The 3.31-inch AMOLED tilt display flips up 90 degrees and down 45 degrees. View larger.
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
207 of 218 people found the following review helpful.
Better than a Nex,? Maybe..By Radio Man
This Samsung NX300 is a great little camera. Seems many of the pros or semi pro photographers haven't talked much about this camera YET. Might be because admittedly, Samsung up till this point was not exactly held in the same company as a Sony Nex or Canon, Nikon, Fuji..etc. Well..seems to me, Samsung is becoming a player here or soon will be, in my OPINION. I formed this opinion as I presently own TOO many cameras :)..among them being the Fuji X100S, Sony RX1, had a Nex7..had an EM5. Anyway my crazy camera buying habits aside I am able to compare all these cameras. More specifically, what I love about the Samsung is it's incredible accurate color. Skin tones look GREAT as does grass, foliage, anything etc..Looks on my screen EXACTLY as colors look in real life..of course making sure White Balance is correct. It's auto WB by the is among the best I have seen so far in all the cameras I mentioned prior btw, in many different lighting conditions. Of course you can choose custom WB if you are in difficult lighting. One thing that is not great, but not too bad are it's write times to the sd card vs ready for next shot or to preview the picture. It's NOT slow at all..but probably a little slower than the Nex cameras and my x100s..but again NOT bad, just not a rocket.
One plus here vs any Nex I have used..this NX300 lets you choose incremental iso. If you may not know what that means..all Nex cameras can only MANUALLY do iso 200/400/800/1600/3200 and so on..This Samsung like most BETTER cameras, DSLRS, etc. you can choose in-between isos be it 640...or 2000. That may sound like not much, but consider the fact MAYBE all you need is iso 2000...on a Nex your only choice will be to jump to iso 3200 if 1600 is not enough...so you simply have MORE control here..and potentially lower iso noise than a Nex because of this silly little SHOULD have feature. :)
Apparently this really does have a brand new sensor despite it being the same exact pixel count as the older NX cameras. I find it's iso to be rather useable up to about 2500 even 3200. That said there is one huge flaw with this camera, Noise reduction kicks in way too much on isos above 400 or low light, and it's a shame because shooting raw you will see the higher isos on this camera are really really great, low noise..with very tight grain..once it starts to creep in. Book short I'd put the high iso capability to be just a notch or TWO better than the EM5 and a notch below the X100S as far as noise goes..again I'm talking about raw. Jpegs look AWESOME in good light but yes..NR is too aggressive once iso gets kicked up..I hope they will fix that in a firmware update. Oddly the Samsung DOES let you control the NR levels but not till you reach 6400 iso..so 3200, 1600 iso etc..you are stuck with aggressive NR..The jpeg noise reduction is just about my only complaint.
The lcd looks great MOST of the time...BUT in very strong sunshine I have to say it can get a little difficult to see detail on the display and a bit difficult to see your menu settings. :( I have deducted one star because as I say SOMETIMES you can't see what's going on too well on the display, in most light though like 90% of the time the display is rather good and useable. Of course a built in evf would be nice but this is not bad at all OVERALL. The touch screen is more than a gimmick, you can really get around the menus very fast. I should say I did end up buying the 30mm pancake lens..2.0 aperture. It does make a world of difference vs the kit lens..mine came with the 12-50mm lens..not bad, but just so so. With the pancake lens this Samsung really shines in low light..great bokeh, almost no purple fringing..really great lens.well that's another review. :)
The focus accuracy and overall speed are above average. I like you can reduce or enlarge the focus box...same like on the Fuji. The camera is not quite OMD fast but maybe about as fast or faster than the x100s, faster and more accurate than my Nex 7 was. For those of you that don't have Light Room it comes with it, so the software is great obviously. That said LR 4.4 actually is not working correctly with the NX300 raws. I upgraded to LR 5.0 and it's just PERFECT...I believe this is a known issue..raws have some weird magenta thing going on with LR4 but it's fixed now with LR5...not to worry.
With the pancake lens this camera really is pocket-able....yes a large pocket but it fits, REALLY. I can't say that about any Nex's...unless you buy the badly reviewed 16mm Sony pancake lens. The dynamic range seems to be above average for this type of camera..it's almost difficult to blow highlights..the EM5 will blow highlights much faster than this Samsung will.
