| The Samsung 50-200 mm III is the successor to a Samsung 50-200 mm II lens, which had no i-Function button. This i-Function button is not “just” useful. It’s enormously useful, if not indispensable, if you take pictures with a Samsung Galaxy NX. If you have a Samsung NX camera, you can only use Samsung NX lenses. Previously, we reviewed all the Samsung 20-50 mm; the Samsung 50-200 mm III is a perfect companion. This lets you bring the action to you, you can compress the perspective in landscape images, make a portrait with a beautiful background blur or thanks to the longer focal length make a beautiful close-up. |  |
Samsung 50-200mm F4-5.6 ED OIS III @ Samsung NX 300
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 Samsung 50-200mm F4-5.6 ED OIS III, 113 mm, f/10, 1/320
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 Samsung 50-200mm F4-5.6 ED OIS III, 200 mm, f/5.6, 1/320 |
| The firld of view of a 50-200 mm zoom lens on a camera with an APS-C sensor corresponds to the field of view of a 77-308 mm zoom lens on a camera with a full frame sensor. With that, a Samsung photographer with this lens has a solid telephoto lens that lets you bring in not only the action, but also other subjects. It’s also fun to play with the perspective: in the furthest telephoto setting, the image is compressed. | |
Construction & AF |
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| Viewed from the front, telephoto lenses can be somewhat imposing, because they have such a big filter. The Samsung 50-200 mm has a modest filter size of 53 mm. This lens is nice and compact, but it becomes almost twice as long when you zoom out to 200 mm. Then, the Samsung 50-200 mm is really big compared to the Samsung NX 300 camera. The lens body is made of high quality plastic, and the lens mount of metal. With a weight of 400 grams, this lens is relatively heavy compared to the Samsung NX300, but in practice we found that not at all distracting. | {insertgrid ID = 289} |
i-Function |
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| In combination with the Samsung NX300,\ focusing, even in low light, is very fast and consistently accurate. Because the lens makes use of internal focusing, the filter doesn’t turnwhile focusing, The shortest distance that can be focused amounts to 1 meter. Samsung lenses have a i-Function on the lens, which allows you to easily and quickly adjust all the manual settings of the camera. You press the i-Function button to select the desired function and then turn the focus ring to adjust shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. In the electronic viewfinder or on the display of the camera you see the effect of the adjustment in real time. Below for clarification is an illustration from Samsung. |
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Image stabilization
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| Samsung uses image stabilization in the lens. Not all lenses have built-in image stabilization, but the Samsung 50-200 mm does. We reviewed the image stabilization at a focal length of 50 mm. The first thing we noticed was that you even at a short shutter speed (1/200) the photos are already sharper with its use. At slower shutter speeds the difference in sharpness just gets bigger: a shot made without image stabilization with a shutter speed of 1/100 is as sharp as a shot made with image stabilization at a shutter speed of 1/6 of a second. A shot made without image stabilization is already unbearable at 1/13 of a second, let alone at 1/6 of a second. This is an actual profit of4 stops. That is very, very good. |  |
Resolution |
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| At the shortest focal length the sharpness is the highest, and sharpness in the corners is virtually identical to the sharpness in the center. The longer the focal length, the lower the sharpness and the greater the difference in sharpness between the center and the corners.In particular, at 200 mm the edges are visibly sharper, regardless of the aperture that you choose. Given the price of this lens, these results are quite good. |  |
Vignetting |
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| The vignetting in RAW files is never more than a half a stop. By in-camera correction of jpg files the vignetting in jpg files is even lower. In very critical situations, you mightfind visible vignetting;in that case it’s easy to correctwith software. Also on this point, the Samsung 50-200 mm telephoto zoom is at least as good, if not better, than many other –more expensive – telephoto zoom lenses. |  |
Distortion |
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| Distortion with the Samsung 50-200 mm is characteristic of a visible telephoto zoom from (only for RAW) visible barrel-shaped distortion at 50 mm to light pincushion distortion at 200 mm. Thanks to effective lens correction by the Samsung NX300, there is, regardless of focal length, no visible distortion in jpg files. |  |
Bokeh |
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| At maximum aperture, light sources in the background make a nice circular bokeh. At f/8 the bokeh begins to take on an angular shape, which you can already see a little in this shot. |  |
Flare |
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| With a lens design that consists of 17 lens elements in 13 groups, the risk of internal reflections is relatively large. In practice, it works (better than) 100%. The Samsung 50-200 mm zoom lens comes with a lens hood, which provides protection against bright light sources that fall just outside the frame. But even in pictures we made by shooting straight into the sun, we encountered no significant flaring and also no ghosts. We found that, given the price tag of this lens, surprisingly good. |  |
Chromatic aberration |
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| The Samsung NX 50-200 mm is made up of 17 elements, including 2 Extra Low Dispersion lens elements in 13 groups. Nevertheless, lateral chromatic aberration is not completely suppressed. In RAW files you can find purple and green edges at sharp contrast transitions, as you can see in the partial enlargement below. This is not surprising: if you want to prevent chromatic aberration in telephoto lenses, much more expensive glass types have to used. Then the Samsung 50-200 mm would have had a very different price tag. Hopefully Samsung will eventually release a more expensive, brighter telephoto lens as a complement to this zoom lens. The Samsung NX300 compensates for chromatic aberration in jpg files perfectly. In the in-camera jpg files, you don’t have to worry about chromatic aberration at all. | |
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Conclusion Samsung 50-200 review |
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See our list of tested lenses to compare the performance of this lens to other lenses. |
 WYSIWYG score: This table shows the performance of this lens when you store the files in the camera as jpg, with all available in-camera lens corrections applied. This score gives you for this lens/test camera combination: “What you see is what you get”. |
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| Pure RAW score: This table shows the performance of this lens when the file is stored in the camera in RAW format. This score approaches the intrinsic quality of the combination of lens and test camera. |
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Pros |
Cons |
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| If you’re buying a Samsung NX camera, then you’re also looking at Samsung for lenses. There are currently no other brands that work on a Samsung NX camera. There is thus little competition for the Samsung 50-200 mm. Even so, Samsung delivers a decent telephoto zoom with a very attractive price tag. In terms of image quality, this lens can compete with more expensive lenses from other brands. The inherent shortcomings of cheap telephoto zoom lenses, chromatic aberration and distortion, are perfectly corrected by the Samsung NX300 test camera in jpg files. Hats off to Samsung that, as a newcomer in the arena of cameras with interchangeable lenses, theyappear able to make a very solidly built lens that performs admirably. | |
