Slashdot Mirror
Samsung's Advanced Chips Give Its Cameras a Big Boost
GhostX9 writes: SLR Lounge just posted a first look at the Samsung NX1 28.1 MP interchangeable lens camera. They compare it to Canon and Sony full-frame sensors. Spoiler: The Samsung sensor seems to beat the Sony A7R sensor up to ISO 3200. They attribute this to Samsung's chip foundry. While Sony is using 180nm manufacturing (Intel Pentium III era) and Canon is still using 500nm process (AMD DX4 era), Samsung has gone with 65nm with copper interconnects (Intel Core 2 Duo — Conroe era). Furthermore, Samsung's premium lenses appear to be as sharp or sharper than Canon's L line and Sony's Zeiss line in the center, although the Canon 24-70/2.8L II is sharper at the edge of the frame.
The whole reason to pay a premium price for a lens is that you get better sharpness across the frame.
I'm sure Samsung's lenses are pretty good, but I'm dubious about them until I see more photographic testing over this spec fest which doesn't tell you a lot about a lens.
I have to say Samsung has some serious balls pushing so hard to enter a shrinking market against giants like Nikon and Canon...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Good one. We also would have accepted Shamesung or Shitsung.
Consumer grade lenses are already blurry at the corners. I'm talking about higher-end DSLR lenses, in those lenses center sharpness is pretty much assumed, the bigger deal is sharpness across the whole frame. That's what you are paying money for in high end lenses, not the easily achieved center sharpness but really great sharpness everywhere.
Also there was no mention of how the bokeh was... that's the element that brings people back to certain lens makers like Zeiss.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They are comparing against the Canon EOS 5D Mark II... which was released in 2008. Sensor tech advances at a fast rate, basically being eclipsed every 18-24 months. So the review compares Samsung's latest sensor against a Canon sensor from 7 years ago that is essentially 3 sensor generations old.
It doesn't much matter as the lens largely determines which brand of body one buys. I have several grand invested in Canon lenses, so in order to switch to Samsung, Sony or Nikon bodies, I would have to be convinced that their technology won't just be better for the next generation, but will be better for a very long time. Not likely to happen.
What this might do is change where new photographers wind up, but if they don't have good glass to back this up with, it's not going to make much difference.
Will be talking out of their ass, just trying to raise a ruckus.
The very first comment gets it wrong: photographers care about anything that gets them The Picture.
Sometimes that means more megapixels.
Other times it means FEWER megapixels but a lot of frames per second.
And yet other times it is simply the camera you have NOW that matters, so a small, pocketable camera (even a cell phone) is the best choice.
Even having the SHARPEST lens possible is not always a critical point, folks.
Here is the big trick:
cameras don't take pictures.
Lenses don't take pictures.
Photographers take pictures, and use various tools that capture data to do so.
Back in the film days it was analog data and the entire process was far more expensive, and the tools were... trickier to work with.
Now it is digital data that we capture (except when using film cameras, of course!) and computer processing has advanced so much that even the truly crappy cameras in our phones are actually pretty damn good for snapshots or even some very nice shots- as long as motion or distance are not involved, or real control over the image data captured is not critical.
What dSLRs still have over every other option is this: control can be yours, not the cameras. Sometimes this is the BEST choice.
What mirrorless has is small size/weight. They can even be competitive on MP, and can do great images. But it is far more difficult to get sports or wildlife such as birds due to less competent focus and slower speeds. They also often compromise the controls too much for easy adjustment WHILE shooting.
Small compacts- yeah, better off with the phone nowadays.
What Samsung is trying to achieve is a disruptive camera- something that brings dSLR-like control, speed and image quality to a smaller, mirrorless camera that also supports interchangeable lenses for different needs while also simplifying workflow.
Nobody has MASTERED this yet- not by a longshot.
I don't think Samsung has either, but it looks like they are at least moving in the right direction.
I'm not ready to give up on my $8k of equipment yet, of course...
Only gadget guys obsessed with numbers would buy a Samsung camera. Photographers just don't care about nm and megapixels.
What an idiot.
