settings, tips and tricks for the Samsung NX500

Samsung NX500: tips and tricks

Introduction

The Samsung NX500 is the company’s low-cost version of the NX1. It features the same APS-C BSI sensor, yet with a smaller buffer and slower processing times and no incorporated viewfinder. Nonetheless, this is a very capable camera, especially if you’re a JPEG shooter and don’t need the features and advanced functionality of the flagship NX1.

Menu System and touch screen

Although very intuitive, you’ll need to get to grips with the Menu System if you’ve never used a Samsung camera before. Everything is very straightforward, and I’d invite you to read the simple manual provided by Samsung first. I’ll be going over the Menu system in detail later.

The NX500 is packed with the latest technology, including a Super AMOLED display like you’ll find in the most recent Galaxy Phones. It features an integrated digitizer, meaning that the layer that detects multiple finger touch is integrated into the screen, rather than overlaid on top of it. This feature means all functionality is also accessible via the touch screen, besides the usual buttons and dials.

Autofocus

 first things first: firmware update for best autofocus performance

Many reviewers have made the mistake of not updating older NX mount lenses to the latest firmware, which offers full compatibility with said camera. So head on over to their support website and make sure you have the latest firmware installed for both camera and lenses you have.

Use S-AF (single AF) with older lenses

Although there are quite a few NX lenses available, some are not ideally suited to the NX500. The Samsung NX 85mm f/1.4, for instance, a fantastic portrait lens, will tend to hunt quite a bit when your camera is set to C-AF. I would suggest setting it to S-AF with lenses where you experience a lot of focus hunting.

Drive Settings

1. Continuous High: Continuously capture photos while you are pressing the Shutter. You can capture up to 8, 10, 12, or 15 pictures per second.
2. Continuous Low: continuous shooting while the shutter is engaged at a lower rate.
3. Single: When you press the Shutter button halfway, the focus fixes in the focus area. The area turns green when the focus is achieved.

Tracking AF

AF tracking is only available via the touch screen. You’ll need to turn on Touch AF in the menu (or touch screen) and select Tracking AF. You’ll see a white square appear when you touch your subject on the display, this means Tracking AF has been engaged. When you half-press the shutter, you’ll see the white square turn free, meaning focus was achieved. If the camera for any reason can’t focus (subject is too small, moves irregularly, is backlit), the square will turn red.

Menu settings

Accessing the MENU settings is possible via the MENU icon on the touch screen.

MENU – Camera Icon

Photo Size

Photo Size selects the dimensions and size in pixels of your stored images. As the Samsung uses a 28 Megapixel APS-C sensor, the crop is best left to 3/2 and full resolution 6480×4320.  This setting will leave you with the most flexible jpeg file, and you can always decide another image crop in your preferred image editor later.

Photo Quality: RAW vs. JPEG

I’m sure you know the difference between an RAW and JPEG file. An RAW file (named .SRW in Samsung language) records all data from the sensor uncompressed while JPEG compresses this data with  settings applied. An RAW file will always be more flexible when it comes to editing your image in post production. This flexibility means more sharpening, colour information, highlight and shadow recovery, etc. will be possible later on with RAW files. JPEG files will compress the data to have smaller files, and will also have in-body noise reduction applied according to your settings.

JPEG is available in Super Fine, Fine and Normal; this depicts an increase in image compression. Although I would always recommend shooting in RAW for optimal flexibility, I have fun that the Super Fine JPEG setting does still retain a lot of useable information in post processing.

 

ISO Auto settings

Here you can change the ISO range that the NX500 will use when set to ISO Auto. As you can read in my NX500 review, the back-illuminated sensor performs very well, even at mid-to-high levels. Conservatively, you can set max ISO to 3200 or even 6400 where you will find that your images are still very usable, especially with close-ups. For busy scenes with lots of details, you might see some loss of detail there, but that is always the case drawback of an APS-C sensor. For optimal performance, the lower the ISO, the better as always. If you find that shutter speeds are getting too long, or if the camera has problems focussing, you might want to raise the ISO above 6400 manually (or make a user preset). It’s always better to have an in-focus shot than a ton of blurred images.

Super Amoled display

The Samsung NX500 has a fantastic touch sensitive Super Amoled Display, rendering beautiful realistic colours and detail. In the OLED color Menu setting, you can optimise performance for this kind of display. The factory settings have it turned off, probably because it’s always better for a manufacturer that your image look best on your (perhaps inferior) desktop screen than on the LCD, but I turn it on, as I have an excellent desktop screen as well.

