Nokia Lumia-800 Camera Comparison

I've been using and enjoying the Nokia Lumia-800 running the Windows Phone operating system, and as I had a little free time over Christmas, thought I'd do a comparison of the camera with it's sibling , the Nokia N9, running the Meego Harmattan operating system and my compact digital camera, a Panasonic Lumix 10mp . I set everything to automatic, the thing that normally suits my limited abilities (and possibly what most normal users would do I think ?) and simply took a few shots with each, attempting to replicate them as closely as possible !

Both the Lumia and the N9 have 8 megapixel cameras with auto focus, and afaik are in effect, the same unit.The Lumia has a physical camera button and the N9 a virtual on screen capture button, both need to be held for a short period of time to focus before taking a picture. Pressing the button on the Lumia a further step once you have a solid white square on the screen and releasing the virtual button on the N9 once the focus square turns blue. I'm no photographer, as those who know me are aware, and this is just a comparison by a strict amateur, people can judge for themselves as to the quality of the pictures, but as everything was auto, I believe the comparisons are fair, and to be quite honest, I think, coming from my E7 EDOF camera (look it up, I'm not getting into either a debate or explanation of EDOF) both cameras on the latest Nokias are pretty good, the N9 for some reason seems to edge it slightly, but as far as I am aware, both cameras will recieve some improvements through software updates in the near future. One thing both the phone cameras struggle with is poor quality in low light conditions, but this is a general fault with almost all camera phones using LED flash, and not perculiar to Nokia.

Camera

8 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics

Wide-angle lens

True 16:9 imaging

Large lens aperture F2.2 for better and faster photos in low light conditions

Dual LED flash

Digital shutter

Continuous autofocus

Touch-to-focus and exposure lock

Focal length: 3.77mm / 28mm

F number/Aperture: F2.2

Still images file format: JPEG/EXIF/XMP

Digital zoom up to 4x for still images and video

Image capture

Camera settings: flash, scene mode, exposure, white balance, ISO, face tracking, aspect ratio and resolution

Automatic location tagging (geotagging) of images and videosImages automatically taken in the correct orientation

Pinch zoom in Photos image viewer

View photos by tag, favourites, collection and slide show

Photo editor with fast non-destructive editing, one-touch autofix, red-eye removal, straighten

Automatic Motion Blur Reduction

Other

Internal memory: 16 GB or 64 GB

High-speed USB 2.0 with micro USB connector for transferring photos to PC or Mac

Share photos online through Facebook, Flickr and Picassa

Photo sharing through NFC

Main camera

Primary camera sensor size

8 megapixels

Camera resolution height

3264 pixels

Camera resolution width

2448 pixels

Camera F number/aperture

2.2

Camera digital zoom

3 x

Camera minimum focus range

10 cm

Camera focal length

28 mm

Main camera features

Camera feature

• Geotagging
• Dual LED flash
• Carl Zeiss Optics
• Exposure Compensation
• Fast one-click photo sharing
• Auto and Manual White Balance settings
• Touch to Focus and capture in a single tap

Camera image format

• XMP
• JPEG/Exif

One thing I have discovered on the Lumia -800 is that there is an 'auto-fix' option built into the phone, when you open a photo you've taken in the 'Camera Roll' section of your Lumia in the Pictures app and press the 3 little dots in the bottom right hand corner of the screen you get a menu pop up and one of the options is to auto-fix, generally speaking it works really well, especially in low light photos and it can make some dark and dingy snaps look much better in a few seconds, no doubt professional editing in a computer would give castly superior results, but for a rank amateur, the feature is quite frankly brilliant and simple, and one of the many things I've found on the Lumia which I like a lot.

Well that's it really, this is just a set of photos from three different sources, I've also included a couple of screen shots and hope people don't find it boring !!

Thanks for reading/viewing.

Stephen Quin

Despite him mentioning it in a comment on one of my previous posts, @chbidmead
mentioned and reminded me of an issue he'd found on the Lumia-800 on Twitter, which is described as a 'Pink Aura' on white backgrounds taken in low light conditions. Chris mentioned that my sample photo of the Reindeer taken with the Lumia had it, as I couldn't honestly see it, I took a photo with virtually no light, of a white T Shirt, and lo and behold, the Aura was clearly visible. Now despite not noticing it previously, the issue is clearly there and hopefully it will be resolved with future software issues. Thanks to Chris Bidmead for using his superior eyesight to bring the issue to my attention for a second time !