Really? So if the numbers look great in the die size of the sensor and the megapixels, but the lenses front focus that's OK? Or they have twice the megapixels on the sensor and the glass is soft outside of the center of the FOV? Focus speed is insanely important to sports photographers. All the megapixels in the world aren't going to change that.
Professional photographers, and most amateurs will tell you to purchase good glass. camera bodies are temporary. Canon and Nikon have the majority of the high-end market for a reason. I can purchase the Canon 24-70mmL lens for around $2K. It will fit on virtually every Canon DSLR that I'd consider using. Anything from a couple hundred dollar Rebel APS to a full frame 5D mark3 for 3 grand.
Will Samsung still be doing that in five years? I don't know. So for most serious hobbyists, to pro photographers, it's simply a big risk. After Samsung has been in the market for a few years, this may change. But not for someone who has half a dozen or more pro grade lenses. You don't toss $20K+ worth of lenses simply because some newcomer to the market puts out a new sensor.
So if the lens is great, you don't care if you use it with an old ~1 megapixel camera with a noisy sensor that requires long exposure times in reasonable light settings? Countering the idea that megapixels don't matter isn't the same as saying they are the only thing that matters.
That depends. If you already have a lot of hardware, you're locked in by vendor.
But if you don't, you get another option. That's not a bad thing.
http://vimeo.com/105855767
Seems like Android phones can outspec the iPhone in every way, including megapixels, but none that I've seen have the image quality of the iPhone camera. It's quite embarrassing how good of pictures my friends with iPhones can actually get. Mine are always noisy and blurry. Even with the LED flash. What's crazy is that even Sony, who makes the camera and camera chipset for Apple cannot even get a camera as good on their Android phones. What am I missing?
Notice how the 5dMKII pics are zoomed out? That is because it is a full size sensor. Due to sensor crop, the image produced by the other two cameras gets zoomed in by a factor of 1.6 or so. Naturally, you can see more detail if it is zoomed in. Also, the reviewer is talking about having issues with camera shake while on a tripod, has he not ever heard of a remote shutter release?
It is interesting to wonder how much process size vs. pixel density effects sensor noise, and Samsung certainly has some nice fab facilities.
Still this reviewer seems like an idiot or a paid shill. I’ll wait for something from DPReview.
And when all the Canons and Nikons use Samsung sensors, what will you do?
Learn to love Alaska
Someone, some day, will make a digital camera the size of a 35mm film cassette, with a pullout sensor the size of a 35mm film strip that fits over the sprockets on the film plane of the good film cameras. Make it Bluetooth or wifi-controllable. For the viewfinder-impaired, put a display driver on the takeup reel side and a stick-on display on the back; reinterpret the film advance lever action. The utterly obvious stuff.
Why not yet? We don't *ing* need disposable cameras, and there are plenty of good robust ones that will last another century.
Camera bodies are indeed temporary, but they are still important. I shoot high school gymnastics. During the season, which started a couple weeks ago, I regularly shoot 4000 to 5000 images at each meet, and there will be 12 meets this season. I know my Canon 7D can take that kind of use week in and week out, and its on its third season now. That Samsung may take pretty photos, but it has no track record for dependability. If one were handed to me I'd use it for day-to-day "walking around town" shots, but I won't even consider using it as a main shooter at a gymnastics meet until its been out long enough, at least a couple of years, to have a reputation for taking heavy usage.
Yes, to answer other comments I've seen on this story, when you buy Canon (and Nikon) you're paying a premium for the name. But you're also buying a decades-long reputation of dependable cameras that can do the job and won't let you down. I'm willing to pay a premium for a quality camera body that I know I can depend on. Samsung has a long way to go before it has that kind of reputation in the camera market.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
It takes a good sensor, a good lens, some skill and even some luck to create a decent photo.
I'll withhold judgement on the Samsung claims until the sensors have been properly tested in the field.
That said, there is a reason pro lenses cost so damn much. Five years from now, my top end lenses will still be worth every penny I paid for them, while I probably wouldn't even be able to GIVE away the DSLR body. A whole lot of optical engineering goes into lens design. Especially the high end glass. If there is a cheaper way to do it without sacrificing quality, Canon and Nikon would really like to talk to you about it.
