I guess Panasonic does this too, but the Panasonics I’ve used are a lot better at finding faces than the NX3000 is. Moving faces, for example, fahgettaboudit. Moving targets in general, for that matter. I tried to document my kids on a carrousel because I don’t have any pictures of them doing that, and it was a frustrating struggle. Might as well pre-focus like you’re using a rangefinder. None of this was helped by the poor screen visibility, which meant that even when the camera had locked focus on something, I wasn’t sure what it was.
Here’s one of those times the camera wanted to get the background in focus instead of my beautiful children.
When I got home and pulled the files off the thumbnail-sized micro-SD card, I discovered that my RAW processor, DxO PhotoLab, does not support the camera. I thought I’d checked this, but realized that I’d been fooled because the earlier NX2000 and the later NX500 and NX1 were supported, so I’d assumed the intervening NX3000 would be as well. But no. So, to the jpegs.
Most of my life I’ve been a jpeg shooter, but since I went RAW, I guess I’ve become a snob. The NX3000’s jpegs look really jpegy. Even though I’d set noise reduction to “low,” things looked weirdly smoothed out. Color can be nice, or it can be off, usually in a green direction (as usual, I used cloudy white balance outside to keep the images warm). But probably the biggest problem was that a lot of images were out of focus, something that had escaped me when I was shooting without being able to see the preview.
What About the Lens?
So, for me, the NX3000 is kind of a nonstarter. It’s just not fun to shoot. But what about that little Korean Summicron? Does it cut the kimchi?
I believe it does. My days of photographing brick walls are long behind me, but there’s nothing I saw in my short experience with the lens that suggests it’s crippled by its small size. Wide-open, you definitely get some subject separation and the lens isn’t committing any crimes in the corners. Yes, things get a tiny bit smudgy in the extreme corners if you’re pixel peeping. But if you truly need corner-to-corner perfection, there are Zeiss Otus lenses for you.
Here’s a wide-open shot, focused on the scarecrow (and underexposed, but I think I did that on purpose to keep the sky in there — I didn’t yet realize I wouldn’t be developing the RAWs). If you look down in the bottom left corner, you’ll see plenty of detail. If this was a real photography review site there would be a snappy way to see a 100% view of the corner. Oh well!
I also didn’t notice any chromatic aberration to speak of, though it’s possible the NX3000 is zapping it in post. Bokeh’s mostly acceptable, though as always it depends on a bunch factors.
It’s not a real Summicron, but I would happily put up with more weaknesses than this little lens has in exchange for its tiny, weightless form factor. This is the lens I’ve been looking for. Why, why does it have to be for this mount?
Conclusion
The NX3000 is not a good bet for weight-averse photographers today, even if they’re willing to put up with some faff to get a cheap, lightweight body. Probably because of its everyman-consumer focus (and price point), the NX3000 has not aged well; it just isn’t much fun to use. I think the sensor quality is fine (but I can’t be sure because my raw processor doesn’t support it and I sure as hell ain’t going to start messing around with a new one for the NX3000’s sake), but the screen and autofocus aren’t quite at the sufficiency point that most of the market was achieving around that time.
The Samsung 30mm f/2 lens, on the other hand, is a tiny gem that would be an asset to any APS-C mirrorless system. Tragically, it’s trapped in NX purgatory. It might be worth exploring it with the NX500, likely a more capable camera in every respect, albeit a slightly heavier one. However, the NX500, even all these years after Samsung took the NX system out behind the barn, commands real money (and the NX1 even more so): too much to justify, at least for me.
I’m selling on the NX3000 and its zooms, but I’m not sure I can part with the 30mm. Maybe one day a cheap NX500 will fall into my lap and I’ll give it another airing.