Samsung’s NX10 is one of the most talked-about digital cameras of the year. Like most entry-level and intermediate digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) cameras, the NX10 uses an APS-C sensor and accommodates interchangeable lenses. But, to achieve greater simplicity, lighter weight, and more compact dimensions, it does away with the flapping mirror, pentaprism (or less expensive pentamirror) and optical viewfinder of DSLRs — a system that’s been in use since the 1950s. That means, if it is going to compete directly with DSLRs, the NX10 must have an electronic viewfinder (EVF).

Ken Werner
Senior Analyst and Editor

If you follow higher-end digital photography, this general architecture may sound familiar. It is the one employed by Olympus and Panasonic in their Micro Four Thirds (MFT) system, which includes the Panasonic Lumix G2 and the Olympus PEN E-PL1. The basic difference is that the ASP-C sensor is about 50% larger than the MFT sensor. All else being equal (which it never is), that should mean the NX10 should produce less noisy images at any given pixel count than an MFT camera.

Samsung has attracted favorable attention for the NX10 by using a 3.0-inch, high-resolution PenTile AMOLED display for the monitor on the back of the camera, courtesy of Samsung Mobile Display. In addition to the expected saturated colors and high contrast of AMOLED, this display should also result in longer battery life than an equivalent LCD.

But what about the viewfinder? Well, depending on market segment, the camera designer could decide to forget about the viewfinder completely and have the user rely on "live view" through the monitor, which is commonly done in consumer-level compact cameras. Indeed, this is the approach Olympus adopted for its PEN series of MFT cameras, and Panasonic did the same for its GF1, to create more compact cameras. (For all of these cameras, an add-on EVF is available.)

But in the NX10 Samsung wanted to compete directly with DSLRs, as Panasonic did with the G1 and G2, so an integral EVF was a necessity.

Samsung adopted the new CyberDisplay VGA LVS from Kopin Corp. (Taunton, MA; www.kopin.com). Kopin issued a release just today announcing volume production of this display had begun, along with a WVGA (864×480) version, and calling the NX10 a "multi-million dollar design win."

The color dots in these displays measure just 3.75×11.25 microns, and the VGA version measures 0.35 inches on the diagonal. The smaller pixel pitch allows this display to be about 40% smaller than existing VGA displays, Kopin says, and it consumes less power. "Our success in advancing these displays with such tiny pixels into volume production is an important milestone," said Kopin CEO John C. C. Fan. "Our ability to produce displays with ever smaller pixels is critical to creating mobile video products which provide high-resolution brilliant color images at prices low enough to allow consumers to access the increasing volume of mobile video content."

The company said the CyberDisplay WVGA LVS and VGA LVS achieve low power consumption by employing two patented innovations: low-voltage architecture, which reduces the input video voltage by half and allows the use of CMOS driver circuits, and clock driverless scanner circuits, which reduce the display panel power to less than 30 mW.

Camera reviewers, who tend to like optical viewfinders, have spent a lot of time talking about the EVFs and monitor displays in the NX10 and the MFT cameras. Both the EVF display and the AMOLED monitor in the NX10 have gotten good grades. It’s good to see a product category in which display technologies are used to help differentiate products in such a direct way. Now, where’s that OLED iPhone?