Samsung NX mini review – Noise, resolution and sensitivity
Keeping up with the competition, the NX mini has a native sensitivity range of ISO 160-12,800, which can be extended to ISO 100-25,600.
In practice, ISO 160-3200 produced pleasing enough results and helped me get a shutter speed fast enough in low light to capture decent shots handheld, although noise is particularly noticeable from ISO 1600. I did attempt to push the sensitivity to ISO 6400, but around that point images become quite smudged and unattractive due to aggressive in-camera noise reduction. Of course, this can be dialled down somewhat and cleaned up using the raw files, but for usable images straight out of the camera I would recommend avoiding using sensitivities towards the NX mini’s limits.
The NX mini actually scored slightly higher on our resolution chart than the APS-C-format Samsung Galaxy NX, which was about three times the price of the NX mini when it launched last year. The technology has definitely moved on and I think it’s fair to give Samsung credit for achieving this level of performance with a significantly smaller sensor.
These images show 72ppi (100% on a computer screen) sections of images of a resolution chart, captured using the Samsung 18mm f/4.5 macro lens. We show the section of the resolution chart where the camera starts to fail to reproduce the lines separately. The higher the number visible in these images, the better the camera’s detail resolution at the specified sensitivity setting.
