Don't leave home without it

A stylish mirrorless interchangeable lens camera that captures pleasing quality photos, the Samsung NX mini is one of the most portable phones round, sliding easily into a shirt or trouser pocket. 

Samsung says the NX mini is the slimmest and lightest interchangeable lens camera – at least as of March this year – and it certainly is small with a body just 22.5mm thick and a weight of only 158 grams.

Better still, the 9mm-kit lens adds a mere 12.55mm to the camera, so even with the lens attached, it is still pocket-friendly.

It looks elegant too, with a solid premium magnesium body bound by a leather-like material in white, brown, pink or mint green.

Its 3-inch display can flip up for self-portrait composing and you don’t have to fumble for the shutter button because you can just wink and the camera will shoot just two seconds later.

The built-in Wi-Fi and NFC (near field communications) technology means you can connect NX mini to a smartphone like the Samsung Galaxy S5 then select and send photos or albums directly to a smart device with Samsung Mobile Link.

When the camera is connected to a smart phone with a Wi-Fi connection, you can use Samsung AutoShare to automatically send each photo to your smartphone or tablet. The AutoShare function can even put GPS-tags on your photos.

You can also use the Remote Viewfinder Pro app to turn your smartphone into a remote control and use it to adjust camera settings like shutter speed and exposure control.

The NX mini uses a large 1-inch 20.5MP BSI (backside-illuminated) CMOS Sensor that is capable of capturing details in vivid colours even in low-light conditions.

The sensor is used with the NX-M lens mount, resulting in a 2.7x crop factor. This means the provided 9mm lens is equal to 24.3mm in 35m photography and with this wide-angle focal length is excellent for landscape photography.

Two other NX-M mount lens are currently available: the NX-M 9-27mm F3.5-5.6 ED OIS micro-compact zoom lens and the NX-M 17mm F1.8 OIS lens. You can buy NX-M Mount Adapter (ED-MA4NXM) separately of you want the NX mini to mount 15 more Samsung NX lens, of all them initially designed for NX mini’s sister Samsung NX cameras.

The camera has a fast shutter speed of 1/16,000 sec so it can capture fast actions easily.

Standard sensitivity is ISO 160 to 12,800, which can be expanded to ISO 100 to 25,600, making it very sensitive to light.

We tested the camera using the kit NX-M 9mm ultra-slim, wide-angle F3.5 ED lens. We found that NX mini captured very good details and vivid colours. It took beautiful landscape photos with well-saturated colours, bringing out the green of the trees and the blue of the sky. Colours were accurate and portrait shots were great too. Both indoor and outdoor shots were of pleasing quality.

NX mini is easy to operate thanks to its touch screen and easy-to-use modes.

The camera provides a mode button for bringing up a menu for changing exposure modes because it does not have a mode dial.

The available exposure modes are Auto, Smart, Program Exposure (P), Aperture Priority (A), Shutter Priority (S) and Manual (M).

If you are an experienced photographer, you will enjoy the P, A, S and M modes that provide you with shooting parameter options and controls to make most of the camera.

If you are a newcomer, then start with the Auto and Smart exposure modes.

In Auto mode, the camera recognises surrounding conditions and automatically adjusts factors that contribute to exposure, including shutter speed, aperture value, metering, White Balance, and exposure compensation. The mode is useful for capturing quick snapshots with the least amount of adjustment.

The Auto mode analyses the lighting environment and automatically select one of 14 scene modes, including landscapes, scenes with bright and white backgrounds, landscapes and portraits at night, landscapes and portraits with backlighting and sunsets.

During the test, we found that NX mini properly analysed the lighting environment and selected the right scene modes. The auto mode let me capture beautiful lights at night by applying the Landscapes at night scene mode. The auto mode also properly applied complicated backlighting scene modes properly, allowing us to capture backlit scenes with good details and colours.

If you want to select scene modes on your own, you can use the Smart mode option from the mode menu. You can select from several fun scene modes, including Beauty Face, Best Face, Continuous Shot, Action Freeze, Rich Tones, Panorama, Silhouette, Sunset, Light Trace and Waterfall.

As ever, the Beauty Face mode proved the most popular with out female staff because it smoothens and brightens the face to make the subject look younger.

The Best Face is a nice cheating technique. The camera captures five shots consecutively. The first is set at the background and then the camera automatically detects faces and lets you touch and select from five faces to ensure that everyone is smiling in the photo and has their eyes open.

The Rich Tones, known in other brands as the HDR shooting mode, captures multi-shots in various exposures and merges them into one images with vivid colours and details in both shadowed and highlighted areas.

The Light Trace and Waterfall requires a tripod as it will use long exposure to capture a cascade while the Light Trace turns car headlamps into long light traces.

NX mini has quite good performance. It’s ready to capture the first photo in less than two seconds when power is button is pressed. I didn’t notice any shutter lag. The shot-to-shot times depend on the mode used. It has fast autofocus speed in bright light but is a little slower, albeit still less than two seconds, in dim light. It can also capture a burst of up to 30 Jpeg images at 10 frames per second.

NX mini has good battery life with each battery charge giving the NX mini the ability to take up to an incredible 650 shots and 190 minutes of video when used with the 9mm lens.

And it’s not even ridiculously priced: the Samsung NX mini retails for Bt12,990.

 

Key specs:

 

Resolution: 20.5 MP

Camera Type: Mirrorless camera

Sensor: 1-inch BSI CMOS sensor

Auto-focus: Contrast-detection AF; Multi – Normal 21 points, Close-up 35 points, Face Detection – Max. 10 faces, Object Tracking AF

Shutter Speed: 1/16,000 – 30 sec; Bulb (Limit time – 4 minutes)

ISO: 100 – 25,600

Metering system: TTL 221 (17 x 13) Block segment

Display: 3-inch TFT LCD with Touch Panel in 320 x 480 resolution (460.8K dots)

Shooting modes: Auto, Smart, Program, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, Manual

Video resolution: 1920p, 720p, 640p at 30 fps

Flash: Built-in flash; hot shoe (for external flash only)

Storage: microSDXC

Ports: microHDMI, micro USB ports

Connectivity: Wi-Fi: 802.11b/g/n, NFC

Battery: 2,330 mAh (650 shots with 9mm lens capturing)

Dimension (WxHxD): 110.4 x 61.9 x 22.5mm

Weight: 196g (with battery)