Today Post by Joe Farace
Recently Automezzi celebrated its 25th year of exhibiting Italian cars, motorcycles and scooters to benefit Denver area charities. Marques displayed at the recent Sunday show include Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, Fiat, Alfa Romeo, DeTomaso Pantera, Lancia, Ducati, Moto Guzzi. Aprilia, Lambretta and Vespa.
While I am a confessed Anglophile both Mary and I love Italian cars but it’s been a while since I’ve owned one, my last being a (brand new) Fiat 850 Sypder. At Automezzi I brought along a Samsung NX1 to capture the event and would like to offer some impressions of the camera in this kind of outdoor car show environment. (For a more detailed look at the NX1 visit Mirrorless Photo Tips.)The NX1 has a tilting but not fully articulated flip-out screen that is nevertheless useful for Hail Mary overhead shots that help minimize the inevitable crowds at outdoor car shows. The screen is hard to move because Samsung didn’t provide a small tab on it to easily pop the screen out.
Similarly removing an SD card from the side-mounted receptacle (thankfully not in the bottom battery compartment) requires the use of your finger nails not fingertips as in every other mirrorless—or otherwise—camera I’ve used. If you care about your manicure, be careful out there.
There is no doubt the 16-50mm f/2-2.8 S ED OIS (24-75mm equivalent) lens is impressive for low-light photography but the less expensive kit lens—the 16-50mm Power Zoom—weighs 3.92 ounces. 16-50mm f/2-2.8 S ED OIS weighs 1.32 pounds.
Even though the 16-50mm f/2-2.8 S ED OIS equivalent maximum focal length falls short of a more portrait-like 85mm, it makes a great portrait lens and while testing Rotolight’s NEO LED lighting system, photographer Cliff Lawson used it to make a nice—I think—portrait of me for the Bio page of my website. I plan to use that lens for a model shoot with these clever LED lights and expect to be posting images on Mirrorless Photo Tips real soon now.
These few quibbles aside the Samsung NX1 was a friendly companion during the Automezzi car show and produced images of startling clarity that are only hinted at by these images that appear here. If the name on the camera said “Canon” instead of Samsung, it would be the best seller it deserves to be.
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