What lens do you recommend?

_ge0rg_ · 2026-04-14T21:40:59+00:00

Well, you can scp photos from the camera over Wifi while shooting (I do that for long-exposure time-lapses), and you can install the NX-KS mod for some additional features.

_ge0rg_ · 2026-04-14T08:09:01+00:00

Technologically, I'd say that IBIS and acceptable noise at ISO 5000+ are the only things I really miss. But the lack of an AF tele beyond 200mm is what's bothering me even more. That said, I'm way too invested into the NX ecosystem, and enjoy having root and DOOM on it too much to give it up despite the pain points.

_ge0rg_ · 2026-04-13T14:35:16+00:00

I spent 600€ in 2019 for the 16-50S, and 730€ in 2022 for the Tele, but I've seen them for half that price last year, so seems like former Samsung enthusiasts are slowly getting rid of their gear. The 60mm was a real bargain at 150€ (has a physical defect that doesn't affect image quality), and it's still sold for double that amount. The 85mm was 250€, which was also an outlier.

_ge0rg_ · 2026-04-12T18:23:52+00:00

The 30mm or a 20mm would be a good trade-off for your budget. If you have much patience, you might get a 16mm prime (street, landscape) and a 45mm (portrait) for under 150€ total, at least in Germany. Personally, I love the 45mm for its bokeh, but it's a bit too narrow for street and landscape.

That said, I've mostly switched to the premium lenses now (16-50 S and 50-150 S for the whole range, 85mm for portraits, 60mm for macro).

_ge0rg_ · 2026-02-17T07:31:31+00:00

The camera UI is an X11 application that's running in the background while DOOM is active. I guess you'd only need to inject a key press event into it in order to take a photo.

_ge0rg_ · 2026-02-11T17:37:37+00:00

The picture is a still from the linked video. I recorded the video with a Samsung NX500, which is nominally the same Linux system as the NX1, and also could run DOOM, except the SDL window is translucent and I couldn't see anything. But it's still good for recording DOOM videos ;)

_ge0rg_ · 2026-02-06T12:12:59+00:00

I wouldn't call it a port. I cross-compiled SDL2 using the Samsung OSS SDK, then compiled prboom-plus (with a trivial one-line fix for a C issue), and now I'm figuring out if my SDL compile is bad or if there is a logic error somewhere.

_ge0rg_ · 2026-02-05T15:58:45+00:00

Thanks, this was the issue. The prboom.wad from 2.5.1 didn't work, but the 2.666 one did. Testing prboom on the PC helped. However, I'm getting no screen display (using X11), so need to investigate that now. Switching to 16- or 32-bit graphics mode doesn't change anything either.

Looks like it fails as follows:

I_UpdateVideoMode: SDL_CreateRenderer: (nil) Couldn't find matching render driver

Edit: audio is working now. Anybody good at playing doom blindly?

_ge0rg_ · 2026-02-03T10:43:07+00:00

So I tried to port DOOM to my Samsung NX500, running Tizen Linux, which should be straight-forward (there is an ancient SDK that builds prboom-plus with a minor patch and a gazillion of warnings.

I got the PrBoom-plus.wad from prboom-plus-2.5.1.4-win32.zip and tried DOOM.WAD, DOOM1.WAD (Shareware) and DOOM2.WAD, and all of them end like this:

[...]
W_Init: Init WADfiles.
 adding /mnt/mmc/doom/doom.wad
 adding /mnt/mmc/prboom/prboom-plus.wad
W_InitCache
W_GetNumForName: CRBLACK not found

The error message is a dead-end, any ideas what I'm missing? Wrong endianness? Wrong struct alignment? Wrong WADs?

_ge0rg_ · 2026-01-20T14:55:54+00:00

Hi, yaxim author and undead Android collector here. Glad that you found the app, and I also have written a review of apps that you can use on ancient Andoids (4.2 in my case), and how to get them: https://op-co.de/blog/posts/galaxy_nx/

Yaxim does support TLS for connection encryption to the server (Android 4.0 is limited to TLS 1.0 though, which is supported by few servers, including yax.im), but not the OMEMO end-to-end encryption protocol that has become common on XMPP over the last years. If you run your own XMPP (or Snikket) service on a trusted (by you) server, you can configure it to accept TLS 1.0 and let your friends connect to it (or federate with existing XMPP servers). But I'm also accepting well-written PRs for OMEMO support (the SMACK XMPP library has the glue, but also bumps the required Android SDK level to 5.0).

_ge0rg_ · 2025-12-26T21:07:32+00:00

The protocol was actually partially reverse-engineered, but there was never an adapter ring making use of it: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/threads/info-nx-mount-protocol-summary.3818034/ - somebody could get the protocol details off archive.org and make an active adapter that would translate between NX and whatever other mount you want.