On the overall considering it's low price..this Samsung is a FANTASTIC little camera. I have NOT used any of the wifi or 3d gadgetry OR video..I don't do video on my cameras. I suppose if the wifi and 3D options are important to you that just puts this camera even in a better position to meet or beat any Nex out there. Again I haven't shot any video so I can't comment on it. "I do miss having a built in evf or even the fact you can't GET an evf for this camera"..that's a real shame. But on the overall...even if you take away it's great price, this Samsung is ready to do battle with pretty much any mirrorless camera out there..again EXCEPT you might want to shoot raw, if you are using higher ISO due to it's too aggressive high iso JPEG Noise Reduction. Overall..this is a great camera and I'm surprised how much I am enjoying it. DEFINITELY worth a good hard look vs the competition..again in my opinion.. and NO it's no RX1 but it's about $2,000 less and it's not THAT far away vs the RX1 in picture quality once you pop a better lens on this thing! This is a fantastic little camera..it will surprise you!
75 of 83 people found the following review helpful.
I finally found a camera that leaves me 100% satisfiedBy John Hunter
I made the following review of the white NX300 and just wanted to share it here since it's the same camera and lens...
First off, if you want an extensive review of this camera go to cnet, dpreview, etc. That's where I head when doing research before buying a camera. This camera is an upgrade from my NX210 that I purchased last year. On my Amazon review of the NX210 I wanted to give it 4 1/2 stars. I thought that the mediocre focusing system subtracted 1/2 star. After reading the positive reviews of NX300 and noting the several awards it already won I just had to have one. I decided on the white one and wow am I glad I did. It is one fantastic looking device. I was initially contemplating the more compact 20 - 50 mm kit lens but ultimately went with the 18 - 55 mm lens. The latter not only offers a wider focal length, but also features optical internal stabilization. I can definitely notice that the focusing system is an improvement over the NX210. It's the quickest, most accurate focusing camera I've ever experienced. I'm also happy to report that the focusing system is no longer audible during video playback. The articulated touchscreen is a nice upgrade as well. The touchscreen is responsive and makes the camera easier-to-use overall. Otherwise, it takes the same "SLR quality" photos the NX210 takes but with a much higher chance of being in focus. This is the first time I felt comfortable giving a camera five stars and recommending it to family and friends without hesitation.
50 of 54 people found the following review helpful.
Wow!By technojunkie
I have always "dabbled" in photography, but never had a DSLR. A friend was so excited about this camera that I just had to check it out an am very glad that I did! eatures are great and the variety in lenses by Samsung is also very good. The camera has features that are too numerous to mention including being able to crop the picture right there on the camera make some image corrections and email it someone (through wifi). The camera is quite light and feels weird with the 50-200mm zoom lens zoomed in all the way. The amoled screen is to die for (but don't, you have too much to live for). One really nice feature is the wireless functions. I haven't tried with an iPhone yet but I have both a Samsung note3 and the 10.1 inch note tablet. You can use either as a remote viewfinder/shutter release and touch focus device! Now you can take a "proper" selfie! The camera creates it's own wifi network and you use the Samsung smart camera app. You see realtime video streamed from the camera and if you touch your phone it autofocuses the camera (very cool) and you can use the phone as a shutter release as well. You can also quickly and easily transfer pictures directly to your phone or tablet. I love shooting some pics then sending them to my note 10.1 tablet for viewing. Very convenient and the transfers are SUPER fast. You can also transfer pics from your phone to the camera but I'm not sure why you'd want to. I purchased the 30mm pancake lens which (like others) I have fallen in love with! it's a great "about town" fast lens with great low light performance. Although it isn't a zoom, you can crop your pictures and still retain some amazing detail (I was personally stunned with the cropped quality). It's my understanding that you don't need high megapixels if you're not printing very large pictures, but I think the pixel density really does make a difference for cropping pics. Extra batteries are cheap as is an external charger (get them as this thing seems to eat up batteries). Don't worry if you're just getting into this type of camera as it has a number of smart functions for figuring out what kind of shot you're taking so if you don't know your ISO from a hole in the ground don't worry about it. the camera does have a flash but it attaches to the hot shoe on top (no built in). it's super easy to check for the sharpness of the pic you just took by hitting the play button and double tapping the photo which zooms it about 7x (very useful to be sure you got a good shot and very quick to do).
