Mirrorless micro-system cameras (also called "EVIL" = Electronic Viewfinder, Interchangeable Lens) are among the hottest products of the season. Micro-Four Thirds started first in late 2008 and they jump-started right into the list of top selling cameras all over the planet. Slowly but steadily we're now seeing further competitors. Surprisingly there're no "traditional" DSLR manufacturers among the first followers. Instead the electronic giants such as Samsung and Sony are taking their chances. Earlier this year Samsung released their "NX" system and they were bold enough to start from scratch - the NX mount is not compatible to one of the established mount systems - so there aren't really many lenses available as of the time of this review. Our first NX review covers the Samsung NX 30mm f/2 - a pancake lens. These dwarfish lenses get increasingly popular also because they're a perfect match for the very small micro-system cameras. Such "kits" are only slighly bigger than conventional digicams. Samsung NX is an APS-C format system so the field of view of the Samsung lens is equivalent to about 45mm on full format cameras - a typical standard prime lens.

The Samsung lens is very well build. You could argue that it's so small that there can't be any shaky parts anyway. The lens is made of high quality plastics based on a metal mount. The physical length extends slightly towards closer focus distances. The front element does not rotate.

The NX 30mm f/2 features a conventional micro-motor which operates slowly for a contrast-detection system (primarily a camera issue) and nearly silent. The AF accuracy is very high but that's typical for such systems. The small focus ring is not directly coupled to the focusing gear - similar to Micro-Four-Thirds is works "by wire" (the focus ring accentuates the AF motor). We had no issues with this approach.