Someone asked why the 300mm/2.8 lens was significant. The reason for it is the 300mm/2.8 and the 70-200mm/2.8 lenses are pretty much lenses that set the bar or standard for optical clarity, so to speak, for both the Nikon and Canon camps.
Yes, tiny sensors can achieve better magnification with less glass than their full sized counterparts, however, this normally comes at the price of noise since you're packing all those mega-pixels into a much smaller footprint. Don't get me wrong, in perfect lighting ( say ISO 100 ) it'll probably make a really nice image. In the real world, however, perfect lighting rarely exists outside the studio. This is where low light capability and low noise sensors pull away from the camera wannabe's. It's more or less a balancing act between low light and noise.
If they want to impress me, show me what the camera can do when the light goes crappy on you and you need to push the ISO above 3200. This is where the full frames really start to flex their muscle. Show me what the image looks like edge to edge when this sensor is paired with decent glass. How's the bokeh ? Chromatic Aberration ? If you can impress me with the first few, now you need to build an inventory of lenses I can choose from depending on what I'm shooting. Portrait, landscape, macro, sports, wildlife, etc. One size doth not fit all here. Don't forget all the other goodies that go into this very, very expensive hobby. Flashes, tele-converters, filters, etc. etc.
Someone mentioned how silly it is to " get it right in the camera when we can do it all post ".
The idea is sound, IF you shoot one or two photos. OTOH, the reason you get it right in the camera is so you don't have to spend so much damn time fixing things in post. So, if you just shot up 1000 images for a wedding or your vacation or whatever, trust me when I tell you that reviewing them all in Lightroom is bad enough. Having to apply various fixes to compensate for silly oversights you SHOULD have done in camera is just annoying as hell.
In the end, it still takes a lot of skill and a bit of luck to pull of a shot to be proud of. The tech will only get you so far.
Sure you can just crop off bad edges on glass. But then your glass is much larger than it needs to be, your lens is heavier than it needs to be, and larger than it needs to be.
"Math" alone cannot fix blurred edges. It can fix things like CA or barrel distortion, but not really outright blurring, at least not to a degree that it can equal the results form a good lens.
Good point about the REAL consumer cameras (like an iPhone) not be blurry across the lens, if that was in answer to my post I should have qualified that as consumer standalone cameras.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
but fixing these effects in the lens is pointless now. The computer can do it better.
You can't fix spatial frequency response with software.
Your picture quality is limited by the worst of the sensor and lens.
There is no use having a kick-ass sensor with shitty optics, and no use having great optics with a shitty sensor.
In regards to the small cameras like on the iphone 6, there are serious limitations in having a sensor so physically small. Having such a small sensor makes lens design for it a great deal easier, but you're paying the price in light collection ability and overall resolution as the system will be limited by diffraction effects far sooner.
Large sensor sites are beneficial in many circumstances, if you have the same amount of pixels in a full 35mm frame and a 1/2.3" system, the 35mm will come off looking far better with a lens to suit.
Almost every device from Samsung I've owned lost support as soon as a newer device/os came along. I would not touch this company for anything I expect to use for longer than 2 years.
Then the parents are in on it too, seeing as how they pay me to take the photos and all. The local paper is in trouble too, since they occasionally print my photos.
Please feel free to go fuck yourself. You're probably the only partner you can get. Actually your hand probably even rejects you.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Makes sense that people stick with the companies that has reliable and dependable products. Yet in the end, someone has to be the guinea pig when a newcomer arrives. Most won't touch it. But somewhere out there, someone's going to pick up the duty and do the dirty work for ya.
The advantage to mirrorless is the lack of front/back focus relative to traditional SLRs. Right now, the Samsung is fast for daylight AF but still hunts in low light. Still, it's 15 fps. It's good enough to be competitive with the 1Dx believe it or not -- I have the 1D Mark IIn which had better brightlight focusing than the 1D3 or 1D4 (the whole Rob Galbraith series of articles). The 300/2.8 will be Samsung's make-or-break lens for the industry.
Good glass is critical, but Sigma has come out of nowhere with brilliant results as have Sony (with the FE Zeiss primes). I think the 16-50/2-2.8 compares very well against the 17-55/2.8 EF-S -- it's just not as good as teh 24-70/L II.
