Ergonomic Roundup November 2013, Samsung

Photo made with Samsung EX-1.

 

Samsung Cameras  The name Samsung describes a gigantic South Korean Chaebol (business conglomerate) which is involved in manufacturing almost everything from ships to (electronic) chips. Somewhere, almost lost in the Samsung behemoth,  is a tiny camera division. This made compact film cameras for many years. In the digital era Samsung briefly teamed with Pentax, supplying imaging sensors for co-branded Samsung/Pentax DSLR's.

My experience with Samsung Cameras  In 2010 I bought a Samsung NX10.  This was Samsung's first mirrorless interchangeable lens camera. For a first effort I thought it was pretty good. It featured quite good ergonomics and a likeable user interface. It was almost exactly the same size as the Panasonic Lumix G1 but was much better shaped, easier to hold and more efficient to operate. I  learned a lot about ergonomics by analysing and comparing these two cameras.  I discovered that two cameras which are the same size and which superficially look very similar can provide a very different user experience. I discovered that it is possible to analyse, name and categorise the ergonomic elements of that difference. The NX10 was followed by the NX11, a very mild upgrade of essentially the same camera. I briefly tried an NX100 but rediscovered that my camera must have an inbuilt viewfinder.

 I also for a time owned a Samsung EX-1 (TL500). This was a quite sophisticated compact camera with decent ergonomics apart from the absence of a built in viewfinder.  It was plentifully endowed with hard controls for the expert user. But it had a serious flaw in the form of  a strong tendency to overexposure with subjects having a high brightness range (bright sunny conditions). Since these conditions are extremely common in Sydney, Australia where I live, the camera did not last long in my bag.

After the NX10/11   I thought Samsung's early MILC efforts showed real promise for future development.   It seemed to me that someone who understands cameras, photographers and the basic principles of ergonomics appeared to be influential in the NX camera design team.

Maybe that person resigned or died, I have no idea,  but subsequent Samsung digital cameras started to veer away from the early photographer friendly style to a more "electronic" style, possibly in line with the company's smart phone business.

Samsung brought the "i-Function" feature into it's lens collection. I analysed this feature  here  and found it to be without ergonomic merit. It was, in my view a gimmick, perhaps designed to create a point of difference between Samsung and other brands. 

I bought a total of 10 lenses for the NX system over the years and found that as time went on it appeared to me that quality control in the manufacture of theses lenses was declining leading to an increase in faults and decentering errors.

Performance was never a strong feature of the NX10 and 11 but I hoped it would improve with the NX20. It did not. The NX20 retained the sluggish performance and tediously slow shot to shot times of the NX10.

So I abandoned Samsung and returned to the M4/3 system where they still make real cameras.  Samsung went on to make their cameras look ever more like "Smart phone with lens". The latest iteration of this theme is the Samsung Galaxy NX, which appears to be an attempt to merge a Galaxy tablet (in the rear) with a viewfinder (on top) and a lens (out in front)  This thing must be operated entirely by touch screen although actually doing so appears almost physically impossible. How anybody could hold the thing, look through the viewfinder and operate the touch screen all at the same time is beyond me.

Actually the Galaxy NX looks to me like an example of asyndesis.  This is a disorder in which separate ideas or thoughts cannot be joined into a coherent concept. It is not uncommon in the drawings of people suffering from schizophrenia. It might appear as a car with a horse's head at the front,  or some similar juxtaposition which makes no sense to the viewer but generally has some kind of significance to the artist.  Presumably the Galaxy NX means something to it's creators but I don't get it.

The Crystal Ball   I have no idea at all about the possible direction of  Samsung's future in the imaging business. Not a clue. The vast majority of photographs made with a Samsung device utilise a smartphone. I have no idea whether there is a place in the Samsung empire for proper cameras. Frankly I can't think of any reason why there would be. Most entities which have a camera division are making a loss on their camera business so why would Samsung want to go there ?