By the way, if you have a Samsung phone for connecting to the camera make CERTAIN that your wifi function is NOT set to AUTO NETWORK SWITCH! Mine was turned on and what happened was the phone would find the camera's wifi network and immediately give an error message saying "internet connection is too slow" and drop the network again. I spent an hour on the phone with Samsung until I figured out the solution by myself (Samsung techs tried to help but they didn't understand the problem either). Go to your wifi setting on the phone and then hit the menu button on your phone and choose "advanced" and then clear the auto network switch checkbox. As soon as I did that, boom! the phone found the camera and connected flawlessly and quickly every single time.
I'm not 100% certain but I think if you email photos directly from the camera it compresses them, but if you send pics to your phone first, they are the original file size which you can then email from your phone.
for the money I just can't see anyone getting a better camera. That said, if you want to buy really good "glass" plan on spending more than the camera (but I think that's true of all DSLRs). The Samsung macro lens is like 500 bucks and their premier portrait lens (the 85mm primary) is like 800. So far I'm loving this camera and it has gotten me excited enough to start learning more about digital photography and learning how to take better pictures. If you take crappy pictures with this camera its going to be YOU not this camera!
BTW if you want something supertelephoto for like nature shots or stalking that woman who just won't return your calls (kidding, i'm kidding), something that you can goof around with without taking out a 2nd mortgage on your home you can get the Samyang (not Samsung) 500mm telephoto F8 (manual focus) lens with a 2x teleconverter to give you a 1000mm lens. It's basically like sticking a telescope onto your camera. It's only like 135 bucks here on amazon so don't expect to be taking sports illustrated cover photos at your next football game. I haven't received mine yet but i'll write a review after I get it. If you want a zoom lens that will work properly with the NX line of cameras Samsung's longest lens is the 50-200mm zoom which is nice and also affordable. There is rumor of Samsung planning a 70-400mm lens but that's all I've heard so far. This probably wasn't a helpful review for "Real" camera guys, but if you're stepping up from a point and shoot fixed lens camera I hope my review helped a bit. If you have other questions I'll try to answer as best I can. Happy shooting!
Update: you can't transfer pics from your phone to the camera (which didn't make sense anyhow). The camera let's you choose which pics to transfer from the camera to
The phone but you can select pics using either the camera screen or via the phone screen.
See all 136 customer reviews...
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
207 of 218 people found the following review helpful.
Better than a Nex,? Maybe..By Radio Man
This Samsung NX300 is a great little camera. Seems many of the pros or semi pro photographers haven't talked much about this camera YET. Might be because admittedly, Samsung up till this point was not exactly held in the same company as a Sony Nex or Canon, Nikon, Fuji..etc. Well..seems to me, Samsung is becoming a player here or soon will be, in my OPINION. I formed this opinion as I presently own TOO many cameras :)..among them being the Fuji X100S, Sony RX1, had a Nex7..had an EM5. Anyway my crazy camera buying habits aside I am able to compare all these cameras. More specifically, what I love about the Samsung is it's incredible accurate color. Skin tones look GREAT as does grass, foliage, anything etc..Looks on my screen EXACTLY as colors look in real life..of course making sure White Balance is correct. It's auto WB by the is among the best I have seen so far in all the cameras I mentioned prior btw, in many different lighting conditions. Of course you can choose custom WB if you are in difficult lighting. One thing that is not great, but not too bad are it's write times to the sd card vs ready for next shot or to preview the picture. It's NOT slow at all..but probably a little slower than the Nex cameras and my x100s..but again NOT bad, just not a rocket.
One plus here vs any Nex I have used..this NX300 lets you choose incremental iso. If you may not know what that means..all Nex cameras can only MANUALLY do iso 200/400/800/1600/3200 and so on..This Samsung like most BETTER cameras, DSLRS, etc. you can choose in-between isos be it 640...or 2000. That may sound like not much, but consider the fact MAYBE all you need is iso 2000...on a Nex your only choice will be to jump to iso 3200 if 1600 is not enough...so you simply have MORE control here..and potentially lower iso noise than a Nex because of this silly little SHOULD have feature. :)
Apparently this really does have a brand new sensor despite it being the same exact pixel count as the older NX cameras. I find it's iso to be rather useable up to about 2500 even 3200. That said there is one huge flaw with this camera, Noise reduction kicks in way too much on isos above 400 or low light, and it's a shame because shooting raw you will see the higher isos on this camera are really really great, low noise..with very tight grain..once it starts to creep in. Book short I'd put the high iso capability to be just a notch or TWO better than the EM5 and a notch below the X100S as far as noise goes..again I'm talking about raw. Jpegs look AWESOME in good light but yes..NR is too aggressive once iso gets kicked up..I hope they will fix that in a firmware update. Oddly the Samsung DOES let you control the NR levels but not till you reach 6400 iso..so 3200, 1600 iso etc..you are stuck with aggressive NR..The jpeg noise reduction is just about my only complaint.
