Comments on: Samsung NX10 still on center stage (specs, 30 fps burst video sample)

By: JSV

JSV — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 08:25:46 +0000

Here’s the fellow who posted the animated gif:

http://blog.paran.com/payton#

Odd that it doesn’t appear on his blog.

Here’s an NX10 that was spotted out and about the city:
http://blog.daum.net/miriya/15600905?srchid=IIMrqONd000#A1764D6044B32BBA24236C4

By: Phil Whiney

Phil Whiney — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 00:07:07 +0000

http://www.slrclub.com/bbs/vx2.php?id=samsung_forum&no=118253

By: RichT

RichT — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:56:44 +0000

Well the link seems to work now.

One thing though about the NX10, I was under the impression there will be NO mirror box in it, so it will presumably need to use an AF similar to the ones used in micro 4/3 or small sensor cameras. Whether it can AF in burst mode or video I don’t know, according to Samsung it can focus faster than Panasonic’s m4/3. But generally you want very fast burst modes to be locked down (no change in focus, exposure, WB, etc).

The sample at slrclub is too small to tell the quality of the burst mode, hopefully it’s larger than 800×530! The other posters are likely right, it’s probably just a slightly modified version of its video mode using the whole sensor instead of a cropped 16:9 aspect.

And I have not seen a DSLR sensor made by Sony that can deliver anything remotely close to 50 fps, if you have a link to one I’d love to see it. But I’m pretty sure there isn’t one – they could probably do it if they wanted since they’re already up to 60 fps on a small (1/1.8″) sensor but I’m sure it wouldn’t be cheap, there’s a lot of “stuff” that would have to be built onto the chip

By: PR admin

PR admin — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 13:15:31 +0000

yea, it is not working for me either

By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 12:45:35 +0000

Want 30 fps? Just record a video in 30 fps and split up the images to 30 images in 1 sec. Doesn’t it work that way?

By: WoutK89

WoutK89 — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 12:43:06 +0000

The link to the GIF sample is not working:

http://media.slrclub.com/0912/20/1261313162_Eric.gif

Samsung been knocking on the door?

By: WoutK89

WoutK89 — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 12:41:53 +0000

And why does it need to flap?

For AUTOFOCUS, so RichT, yes the mirror is the biggest limitation

By: Din

Din — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 11:33:41 +0000

This is video rate non still image.
30fps is very common.

By: Sky

Sky — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 11:17:13 +0000

yep. it’s all about the mirror. Sensors in new Sony DSLRs are capable of delivering about 50 fps in full resolution – but the mirror cannot flap that fast Not saying about processing all that data…

By: RichT

RichT — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 08:52:35 +0000

Actually it’s not so much the mirror that limits speed it’s the shutter curtain, there’s a physical limit as to how fast that curtain can open and close. But by using live view you don’t need either – you can shoot as fast as data can be grabbed off the sensor. The lack of a physical shutter leads the phenom known as rolling shutter. Right now the 5fps rate quoted by Samsung’s current sensor is pretty much as fast as its electronics will allow data from the entire sensor to be dumped off the chip into the processor, their sensor for the NX10 should be faster, how much I don’t know.

Video and live view get around this slow limit by either binning clumps of pixels into a superpixel which gets read off the sensor, or by subsampling, which just samples about every 6th pixel on the sensor. Either way it cuts way down on how many pixels need to be read off the sensor.

There are specialty sensors on the market today that can read every photosite at 30 (or more) times per second. Sony I believe is the only company that currently sells consumer sensors capable of scanning the entire sensor at video-speed. See the following articles:

http://www.sony.net/Products/SC-HP/cx_news/vol47/np_imx017.html

http://www.sony.net/Products/SC-HP/cx_news/vol55/np_imx032cqr.html

Note that Sony’s popular 12.5mp APS-C sensor is only capable of a 10 fps readout:

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/200708/07-072E/index.html

You can see a list of Kodak’s fast CCD sensors here, listed by megapixel, sensor size, and maximum fps:

http://www.kodak.com:80/global/en/business/ISS/Products/Interline/index.jhtml?pq-path=11937/11938/14424

As you can see no APS-C sensors offer anywhere near 30 fps in full scan mode, they’d either have to crop (pretty severely) or use binning as Sony describes. If Samsung released such a sensor on a sub-$1000 camera it would be revolutionary, a large 14mp sensor that fast is still very expensive in 2009. That’s why I’m thinking the 30fps burst rate is, at its core, just a version of video (an option for a cropped mode would be great).

Was anybody able to get a look at the sample burst? I got a dead link.

By: WoutK89

WoutK89 — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 07:43:29 +0000

Oh, and consumer, well, a D5000/D90 will probably be able to do so too, it’s just the small form factor of the compacts that mostly limits it’s speed.

By: WoutK89

WoutK89 — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 07:42:10 +0000

The D3s is limited by it’s mirror to shoot 30fps with AF It’s nothing new to shoot 30 fps, just the processing speed of most compacts is far too low to do so.

By: RichT

RichT — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 02:52:31 +0000

30 fps! That’s crazy! Only Casio offers anything like that at the consumer end. I’m wondering if it’s something more akin to the burst mode on the Pentax k20d, which is really just a video/live view capture that is output as a series of still images. It would truly be a coup if Samsung has developed an affordable APS-C sensor capable of shooting 30fps, even if it were only in a cropped mode (heck even 20fps would be a breakthrough). Sony has built several tiny high-speed sensors like the ones in Casio’s cameras, and I believe Kodak has been dabbling in high-speed CCD sensors up to 4/3″ in size but I don’t think they’re cheap. My gut is telling me this is just a variation on some sort of video capture mode, I hope I’m wrong