by Anura Guruge

“Shock HORROR I” was on July 27, 2016 when I decided I was not going to get the Fuji X-T2, because of autofocus concerns, after I had spent months believing that it was the bespoke, dream-camera for me.

This is as such is the second “Shock HORROR“. There were times, days on end when I was absolutely in love/awe with my Samsung NX500. I sang its praises. Marveled at it. I even thought about getting a second body as a backup.

THEN …

On Sunday, October 30, 2016 it all unravelled. A confluence of fast moving events and the timing could not have been worse in terms of that day. I had ordered the Samsung NX500, from Amazon, on October 1, 2016. So my 30-day window for a ‘hassle free’ return was fast closing. I had to make up my mind that day itself. Actually that night, just before midnight. AND I PULLED THE TRIGGER.

There were 4.5 factors. Four of them had cropped up that fateful Sunday. The two pictures below, taken that day, 8 hours a part will explain two of my prime reasons.

Click pictures to ENLARGE.

The 4.5 Reasons Why I Returned My Samsung NX500
after 26-days of use.

1. The very nice organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panel on the NX500, when using manual focus with peaking, makes you believe an image is in perfect focus when it is NOT! First picture. I spent a few minutes focusing this to perfection, manually, on the OLED. I thought it was going to be incredible. Then I got the above. [Now, you know I nail focus most of the time. So it isn’t that I don’t know how to focus.] Basically the OLED ‘paints’ an inaccurate picture of focus. Makes it look better than it is.

2. There is no digital zoom capability, whatsoever. We went to the ‘Indigo Girls‘ concert, in Concord, that evening. My Nikon P900, though it would have been ideal, was too big for a venue like that. The 50mm zoom just didn’t cut it.

3. Second picture. It is difficult to shoot concerts at the best of times. With the 50mm there was ZERO definition on the faces! There was nothing that I could extract even using software. That was frustrating.

4. It happened during the concert and it had happened before. I would random error messages. They would go away if I played around. At the concert, in addition to getting two error messages, the display went HAYWIRE for a few second. That scared me. Had had this happen on another Samsung in December 2014. Didn’t want a repetition.

So those were the 4 BIG reasons.

Discountinued camera. Not sure what the warranty would be like. Amazon return window was closing. I had to submit the return — or run the danger of getting stuck with this camera. It wasn’t a super expensive camera but I would rather not lose money on it. So this is why I scrambled like crazy. after getting home from the concert, and seeing the picture quality, to file the return.

And then there was an auxillary consideration in the back of my mind.

IF (and it is still an ‘if’) I get a Sony a6500 I would NOT need a compact camera — and I had bought the Samsung NX500, 5-days ahead of the Sony a6500 announcement, to be my compact camera — alongside a ‘big’ APS-C camera (not counting the Nikon P900).

The Sony a6500 with a 16-50 zoom or a 50mm prime is a compact camera.

So that is what happened. That is why you haven’t seen any Samsung NX500 pictures since October 30. I took 1,337 pictures with that camera in 26-days. 51 a day.

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by Anura Guruge