The lcd looks great MOST of the time...BUT in very strong sunshine I have to say it can get a little difficult to see detail on the display and a bit difficult to see your menu settings. :( I have deducted one star because as I say SOMETIMES you can't see what's going on too well on the display, in most light though like 90% of the time the display is rather good and useable. Of course a built in evf would be nice but this is not bad at all OVERALL. The touch screen is more than a gimmick, you can really get around the menus very fast. I should say I did end up buying the 30mm pancake lens..2.0 aperture. It does make a world of difference vs the kit lens..mine came with the 12-50mm lens..not bad, but just so so. With the pancake lens this Samsung really shines in low light..great bokeh, almost no purple fringing..really great lens.well that's another review. :)
The focus accuracy and overall speed are above average. I like you can reduce or enlarge the focus box...same like on the Fuji. The camera is not quite OMD fast but maybe about as fast or faster than the x100s, faster and more accurate than my Nex 7 was. For those of you that don't have Light Room it comes with it, so the software is great obviously. That said LR 4.4 actually is not working correctly with the NX300 raws. I upgraded to LR 5.0 and it's just PERFECT...I believe this is a known issue..raws have some weird magenta thing going on with LR4 but it's fixed now with LR5...not to worry.
With the pancake lens this camera really is pocket-able....yes a large pocket but it fits, REALLY. I can't say that about any Nex's...unless you buy the badly reviewed 16mm Sony pancake lens. The dynamic range seems to be above average for this type of camera..it's almost difficult to blow highlights..the EM5 will blow highlights much faster than this Samsung will.
On the overall considering it's low price..this Samsung is a FANTASTIC little camera. I have NOT used any of the wifi or 3d gadgetry OR video..I don't do video on my cameras. I suppose if the wifi and 3D options are important to you that just puts this camera even in a better position to meet or beat any Nex out there. Again I haven't shot any video so I can't comment on it. "I do miss having a built in evf or even the fact you can't GET an evf for this camera"..that's a real shame. But on the overall...even if you take away it's great price, this Samsung is ready to do battle with pretty much any mirrorless camera out there..again EXCEPT you might want to shoot raw, if you are using higher ISO due to it's too aggressive high iso JPEG Noise Reduction. Overall..this is a great camera and I'm surprised how much I am enjoying it. DEFINITELY worth a good hard look vs the competition..again in my opinion.. and NO it's no RX1 but it's about $2,000 less and it's not THAT far away vs the RX1 in picture quality once you pop a better lens on this thing! This is a fantastic little camera..it will surprise you!
75 of 83 people found the following review helpful.
I finally found a camera that leaves me 100% satisfiedBy John Hunter
I made the following review of the white NX300 and just wanted to share it here since it's the same camera and lens...
First off, if you want an extensive review of this camera go to cnet, dpreview, etc. That's where I head when doing research before buying a camera. This camera is an upgrade from my NX210 that I purchased last year. On my Amazon review of the NX210 I wanted to give it 4 1/2 stars. I thought that the mediocre focusing system subtracted 1/2 star. After reading the positive reviews of NX300 and noting the several awards it already won I just had to have one. I decided on the white one and wow am I glad I did. It is one fantastic looking device. I was initially contemplating the more compact 20 - 50 mm kit lens but ultimately went with the 18 - 55 mm lens. The latter not only offers a wider focal length, but also features optical internal stabilization. I can definitely notice that the focusing system is an improvement over the NX210. It's the quickest, most accurate focusing camera I've ever experienced. I'm also happy to report that the focusing system is no longer audible during video playback. The articulated touchscreen is a nice upgrade as well. The touchscreen is responsive and makes the camera easier-to-use overall. Otherwise, it takes the same "SLR quality" photos the NX210 takes but with a much higher chance of being in focus. This is the first time I felt comfortable giving a camera five stars and recommending it to family and friends without hesitation.
