Gadgetory

hey everyone this is Jimmy with Jim's review room samsung's latest mirrorless camera replaces the nx300 and offers a smaller package than the DSLR light and x1 the nx500 that I'm reviewing today is getting a lot of attention because some of the mechanics and technology from the NX one makes its way into this smaller body camera and some may think of it as a cheaper alternative as well now on the flip side the price of the nx500 is on the upper end of mirrorless cameras in general but with its specs and technology it might be well worth it now I personally paid seven hundred and ninety nine dollars for this as of this video and it does come with these 16 250 millimeter varible lens now before starting keep in mind I'll be reviewing this for the average consumer mostly with the settings on auto and this review is targeted towards those who don't know what F stops are ISO levels and all that amazing timber jargon now this is however for those who wants to pick up a possibly great working camera and using it to read out of the box and maybe for video bloggers to thinking of picking this up so without further ado welcome everyone to Jim's review please going over the physical layout first the camera is 4.7 inches wide 1.7 inches from front to back and stands tall at two and a half inches the camera itself weighs a little over half a pound but still very light to work with the lens itself I do admit it does protrude a bit here but it does sit 100% flush or parallel with the camera preventing the camera from tipping over unlike these Samsung and X Mini that I've tested previously now part of the lens here specifically most of the exterior is made of plastics and because so it's not front heavy making this camera well balanced when holding for long periods of time even when holding this with one hand no again ideal for bloggers and videographers the lens itself does feature a very smooth rotating ring here for zooming in and out but also on the side of the lens are buttons to zoom in and out as well now there's this eye function button on the side which I'll show you shortly now looking at the cameras body I do have the textured white which indeed has gotten dirty from touching other unsightly things and then touching the camera afterwards the mess doesn't rub away dry but with a little bit of water and a cloth it rubs out just fine with no staining at least for now overall no squeaks or areas of flecks just a very well-built and tightly packed camera now going over to layouts starting at the top right here we have your on and off switch with shutter button this small button to the right is the auto exposure lock below that is a very nice and stiff metal dial for selecting your type of control whether full auto manual aperture or shutter priority etc but on Samsung you have SAS abbreviated for samsung auto shot three different types of action shots are able to be taken automatically any jump shot here for example is the easiest to explain now once a person jumps into the air the nx500 will take the photo when the person is at its peak in its jump now the same concept is applied to baseball and trap shots only helping to capture that exact moment that you want now the S camera icon will allow you to use presets such as portrait mode panorama sunset fireworks etc that we've seen on other cameras as well now going back to the layout here the nx500 offers what i think is highly beneficial with setting dials just like DSLR cameras where your ma mode other than auto you can adjust your exposure f-stop ISO levels and navigate through your settings on the fly and everything is displayed on the screen in real time and with other models you had to go through the menu adjust the settings with the directional pad in the back and whatnot this makes for a very streamlined smoother process now the center is your quick connection button to link your camera directly to your smartphone you can use your smartphone as a viewfinder which I found to be ok for photos the Bluetooth connection wasn't as fluid as the main LED display despite having a newer phone and being right next to the camera itself and to finish up the wireless capabilities this is perfect for those on social media that wants better photos than what your phone may output photos can be beamed to your smartphone wirelessly and turned allowing you to store the images or share them on Instagram Twitter etc but back into the physical layout here a hot shoe is available and in the nx500 packaging you do receive a mountable flash and sadly with this camera I was hoping we were now able to get a microphone jack so I can mount my rode microphone to this but there isn't instead on either side of the hot shoe are the built-in microphones which does surprisingly a pretty darn good job picking up clear audio now on the back side the video record button is conveniently located on the edge for thumb access while all the other buttons on the back are placed in this standard position like most of the cameras now to the far left side and protected by cover a microUSB port is offered for charging and transferring data no special cords needed and above that is a micro HDMI connection now rotating to the bottom NFC or near field communication is present with a tripod threaded mount and lasts to the far right is a slot to hold your lithium ion battery and regular sized SD card no Samsung claims three hours and 20 minutes about to fully charge the battery from a dead one and you can achieve up to 370 images if you're using this only for taking photos or up to 2 hours straight if you're using this to record video at 1080 at 60 frames per second now getting to the part that's probably a little bit more interesting Samsung uses Super AMOLED technology and a 30 inch touch screen the camera has the ability to flip up for yes those selfie photos but better yet for recording yourself the screen also tilts facing downward if you ever need to hold the camera above your head to take some aerial shots now regarding the display like most of the AMOLED screens Samsung uses I personally like them for entertainment purposes it's very contrasting colors pop and it's a pleasure to look at that is on a TV tablet or smartphone I do have to say if you're looking for color accuracy either for taking photos or filming video the AMOLED will provide an image on screen that isn't what the real world looks like it doesn't look like the photos eventually that I'll show you on screen in a moment example the grass in this image is very green and looks to be well watered and plush but the grass in real life is in life that no Samsung does provide an option to turn off Super AMOLED and the saturation and contrast is slightly reduced but it's still not what your photos would look like once you put them on your computer to view so just be aware of that overall the screen still though is very responsive to touch execute menu selections and during recording in photography you can actually manually tell where the camera to focus just by touching anywhere on the touch screen now in the menu settings the nx500 offers one of the highest megapixel sensors available on any mirrorless camera Samsung offers up to 28 megapixels and in large variety of smaller sizes to choose from but while the menu options here everything is laid out pretty straightforward easy to understand read and scroll through now regarding that i Function button and lens that I showed you earlier it allows a pop-up menu on the screen here for you to change all your settings on the fly using the scroll wheels on the back and atop the camera now again just