Earlier this month, a few other photographers and I were fortunate enough to road test the new Samsung NX1 with its vast range of lenses. We were let loose in the beautiful Wrest Park stately home to photograph two models over the course of the day with an envious amount of Profoto gear. On the second occasion, we were let loose on the streets of London with the new cameras and this was a joy, as the location constraints were no longer there.
My point of this post is somewhat of a realisation. Through no fault of my own I have been spoilt when it has come to cameras. Being a bit of a purist, I went straight from quality film SLR's to working pro DSLR's, refusing to give up shooting film until I felt an acceptable quality had been reached in the digital era. This was in the form of Minolta's 7D, followed by Canon's 5D series.
Over the last decade I have paid little attention to the smaller, non-full frame camera models coming onto the market, comparing most offerings to full frame DSLRs or the flagship work-horse cameras from Canon and Nikon, only really keeping an eye out for major upgrades in sensor technology or something that really turns the photography world on its head like Fuji's X-Series. This was until now it seems.
With all new cameras I have seen released onto the market, there is always an element on scepticism on my part that the manufactuers have just upgraded the minimum to enforce a price hike. On this occasion I started the experiment with an open mind but was comparing all the way to my Markiii most of the time. Despite my bias the Samsung NX1 performed very well. There was a minor ergonomics issue with the on/off buttons but the 28megapixel sensor and image resolution quickly caught my attention on both the model shoot and the day spent in London. The image clarity was lovely straight out of camera and the sheer size of the files held bags of detail. I'm not one for new years resolutions but I think I'll be a little more open minded about CSC's from this point on.