50 of 54 people found the following review helpful.
Wow!By technojunkie
I have always "dabbled" in photography, but never had a DSLR. A friend was so excited about this camera that I just had to check it out an am very glad that I did! eatures are great and the variety in lenses by Samsung is also very good. The camera has features that are too numerous to mention including being able to crop the picture right there on the camera make some image corrections and email it someone (through wifi). The camera is quite light and feels weird with the 50-200mm zoom lens zoomed in all the way. The amoled screen is to die for (but don't, you have too much to live for). One really nice feature is the wireless functions. I haven't tried with an iPhone yet but I have both a Samsung note3 and the 10.1 inch note tablet. You can use either as a remote viewfinder/shutter release and touch focus device! Now you can take a "proper" selfie! The camera creates it's own wifi network and you use the Samsung smart camera app. You see realtime video streamed from the camera and if you touch your phone it autofocuses the camera (very cool) and you can use the phone as a shutter release as well. You can also quickly and easily transfer pictures directly to your phone or tablet. I love shooting some pics then sending them to my note 10.1 tablet for viewing. Very convenient and the transfers are SUPER fast. You can also transfer pics from your phone to the camera but I'm not sure why you'd want to. I purchased the 30mm pancake lens which (like others) I have fallen in love with! it's a great "about town" fast lens with great low light performance. Although it isn't a zoom, you can crop your pictures and still retain some amazing detail (I was personally stunned with the cropped quality). It's my understanding that you don't need high megapixels if you're not printing very large pictures, but I think the pixel density really does make a difference for cropping pics. Extra batteries are cheap as is an external charger (get them as this thing seems to eat up batteries). Don't worry if you're just getting into this type of camera as it has a number of smart functions for figuring out what kind of shot you're taking so if you don't know your ISO from a hole in the ground don't worry about it. the camera does have a flash but it attaches to the hot shoe on top (no built in). it's super easy to check for the sharpness of the pic you just took by hitting the play button and double tapping the photo which zooms it about 7x (very useful to be sure you got a good shot and very quick to do).
By the way, if you have a Samsung phone for connecting to the camera make CERTAIN that your wifi function is NOT set to AUTO NETWORK SWITCH! Mine was turned on and what happened was the phone would find the camera's wifi network and immediately give an error message saying "internet connection is too slow" and drop the network again. I spent an hour on the phone with Samsung until I figured out the solution by myself (Samsung techs tried to help but they didn't understand the problem either). Go to your wifi setting on the phone and then hit the menu button on your phone and choose "advanced" and then clear the auto network switch checkbox. As soon as I did that, boom! the phone found the camera and connected flawlessly and quickly every single time.
I'm not 100% certain but I think if you email photos directly from the camera it compresses them, but if you send pics to your phone first, they are the original file size which you can then email from your phone.
for the money I just can't see anyone getting a better camera. That said, if you want to buy really good "glass" plan on spending more than the camera (but I think that's true of all DSLRs). The Samsung macro lens is like 500 bucks and their premier portrait lens (the 85mm primary) is like 800. So far I'm loving this camera and it has gotten me excited enough to start learning more about digital photography and learning how to take better pictures. If you take crappy pictures with this camera its going to be YOU not this camera!
BTW if you want something supertelephoto for like nature shots or stalking that woman who just won't return your calls (kidding, i'm kidding), something that you can goof around with without taking out a 2nd mortgage on your home you can get the Samyang (not Samsung) 500mm telephoto F8 (manual focus) lens with a 2x teleconverter to give you a 1000mm lens. It's basically like sticking a telescope onto your camera. It's only like 135 bucks here on amazon so don't expect to be taking sports illustrated cover photos at your next football game. I haven't received mine yet but i'll write a review after I get it. If you want a zoom lens that will work properly with the NX line of cameras Samsung's longest lens is the 50-200mm zoom which is nice and also affordable. There is rumor of Samsung planning a 70-400mm lens but that's all I've heard so far. This probably wasn't a helpful review for "Real" camera guys, but if you're stepping up from a point and shoot fixed lens camera I hope my review helped a bit. If you have other questions I'll try to answer as best I can. Happy shooting!
Update: you can't transfer pics from your phone to the camera (which didn't make sense anyhow). The camera let's you choose which pics to transfer from the camera to
The phone but you can select pics using either the camera screen or via the phone screen.
See all 136 customer reviews...
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