Saturday, 4 May 2013

bad weather photography

Here are a few shots I took yesterday, they are all taken in bad weather conditions.
I think that makes it more interesting, since most phone's on the market are all delivering good quality in good light conditions these days...

Those are the phones I used in my test scenario:

Nokia 808 PureView
The current camera phone champion and best Symbian phone ever made!

Nokia Lumia 820
The higher mid-range Windows Phone 8 device. As powerful as Nokia's current flagship the Nokia Lumia 920, but not exactly a camera centric phone. Still equipped with a Carl Zeiss lens, promising decent results.

Nokia E7-00
The 1st generation Symbian^3 phone is representing the 1st generation EDoF camera's used in devices like the Nokia C7 and Nokia X7. With the limitations of the EDoF technology, it was never meant to be a true camera phone... but it's surprisingly capable of producing excellent results in good light conditions.

Scenario

Shortly before a thunderstorm, I went outside to take those pictures.
It was very windy, keep that in mind when seeing the pics of the tree! Everything was in motion ;)

All pictures were taken from the same position and the settings on all phones were mostly on "auto".
So especially the Nokia 808 could probably deliver much better results, when adjusted to the scene correctly!

By the way, not sure how much processing goes on by uploading images to Blogger/Google, so if you are interested in the original images, you can download them here.

Cloudy Sky

I took three shots with each phone and selected the best result to upload here.
Only the 808 got six shots (3 x in 5MP / 3 x in 8MP).

Nokia 808 PureView (8MP)
Nokia 808 PureView (5MP)
Nokia Lumia 820
Nokia E7-00
The 8MP image from the Nokia 808 is my favourite here. It has the most accurate colour of the sky.
The right side of the image turned out do dark and noisy, but that's an issue with all the cams I tested here...

The second image from the 808 delivers incredible detail for a 5MP shot, it got the colours slightly wrong. But it is still a very pleasing result.

The Nokia Lumia 820, an 8MP device, does very well in comparison.
Zooming in reveals the lack of detail and the "bluish tint" of the sky doesn't match the real colours.
But overall a good result in my opinion.

Well, don't know what to say about the E7... the light source you see on the lower end, was on all the time. The other phones didn't bother, only the E7 had an issue with that.Maybe that's what messed up the whole pic? The image has a red tint all over the left side, it is definitely the worst result here.

Cropped Sky

I cropped the images so you can see the difference in the detail. Those frames are from the centre of the image, where the focus was (technically the E7 doesn't have a focus point, but whatever).

Nokia 808 PureView (8MP)
Nokia 808 PureView (5MP)
Nokia Lumia 820
Nokia E7-00

Conclusion

The 808 wins, what a surprise!!
Jokes aside, the point wasn't to prove the 808 is better than a mid-range Symbian or WP8 device.
From the selection of my phones, the 808 is the only one that concentrates on the camera, so everything but a win would have been extremely disappointing.

This was only a short real life test of different camera's ;)

As mentioned earlier, the Nokia E7 is capable of producing decent photographs in good light but you can see, that it has it's limits.

What can I say about the Nokia 808 at this point?
Sure, by adjusting the advanced settings it could have done better... and I doubt that any other phone could have done better here. But while some say the 808 is close to mid-range DSLR, I think it is still far away when it comes to difficult situations like in this test.

The Lumia 820 isn't doing bad at all, actually I think it is quite good. Considering its price and marketplace the results are very satisfying.

I'll try to share more pictures and some other facts about the Lumia 820/Windows Phone 8 and maybe soon also about the Lumia 920/620, here on my Blog ;)

Let me know what you think and if you are interested in more content like this!

6 comments:

  1. Good day,
    I would be more interested in a general review over the windows os versus the good old simbyan...

    David (DR)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi David,

      Glad to hear there is some interest in a new review!

      I think I will start with a few purly hardware based reviews (808 vs 920 vs 820), since thats much simpler to compare...

      I am still learning to use WP8 (getting the maximum out of it) and there are enough bad reviews out there, from people who haven't used WP more than 15 min... I wanna make my own one fair!

      Delete
  2. As a E7 user, I must conclude that the camera in the E7 is crappy indeed.
    The pictures CAN be pretty decent en beautifull but only if there is enough light!

    On the other hand, the videocapabilities of the phone are much better!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My brother owns a X7 and my father a C7. both phones have the same cam as the E7...

      especially my brother surprised my a few times with some excellent photos.
      here is a link to his flickr photostream (in case you are interested):
      http://www.flickr.com/photos/pb1893/

      I never though the X7/C7/E7 was capable of shots like these.

      But yes, EDoF has its limitations... the scenario tested here was kinda extreme (moving subject, bad weather/light), so anything else than the last place in this comparison, would have been a surprise for the E7 :)

      Delete