With all the pre-PMA announcements that Samsung made in the last few weeks I wondered if they had anything left in the tank. While it’s not a production ready model, the NX Series hybrid looks interesting, but it’s a still a hybrid and I don’t think they’re any better than a point and shoot. However, I won’t pass judgment until I’ve taken this one for a ride.
The hype over this hybrid is the APC-S sensor that is found in DSLRs sans mirror box. Because of the exclusion of the mirror box, the NX has an electronic viewfinder that Samsung says is “ultra-precise.” The distance between the lens and sensor on the NX is approximately 60 percent closer than that of a DSLR. The first NX Series model will be out in the second half of this year.
Samsung Digital Imaging’s CEO Sang-jin Park had a pretty interesting quote in the press release about hybrid market share.
“We estimate that the hybrid digital camera market will be over 20% of the global digital still camera market by 2012,” said Sang-jin Park, CEO of Samsung Digital Imaging Company. “With the release of the NX Series, a digital camera that combines the strengths of a DSLR and compact digital camera, Samsung Digital Imaging will become a global leader in the new hybrid digital camera market and achieve the company’s goal to become the global leader in the digital camera market by 2012.”
I don’t see Samsung taking over the world by 2012, but the estimate about hybrids being 20% of the market is pretty astounding and maybe a little laughable. But you never know. People want small cameras to put in their back pocket or purse. That will never change and most aren’t pedantic enough to care about actual image quality so long as everything isn’t blurred, etc.
Photo Gallery by Picturesurf
This isn’t a hybrid in the same sense as the Pentax that was announced today. It’s got removable/exchangeable lenses and an APS-C sensor, the same as found in 80% of dSLRs. It’s much more akin to the Panasonic G1 micro four-thirds “dSLR” than a typical bridge/hybrid camera, except that it has a better sensor than the four-thirds cameras do. Theoretically it offers the same image quality as most current dSLRs at significantly reduced weight/size. The drawback is an EVF rather than a pentamirror/pentaprism viewfinder.
The idea is, make a digital camera with interchangeable lenses without the crazy mirror/prism nonsense! Here’s something that I wrote on the subject about 1 1/2 years ago:
The purpose of an SLR (single lens reflex) camera is to eliminate viewfinder parallax, and to make interchangeable lenses possible. Both of these problems are automatically solved in even the cheapest LCD display digital camera, so why not, for a slightly higher price make them capable of changing lenses? It’s true that some digital cameras come with zoom lenses with a huge range of focal lengths, but what if you want to attach your camera to a microscope or to a high power telescope? Doesn’t the advent of digital photography make SLR cameras obsolete? SLR cameras are bulky, heavy, slow, noisy, and have a large number of moving parts to potentially break down, so why is there such a thing as a DSLR camera? It doesn’t make sense! It seems like the only reason that they are being manufactured is because SLR cameras have a stereotypical reputation of being professional, and perhaps partly because it’s cheaper to adopt existing SLR cameras to digital rather than design new cameras from scratch! Also, SLR cameras are much more complicated to design and manufacture, so some of the competition is automatically eliminated. Since a large number of people want interchangeable lenses at any cost, the manufacturers are simply taking advantage of their ignorance! There IS such a thing as a non-SLR digital camera with interchangeable lenses, namely the Leica M8, but it has a list price of US$5,995.00! (http://llbest.com/ILTSTM_AudioVideo.htm)
Well, they’ve finally done it (figured out how to make a digital camera)! Better late than never!