I actually quite prefer the HS10 over my NX10 for certain situations, such as night shots and -quick-and-dirty snapshots of events.
Reason being that the HS10's smaller resolution makes touching-up a little faster, plus the JPEGs produced by the HS10 seem superior to the NX10 in terms of colour reproduction, sharpness and detail This is even after the HS10 has been set to use 'soft' sharpness and 'normal' colours. If you are going to shoot primarily in JPEG, i'd say the colour reproduction and JPEG quality way surpasses most EVILs/MILCs today.
But i say, the HS10 really, really sucks in the following things:
- autofocus. First off, the EVF/LCD actually freezes by at least half a second after you half-depress the shutter button and the camera manages to determine focus. Because of this, i have lost a chuck of potential shots due to the camera being unable to fire in the focus-acquired + EVF-freeze stage.
- more on the autofocus: it's unacceptably slow to my standards. Of course, this may be due to the fact that i have been spoilt rotten by the NX10's extremely fast contrast-detection AF speeds, but i can understand that the HS10's superzoom lens has like, almost 12 glass elements inside, and aligning these elements will take time. But that doesnt mean that i can accept it.
- rear lcd screen resolution. One word: $hi++y. The reso of the rear LCD screen is so low that even perfectly focused and sharp images look blur on the screen. In fact, you are almost better off just using the tiny EVF to do all your shooting and disabling the rear LCD screen.
- EVF/LCD proximity sensor. Once again, same word. $hi++y. My NX10 immediately toggles between rear screen and EVF when the proximity sensor is triggered, while in the HS10, you can put your eye up to the EVF for a whole 2 seconds before the screens actually switch. Like before, better off to disable the proximity sensor and have the camera use the EVF only.
- tiny, tiny 1/2.3" backlit CMOS sensor (i've checked, this sensor was made by Toshiba, IIRC) means that you have precious little control over depth of field. But on the bright side, the sensor is freaking doggone sensitive. Leave a 5 sec shutter speed with F8 at night over the cityscape near the Esplanade area and you will definitely get overexposed shots. I could not replicate this on the NX10: it needed a much longer shutter speed at the same aperture value.
I got my HS10 for $685. Fair enough a price for a bridge camera. though if you ask me., it could also have been so much better.