Minimum shutter speed and how to get ‘Tack Sharp’ images

Auto linking shutter speed to focal lengths: Longer focal lengths will accentuate camera shake so you’ll need to choose a faster shutter speed. Traditional photography theory tells you to choose a shutter speed with a denominator that is larger than the focal length of the lens. For example, if you’re shooting with the Samsung 50-150 at 150mm, you’ll probably want to shoot at a minimum of 1/150. Samsung’s image stabilisation will give you between 2 and 3 stops advantage though, which is not bad. Linking minimum shutter speed to focal length takes all these things into account, and it’s best left set-up this way.

White Balance

Samsung needs to improve Auto White balance in the next firmware upgrade, although manually selecting the desired White Balance for your different lighting scenes works better. I’ve found AWB to be quite cold, and needed to turn it up at least 2000K for a more neutral and realistic balance.

Picture Wizard

The Picture Wizard Menu is one of the features that will make most professionals shiver. It’s basically a set of filters you can apply to JPEG images in-body. It is also a way for Samsung to show of the capabilities of their DRIMe V processor.. Once you’ve worked with the NX500, I don’t think anyone will deny the fact that it is one of the most powerful camera processors out there. And I actually found the Portrait effect useful in some situations. Think of it as a mini version of desktop software like Portrait professional, as you are able to make your subject feel a bit better with how they look, and does an OK job at decreasing wrinkles and pores. Nice to have if you don’t have time to do any real post processing.

Autofocus settings

Next in the menu, you’ll find the Autofocus settings. Compared to a sports camera in the same price bracket like the Sony A77M2, it is true that the NX500 offers less flexibility when it comes too autofocus tweaking. This means you’ll have to get to grips with how the available settings work, instead of customising the camera to what you are used to. One of the most-visited posts on my blog is the Sony A77 II tips and tricks page, mainly because it’s so difficult to wrap your head around, and in real life it’s true that not everyone needs this advanced customisation. Honestly, this might be a blessing in disguise for many because this means there is less of a learning curve.

AF Modes

• Single AF (SAF): autofocus is engaged when you half press the shutter button. If you find the AF ‘hunts’ to much with some lenses like the 85mm f/1.4 in CAF, try SAF. Works better.
• Continuous AF (CAF): Autofocus is continuously trying to lock. Advantageous in some situations but drains the battery more rapidly.
• Active AF (AAF): switches between Single AF and Continuous AF as the camera deems fit.
• Manual Focus (MF): only available if your lens is also set to MF, if it is set to AF, you’ll see this option greyed out. Use Focus Peaking to help you get the focus right in MF.

AF Area

• Selection AF: selection AF allows you to use a specific, selectable autofocus point on the sensor.
• Multi AF: Multi AF uses all available focus points. I personally never like to use all focus points, as this AF area setting is so unpredictable. You can change the size of the AF area in multi AF to a smaller square though, a tweak which I did find very useful.
• Face Detection AF: NX500 will give focus priority to detected faces. When Face Detection is on, the camera is automatically set to Multi AF.
• Self Portrait AF: The ultimate selfie tool, where the camera will focus on your face close to the camera and automatically engage the shutter when it is detected.

 

Tracking AF, Touch AF and Focus tracking

Another fantastic feature of the Samsung NX500 is the touch screen. To many it might look like a gimmick, but my guess is that you’ll quickly find it very useful for easy operation and, at times, it actually is the fastest way of having the camera focus on exactly what you want. The Touch AF menu setting allows for customisation of what happens when you touch the screen.

In my view, turning this feature off largely negates how this camera is made to be used. You’ll have to get into Samsung’s frame of mind if you want to get optimal performance out of this camera, especially if you come from a non touch-screen DSLR.

• Off: Touch AF is disengaged.
• Touch AF: Turns touch screen usage on for AF operation.
• AF point: Allows you to select a specific auto-focus point by touching the screen.
• Tracking AF: Lets you select a moving target for auto-focus tracking. This setting automatically enables C-AF, so you can set your camera to Selection AF, and quickly change to C-AF when needed if Touch AF is set to Tracking AF. This is the only way to engage AF tracking by the way.
• One Touch Shot: the camera will focus on anywhere you touch the screen and take an image.

MF assist

This is a focussing assist aide, which will enlarge your point of focus 5 or 8 times. Since there is currently no Eye-AF available, I have it set to 5 times and when doing portraiture in a custom mode.