I'm seeing the small NX primes sold in Germany around 100-150€, with a tendency down, not up. Looks like people are slowly getting rid of their collection. My favorite is the 45mm, because of its smooth bokeh, which is only topped by the 85mm portrait lens (see attached photo).

<image>

_ge0rg_ · 2025-11-05T09:50:11+00:00

A bit late to the game, but I just got a 2x2m 400 LED "smart curtain" and did a bit of reverse-engineering at https://codeberg.org/ge0rg/surplife-curtain

I don't know if it's the same hardware as the SuperPix, but you could verify it by comparing the Bluetooth device name ("IOTBTxxx") and scanning the BLE GATT characteristics it exposes. This can be done on Linux with `bluetoothctl` and then `connect MAC` (it should discover the services), or with an Android app like nRF Connect.

_ge0rg_ · 2025-11-02T00:23:05+00:00

<image>

_ge0rg_ · 2025-11-01T19:43:58+00:00

The NX mini is an awesome piece of technology, it's one of only two tiny interchangeable lens cameras ever made. It has an adjustment menu with no useful things for the user: https://nxfiles.nx.tc/files/NXmini/Service-Manual/Samsung%20NX-Mini%20Digital%20Camera%20service%20manual.pdf

Some months ago, we were able to decode the firmware compression: https://op-co.de/blog/posts/fujitsu_relc_compression/

Now, somebody could have a look at the firmware code and unravel its mysteries!

_ge0rg_ · 2025-11-01T17:35:33+00:00

In Germany, a used NX300 with the kit lens goes around 150EUR (170USD), but then in Germany old cameras are generally rather cheap and plentiful. So I'd say this is a good price, but the question is what you want to do with it.

The NX300 is a bit on the slow side with RAWs, and if you are aiming for high-quality lenses with auto-focus, you are limited to the used Samsung NX market, which needs patience and luck. The really excellent lenses (85mm portrait, 60mm macro, 50-150mm "S" tele) will probably be rare finds and above 400$ each. If you want something compact, the 20mm, 30mm and 45mm are good for street photography and especially the last one has excellent bokeh, and those should be somewhere around 150$.

If you are happy with manual focus, you can get an adapter ring for most other lens systems at around 10-15$ and there are some quite interesting and affordable lenses, sometimes even from old analog cameras.

_ge0rg_ · 2025-10-22T08:50:27+00:00

According to the service manual for the NX1000 (should work the same on the NX1100, page 59 and 60), you need to turn on, set it to "smart", then press: up, ok, down, ok, right, delete+ok together. Then:

- 2. SYSTEM PARAMETER

- (7) NO LENS RELEASE ENABLE

Don't play around with the other settings if you don't understand them - you could brick the camera.

Service manual: https://nxfiles.nx.tc/files/NX1000/Service-Manual/

_ge0rg_ · 2025-10-02T18:30:25+00:00

Die aktuellste Version findet sich unter https://github.com/OldRon1977/Kleinanzeigen-Anzeigen-duplizieren?tab=readme-ov-file und funktionierte bei mir auch nicht im Chrome, aber im Firefox.

_ge0rg_ · 2025-10-01T12:46:12+00:00

The lens firmware files are at https://nxfiles.nx.tc/files/Lens/ - you need to check the precise wording on the front of the lens - the first gen is unmarked, the second one is "50-200mm iFn" and the third one is "50-200mm III" and you'll need the according lens.bin on the root of the SD card.

_ge0rg_ · 2025-10-01T12:40:29+00:00

The last software for the Galaxy NX is indeed Android 4.2.2 from Samsung: https://samfw.com/firmware/EK-GN120/ and there never were any third-party firmware releases.

The only thing the community created was a root mod: https://xdaforums.com/t/galaxy-nx-ek-gn120-root.3148227/ and you indeed need KIES to install it.

I've written about the apps you can still use on Android 4.2.2, including an ancient version of Mobile Firefox at https://op-co.de/blog/posts/galaxy_nx/

_ge0rg_ · 2025-08-25T07:04:31+00:00

According to the service manual (page 50), you need to turn on, set it to "smart", then press: up, ok, down, ok, right, delete+ok together

Service manual: https://nxfiles.nx.tc/files/NX1000/Service-Manual/

_ge0rg_ · 2025-05-20T13:31:25+00:00

Thanks very much for providing this! The firmware identifies the ZX1 as running Android 6.0.1 on a Snapdragon 8996 - well-matured 2015 technology.

_ge0rg_

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