With the sheer number and kinds of cameras nowadays, a novice like me will probably find the proverbial needle in a haystack faster than choose the right camera. You have the big boys of the DSLRs, the casual point and shooters and the continuously improving camera phones. But the darlings of the photography world right now seems to be the mirrorless cameras. Being a smaller version of the DSLR with interchangeable lenses, cheaper prices and great performance have made them popular. Samsung is eager to ride this trend and because of that, we have the NX300.
The Samsung NX300 has a rather retro-inspired body that feels and looks great in hand and well-thought out placement of controls. It also has a 3.3-inch, articulated, AMOLED screen, which gives the user great shooting angles. It’s also a touchscreen, for those who are used to smartphones.
Out of the box, it has 18-55mm kit lens which have the i-Function. This is a multi-function button at the side of the lens which lets you cycle through options like aperture priority, shutter priority and so forth. It also features the new Lens Priority. This shows a focus/defocus scale, and by twisting the focus ring, you’d be able to control depth of field immediately without messing with the aperture settings. In practice, it is a pretty nifty feature and really intuitive and lets you take professional-looking pictures quickly and without fiddling with the other settings.
As I mentioned, I’m quite the novice when it comes to photography but the NX300 minimizes that with a superb auto mode. It has blazingly fast auto focus and you’ll be able to capture a great picture in less than a second. Pictures come out with crisp detail thanks to its 20.3-megapixel sensor and the colors are accurate and true. For the more experienced shooters, ISO runs 100 to 25,600 and you can open the shutter to up to four minutes. The NX300 is also a capable night camera, only starting to show grain at ISO 900. And if you really need extra lighting, there’s also a bundled, removable flash. The NX300 also shoots HD videos up 60 fps and recorded audio quality is decent but not great.
One feature that Samsung is trumpeting is the NX300’s connectivity options. It features full WiFi compatibility which lets you send pictures instantly. But aside from regular email capabilities, it also has a social sharing features and remote shooting for the creative ones. There is also automatic software updates and sharing options to both Android and iOS. It also has Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 bundled for free, which is a pretty incredible offer, considering it is a pricey bit of software.
Overall, the NX300 is a good effort from Samsung and adds to the pressure exerted by mirrorless cameras to full-fledged DSLRs. The flexibility options and performance of the NX300 make it a good alternative for the professional, while its simplicity and WiFI connectivity seems like a good fit for casual and novice photographers.
Reviewed by: Cyrian Agujo
