As if the new E-5 weren’t enough excitement for one day, Samsung have also announced their new NX100 mirrorless-interchangeable-lens compact, sibling to the NX10 and NX5 models. The NX100 is a direct competitor to the Olympus E-P1/E-P2/E-PL1, Panasonic GF1 and Sony NEX-3 and NEX-5 models, having a compact p&s design.

The NX100 comes in three colours. Picture provided by mirrorlessrumors.com.

The NX100 inherits most of its specifications from the NX10, except for its different body shape and the fact that the electronic viewfinder is an external accessory. It will be introduced in kit with a new 20-50mm f/3.5-5.6 collapsible zoom lens (much like the Olympus PEN models’ kit zoom) and a 20mm f/2.8 pancake lens.

Probably the most ingenious new feature that comes with the NX100, or better, with the two new lenses, is the so-called “i-Function” button. This little button, located on the lens, when pressed, allow the lens’ focus ring to be used for a number of user-selectable funtions, such as exposure correction, shutter speed adjustment etc. – much like the lens ring of the Canon S90/S95. Interesting for those loving classical manual operation might be the option to select the aperture value via the lens’ focusing ring.

An exhaustive list of announcements and previews can be found on mirrorlessrumors.com.