The Samsung 50-150 and 300 will be true tests of whether the NX platform itself is valuable imho.
Then, as you say, what will Samsung be doing in 5 years? That's the biggest gamble..
I think you're misinterpreting the numbers. The market at the low end is contracting because cell phones are cutting into it. The market at the high end is contracting because neither Canon nor Nikon is really innovating much. If each generation has only small, incremental improvements, people are going to upgrade their gear less and less frequently.
Nobody is replacing their DSLRs with cell phones, within some small epsilon. At best, cell phones can replace DSLRs for outdoor portrait photography, when you're within a few feet from the subject. On the opposite extreme, if you try to use a cell phone to take photos of your kid's stage play, you'll annoy everyone by standing up in the front row, and you'll still only get shots with blown-out faces that are six pixels by six pixels in size and so severely smeared by motion blur that nobody would be recognizable even if you could fix those first three problems.... All the while, the parent with the real camera might be taking amazing close-ups with a 300mm (or longer) lens on a full-frame camera from the back of the auditorium.
Of course, half the time, the parent with the real camera has a lens that's too short to be usable and hasn't learned enough about the camera to avoid getting blown-out shots. Unfortunately, some of those folks get discouraged and never upgrade their gear. Fortunately, there's a steady supply of people who can't be bothered to learn the basics, so them getting discouraged isn't a big problem market-wise. :-)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Correct me if i am wrong, but doesn't the "reflex" part indeed imply a mirror?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
All this is possible if you are just willing to use a program that understands the vocal input "Enhance!".
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I can't tell if you're trolling or merely completely clueless. But I'll humor you anyway.
The sensors have moved on massively since then. CCDs have gone, largely replaced by CMOS, CMOS was replaced by backlit cmos which improves noise response.
Now we have STACKED pixels, with the colors stacked onto each other. Again it substantially reduces the area needed.
1) The only vendor selling cameras with stacked pixel sensors today is Sigma. Stacked pixel sensor today delivers good images in base ISO, and then completely falls apart when you knock it up a few stops. None of the image processor software is ready for stacked pixels either.
2) Stacked pixels doesn't do jack about "area needed." What it does do is avoid the artifacting effect introduced by the traditional Bayer layout of pixels.
We're at the stage now, where those night-time star photos are not as good as my 1inch G7X produces. In a few years time, a 6mm sensor like the smartphones have will be able to do that.
What you need for night-time star photos is the ability to withstand thermal noise from long exposure, which is a different requirement from most normal type of photography. Your G7X, while a great piece of technology in a small package, will get slaughtered by even entry-class DSLRs in situations that really do call for high sensitivity, such as indoor sports.
Then there's the glass, too many corrective lenses fixing aberrations and barrel distortions and so on. All of that glass adding weight, size and cutting some of the light. Why? The camera can do that in software. Ditch the u
You speak of this like it's a revelation, but it's already done in software on many compact cameras, including your G7X. But when you compare the image quality to optical correction, you can tell the software isn't there yet.
All these improvements have enabled smaller cameras, and better cameras, but DSLR seem stuck in a timewarp.
You are happy with an f2.8 lens? Seriously? If they could make a f1.8 or faster lens without making it insanely big, they would. It's a compromise and not necessary with the better sensors/smaller bodies.
1) You need large aperture on smaller bodies for sharp image because small sensor=smaller focal length=smaller aperture size at any given f value=diffraction kicks in faster because it's only affected by absolute size of the aperture. Full frame DSLRs don't have to worry about diffraction until well past f/10; medium format go well past f/22. That's why full frame users are happy with f/4 or even f/5.6 zooms, when such an aperture would be unacceptable in a high-end compact camera.
2) You also need large aperture on smaller bodies for low noise because their ISO characteristics are worse than large sensors.
3) To get back into topic, Samsung lenses aren't much smaller than APS-C based DSLR counterparts, and all of that is attributable to the shorter flange distance. For telephoto lenses there is virtually no size savings.
With respect the the Samsung:
Autofocus: good in bright light, passable in low light, it really is better than the old canons (5Dii) in mid-low light. Nowhere near the newest AF SLRs. There is no good way to control focus in C-AF mode.
Weight: Very nice! Even with the 16-50 f2-2.8.