Focus Peaking

Focus peaking is now found in all cameras as a manual focussing aide. It adds a white, red or yellow ‘noise’ on your image in order to guide you in getting your focus exactly right. Setting it to ‘Normal’ will suffice in the NX500, it works as well as this feature in any other camera I’ve tried.

Link AE to AF point

This setting is basically telling your camera to link Exposure point to focus point when using spot metering or multi metering. So your camera will decide on correct exposure depending on your subject. It’s a valuable tool at times, but you might want to consider turning it off as often having exposure set to AF point can lead to blown highlights.

Overexposure guide

OIS (Anti Shake)

Drive Settings

The Menu drive settings allow you to customise the timing of the Drive rotator.

• Continuous High: sets the Drive setting for continuous shooting mode. It might be a good idea to set it to 12 or 10 fps if you want to have more keepers when using CAF.
• Timer: sets the timer for using the timer shooting mode.
• Bracket: sets the functionality of the bracket shooting mode.

 Interval Capture

Set the shooting interval, the number of shots, and shooting start time for interval captures. Use this function to capture photos at regular intervals like a lunar eclipse or a sunrise. You can also save an interval capture as a movie if you set the Time Lapse function to ON.

Metering Mode

Metering Mode sets the way the camera measures exposure of your captures. This is standard set to Center Weighted but I often change to Multi if I want to better capture the mood of a scene.

• Multi:calculates the amount of light in multiple areas. When light is sufficient or insufficient, the camera adjusts the exposure by averaging the overall brightness of the scene. This mode is suitable for general photos.
• Center Weighted: calculates a broader area than the Spot mode does. It sums up the amount of light in the center portion of the shot (60–80 %) and that of the rest of the shot (20–40 %). It is recommended for situations where there is a slight difference in brightness between a subject and its background or where the area around a subject is large compared to the overall composition of the photo.
• Spot: calculates the amount of light in the center. When you capture a photo in conditions where there is a strong backlight behind a subject, the camera adjusts the exposure to shoot the subject correctly. For example, when you select the Multi mode in a strong backlight condition, the camera calculates that the overall amount of light is abundant, which results in a darker photo. The Spot mode can prevent this situation as it calculates the amount of light in a designated area.

Dynamic range (only for JPEG)

Flash settings

• Fill-in flash: Fill flash is a photographic technique used to brighten deep shadow areas, typically outdoors on sunny days,
• Fill-in Red Eye: Flash will fire a few pre-flashes in order to reduce red eye
• First curtain: also know as front curtain sync. This is the normal flash mode, with the flash being triggered near the start of the shutter duration.The flash finishes quick, and freezes the motion.
• Second curtain: also known as rear curtain or slow sync.  With moving subjects, the shutter opens and the lights record their streaks. Then the flash illuminates the subject right before the end of the exposure. The streaks from the lights lead up to the subject, giving the illusion of speed.

External Wireless settings

Set the flash mode, exposure value, flash brightness, or multi flash when you attach an external flash to the camera. You can also set wireless sync to control the internal or external flash. The flash settings are supported only when you attach a compatible, optional external flash (SEF-580A).

Wireless Flash controller

Use a Wireless Flash

Set to use wireless sync with TTL functionality

Channel Selection

Select channels for wireless sync. There are four remote channels available to allow multiple remote systems to operate at the same time. Master and slave flash units, in the same remote system, must be set to the same channel. (Ch. 1, Ch. 2, Ch. 3, Ch. 4)

Group Mode flash

Set the flash mode for group A, B, or C. Changes to the flash mode must be made on the master flash. The changes are then applied to slave group A, B, or C, and the slave groups operate as a remote system of the flash mode (TTL or manual) according to the settings for the master flash.

• A-TTL: Set the exposure of the flash when the flash mode is A-TTL.
• Manual Flash Set the brightness of the flash when the flash mode is Manual Flash.
• Off : Do not fire the flash.

Movie size

Movie Quality

Normal: Record videos in normal quality.

HQ: Record videos in high quality.

Fast/Slow Movie

Fader

Voice

Sometimes, a muted video is more appealing than one with sound. Turn Voice off to record a muted video.

Wind Cut

A filter is applied to the internal microphone or mic input in order to reduce noise.

Mic Level

Set the Microphone input level in a range between 1 and 10.

Smart Range

Corrects for the loss of bright detail when shooting JPEG.

