They are very compact, light and offer quality "times better" than the Nikon 1

Apr 20, 2012 11:50 GMT  ·  By

South Korean company SAMSUNG has sent out a press release about its new line of high-quality D-SLR like cameras. These cameras offer a very good image quality, that’s most likely better than NIKON’s D3100 and rival the recently announced D3200.

They are smaller than the usual D-SLR camera and benefit from the “mirrorless” design. In fact, these are basically MILC type of cameras, meaning Mirrorless Interchangeable-Lens Camera, but SAMSUNG likes to call them CSC cameras, as in Compact System Camera.

The lenses are interchangeable, but different manufacturers use different mounting types.

Leica uses the M mount, Olympus and Panasonic use the Micro Four Thirds type, SONY has the E-mount, NIKON uses Nikon 1, Fujitsu uses the X-mount, Pentax has two different mounts – the Q-mount and the K-mount and, finally, SAMSUNG has the NX-mount. So, unfortunately, only Olympus and Panasonic can share lens between them.

What’s definitely special about Samsung’s CSC cameras?

It’s the sensor. The Samsung NX series uses a large NX sensor that’s over 50% larger than what Olympus and Panasonic MILC cameras have. When compared to Nikon’s 1 series, the NX sensor is almost 300% the size, so you can picture the image quality difference.

The new 20.3 Megapixel APS-C CMOS image sensor can capture beautiful pictures with a maximum resolution of 5472 x 3648 pixels in 1:1, 3:2 or 16:9 image ratios. The size of the sensor is the standard 23.5 x 15.7 mm and it can set an ISO value of up to 12800.

The NX1000 is very light and comes in nice white, black or pink body color.

One obvious small downside, probably the same as with all MILC / CSC cameras, is the fact that the Autofocus is using the Contrast Detection method, rather than the Phase Detection method like SONY’s new SLT A57 “mirrorless” digital camera that we’ve presented recently here.

The NX210 is just as light as the NX1000, but it comes with a high quality metallic finish and has the same 3” LCD size like the NX1000, but this time it’s an AMOLED high quality screen.

It also comes with Wireless technology and can connect to any available Wi-FI network and SmartTVs that connect to the internet.

The Samsung NX20 comes with a swivel 3” Active Matrix OLED screen and a very fast 1/8000 sec shutter speed and with an optional remote control, the SR2NX02.

All the cameras can film in FullHD resolution at the standard 30 FPS speed and use SD/SDHC and SDXC card.

Pricing has not yet been made public but we expect these “wonders” to be priced below the 600 USD mark.

Photo Gallery (3 Images)

SAMSUNG's NX20 CSC Camera
SAMSUNG's NX1000 CSC CameraSAMSUNG's NX210 CSC Camera
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