to make sure that we're aware here this review is for the average consumer looking for a camera right out of the box using mainly the auto settings unless I specified otherwise in the following photos unless you're the photos you'll see are all unedited but so I decided to venture around the city and came across the scooter first the autofocus on this thing works amazing that's one of the first things that I noticed right off the bat this thing locks onto my images fast but the tracking face detection and the number of areas that nx500 offers to focus on is very impressive now this wouldn't be a surprise as the same focusing system comes from it's more expensive bigger DSLR like mirrorless camera the NX one now with this image overall a sharp enough focus is on the scooter itself but I do admit the colors are a bit muted or flat with a very slight hint of green to the overall image now here's another example just in case you put on a sunny day to make sure it's not the auto white balance that's screwing things around the photo on the right again is the nx500 unedited and the photo coming in on the left here is from a nikon d50 100 an entry-level camera at the time priced about $900 with the lens the Nikon is also unedited and you can see from the ground to the pine needles just a bit more color that's present now I'm not saying that Samsung is bad for example my mother and friends first time seeing this they would think the more saturated picture is better and if you're a point-and-shoot kind of a person with no editing experience you might think the same as well it's good but for more avid photographer those who actually edit their photos with a flat color palette like the nx500 it does make it easier to retain all the details when editing in say Photoshop or Lightroom and just real quick around this image granting the Samsung does have many more megapixels than the d50 100 is sharpness and clarity really shows now here's another close-up with the nx500 for your viewing pleasure again no editing done on this here as well and here's another indoor image that is again on it's Auto settings but still a great looking photo in my opinion and in this image it does look really rich so on a different day here and yet again it's cloudy I had taken an overall image of our local college campus overall still a very sharp image the colors again could use a little bit more saturation for the brick and now some things to point out here and this kind of being nitpicky here you do receive some band in color shade transitions if you look at the sky you'll notice bands of gray when there should be a smooth linear progression and second this is quite common on smaller frame sensors you do get a bit of Alison or what they call more rave usually with very fine details and lines at times you get these jagged edges or lines that appears to bend again this is pretty typical for smaller frame cameras but if you're a blogger and wear some fine line plaid or prints this is something to look out for now regarding low-light performance not to get into too much jargon here at ISO level 400 it's pretty equivalent both pictures are on the same aperture exposure time and ISO levels in the lampshade chain and the lettering are pretty much neck-and-neck now for another picture once you start going into ISO level 500 you starts to see some noise being introduced and the ceiling and on the edges of darker areas so over on with low-light performance shown it works well in lower levels of course but once you start stretching the performance in lower lit situations the annex 500 doesn't really have a huge leg up and perform similar to other cameras now as for video this is one of the biggest perks this is one of the few merliss cameras on the market today in this price range that can record in 4k it is indeed ultra sharp ultra clear and a pleasure to look at now these videos shown has been down scale to 1080 but even so the detail is still simply amazing now this one thing I do have to mention though when you do record in 4k or UHD the screen image then zooms in to a one to one ratio size and with the 4k recording you are limited to the cinematic 24 frames per second so prior to filming you have to estimate how close the crap will zoom in on your image and then when you start recording then you have to readjust a camera to be in frame it's quite annoying after a while though now watch what it looks like once I move from you HD or 4k here to 1080 and you can see the image is pulled back you can see the railing on the edge of the frame here where I had my tripod leaning against it and not to mention this is actually 1080p footage at 60 frames per second from the nx500 and you can see a dramatic decrease in image quality and just to be fair here's another quick comparison of just 1080 better lit area you can see the lettering the nx500 is not as sharp as the three-year-old Nikon that I'm using but one last item here I wanted to mention for anyone thinking of getting this for recording video and I want to make this clear this is not necessarily a flaw but Samsung has implemented the latest high-definition recording codec h.264 it's a high efficiency codec meant to reduce file sizes dramatically and other technological advances but with most video players including the latest video Land 2.2 or even the latest video editing program as of this upload like Premiere Pro CC you can't watch them or edit the files instead you have to convert them for the time being back to h.264 then you're able to do what you need to do now one program I found that's free and does work is media player classic if you need to please google them and to edit this video I had to use Rocky Mountains movie convertor and not wondershare as some has suggested this is the new codec and it's the way of the future eventually but for the time being there's just an extra step of conversion or special players needed to work with this media and this does apply to the 4k recordings and even down to the 1080 video so overall with this camera I think it's still a good camera for the price range it provides sharp photos an amazing focused system for such a small package the colors on men are more subjective but I did notice on darker and cloudy days the college had a slight green tint and on bright sunny days there's just a bit of overexposure again it's all in the auto settings now if you don't use Auto settings the camera does work much better and provide some great results as for low lights from my experience this was not the NX 500 strong suit it really performed on average or worse both on auto and manual mode than other cameras on the market now regarding the video recording capabilities now it's great to have that hotshoe but we're still missing that mic input then although the built-in mics are still good but the video recording ratio does impact my workflow since there's not a dedicated video mode as well the 4k like any 4k the clarity is amazing but if you're still in the 1080 world of videography there's much better video recording cameras out there today and I'd say once the price goes down once the new video codec becomes more mainstream it may be worth a second look but for the time being even with the excitement of having parts from the NX one carried over to this real-world performance I still feel is somewhat lacking so hope this video helped you in some way if you like my work add me gems review room to Facebook Twitter and Instagram for items I work on behind the scenes and my personal updates this is Jimmy wood Jim's review room you guys take care and I'll see you the next one bye