Manage Custom Mode in Key Mapping

Manage the custom button, where you can set-up your Samsung NX500 according to your own preferences for use in specific situations.

Auto ISO Range

One of the most important settings on any camera, where you can select the range between minimum and maximum ISO values to be used when set to ISO Auto. Setting this conservatively to a maximum of ISO 1600 will ensure you’ll still have quite flexible files in post processing. However, the Samsung NX500’s fantastic sensor can still yield very usable images up to 6400 (and even 12800) if not too much detail is required. As lighting conditions deteriorate, you’ll need to go to higher ISO in order to achieve a fast enough shutter speed, so it is advisable to change ISO auto settings (or go full manual) according to the scene you’ll be shooting.

Color Space

You’ll find the usual colour space options: sRGB, Adobe RGB and ProPhoto RGB. The latter two have an expanded colour range, so you might find it useful to select ProPhoto RGB if you intend to do a lot of post processing in an image editor like Lightroom if you shoot RAW.

iFn Customising

Many Samsung lenses have a customisable iFn button on the lens itself. This is an easy way of changing your frequently used settings on-the-fly by pressing the iFn button and using the focus ring to change the value. Which settings are exactly available is customisable in this menu. You might find it useful to set ISO only as an option, and use a conservative ISO Auto range. This will allow you to quickly change the ISO value you’re shooting at if you find that the camera cannot achieve fast enough shutter speeds in low light conditions. As I have mentioned before, autofocus seems to work better in low light at higher (suitable) ISO’s, so this can be a way of increasing AF performance in low-light. Another option is to assign Aperture only to the iFn button, effectively allowing the focus ring to be used as an aperture ring.

User Display

Key Mapping

After a few weeks with the NX500, I’l sure you’ll find that there are some buttons you rarely use, and some settings you wish you had more direct control of. The Key Mapping menu allows for advanced customisation of all the camera’s buttons and dials. I always set command dials to aperture and shutter speed, as I very much like a hands-on control type camera.

AF Release Priority

Focus: Capture a photo only when the focus is achieved. When you select the Continuous High shooting method, the focus is prioritised only on the first shot. It should always be set to Focus.

Mobile Link/NFC

Set the size of photos to transfer to a smart phone using the MobileLink or NFC function.

AF light

 

Electronic Shutter

Quick View

Set the Quick View time length–the amount of time the camera displays a photo immediately after you capture it. Select Hold+Focus Zoom to display the image after shooting with the focus area enlarged. I find this feature very useful for checking if my focus is exactly where I want it, and have it set to Hold + Focus Zoom.

Other possibilities:

Brightness adjustment guide

Adjust the display brightness, auto brightness setting, display color, or level gauge.

Auto Display

Power Save

Set power shut off time. The camera shuts off if you do not use it for the time you set. (30 sec, 1 min, 3 min, 5 min, 10 min, 30 min). Factory setting is 1 minute, this is to conserve battery power, but I have it set to a medium 3 minutes.

Help Guide Display

The Help Guide display can be very useful when first starting out with the NX500.

Language

Set a language the camera shows on the display. I would advise you to set it to English, as it will be easier to google trouble-shoot any problems you have with the camera .

Date And Time

Video Out

Set the video signal output to the appropriate system for your country when connecting the camera to an external video device, such as an HDMI-supported TV.

Anynet plus

When you connect the camera to an HDMI-supported TV that supports Anynet+ (HDMI-CEC), you can control the playback functions of the camera with the TV remote control.

HDMI Output

When you connect the camera to an HDMI-supported TV with an HDMI cable, you can change the resolution of the image.

File Name

Set the method of creating file names. Standard*: SAM_XXXX.JPG (sRGB)/_SAMXXXX.JPG (Adobe RGB) Date:

File Number

Folder Type

Bluetooth

Format

Errors can occur if you use a memory card formatted by another brand of camera, a memory card reader, or a computer. You should always format memory cards in the camera before using them to capture photos.

Wi-Fi Network

Set to connect to a Wi-Fi network.

My Smartphone

Bluetooth Auto Time Set

Set to sync the camera’s date and time with the smart phone when connecting the camera to a smartphone via Bluetooth

Wifi Privacy Lock

Sensor Cleaning

Factory setting is OFF, but I would strongly advise you to select “Shut Down Action” in order to keep the sensor free of dust.

Mobile Link

Reset

Camera Menu: Return the setup menu and shooting options to the factory defaults.

Device Information and software update

 

 

Licence

Simple: view the open source licenses.