Durability: Appears to be at or above the 5Diii level. Not quite as overbuilt as an D810. It feels basically like a 7D.
Usability: Complete garbage! Nice button placement but boneheaded firmware. In video mode, we let it slide because the video is so awesome.
Support: 2 Firmware updates already, new ones on the way (sadly these ones are video focused).
Weather Sealing: S lenses are gasketed, body appears robust. We won't know till someone tears one down though.
Lenses: 24-70 eq available and quite good. 70-230 eq reportedly of similar quality sharp and fast. Neither are landscape lenses. 85mm f1.4 (135mm eq) check, very sharp very corrected a bit high on CA but its a system of lenses that are supposed to be software corrected. 60mm macro check. 30mm pancake check. UWA zoom check minus.
Viewfinder Quality: A new standard as far as latency, good sharpness as compared to A7.
Lightroom support out of the box: It includes a copy of lightroom! Sadly no Capture One support other than through an included DNG converter.
At the moment it really is an astounding 4k video camera.
Stills are good enough for events, there are reports of sports working fine if you can fill the frame. Its a PITA for slow fine arts stuff because of wide open focusing and a nerfed AF-S mode.
(I don't normally reply to ACs, but three of you bring up good points, which outweighs the one asshole.)
Actually, no on the toe. Of course there are shots where the gymnast is in a type of pose that doesn't need to be immortalized in a photograph. You'll get that in any sport where the standard method of shooting is "spray and pray" (set the camera on continuous shooting, hold down the button as the gymnast starts a flip, and pray you get a good printable shot at the peak of the flip). And yes, I go through and make sure those don't go out in the wild. But in all honesty, I've never seen a camel toe shot in the schools I shoot at. High school leotards are designed to prevent just that sort of thing. If a high school gymnast is showing toe, then the coach did a really poor job of selecting leotards for the team.
As for the "reasonable suspicion" part, no it really isn't. You'll see more skin at any public beach (and probably most shopping malls in the summer) than you will at a high school gymnastics meet. And most gymnastics meets are so lightly attended that the parents and coaches generally know quickly if anyone suspicious is showing up. If someone unknown shows up and just starts taking photos, someone else is going to ask questions. I started out by taking photos of a family member and her friends on the team 8 years ago, I didn't just randomly walk in off the street with a camera and start shooting. There's also the part, at least in my state, where one must obtain permission from the school principal or the state sanctioning body (depends on particular meet) to distribute the photos commercially. And finally, getting good gymnastics photos is not a cheap endeavor, nor is it something you're going to learn overnight. You're generally in a very large room with piss poor lighting and a strictly enforced rule of no flash photography, and photograph is only allowed in certain areas if you're shooting from the actual gym floor and not the stands. You ain't going to get even passable shots with an entry level camera you bought the day before a meet, a kit lens, and the camera set on "Programmed". A pedo isn't going to devote that much time, money, and effort to something that only lasts 12 weeks a year.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
While pixel count matters we have probably already crossed into the realm where lenses are going to be more important for picture quality than pixel count unless you have a Hasselblad with a full frame digital back. Most people understand megapixels and for a long time a higher count meant you would get better pictures but as soon as you mention diffraction limits you have lost them. This was something that I was taught about years ago in high school in the photography class using Pentax K1000s and ISO100 black and white film with the general rule that for crisp pictures don't stop the lens down beyond f/8. There are exceptions like you really want a very high depth of focus or you are doing a very long exposure but you understood why you were doing those things.
The GP is also right in that now days camera chassis are fairly disposable unless you are looking at the very high end ones. I still have my Pentax Spotmatic F with close to a full complement of good lenses (looking for an M42 screw mount 17mm fisheye and 400-500mm range telephoto at reasonable prices) and as long as the camera shop near me exists I will keep on using it. My wife however is on her 4th digital camera in 10 years as they just don't last even though my SpotmaticF has been exposed to substantially harsher conditions while I have owned it for almost the last 20 years.
Time to offend someone
This is incorrect. The process is called deconvolution.
Yes, I know about that...
It's limited by your knowledge of the len's point spread function
Which varies per lens and is different across the whole lens so GAME OVER MAN.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley