Nokia Phone Cameras E7 v N9 v Lumia800
Panorama of Kirkstall Abbey- E7
Macro From E7, N9 & Lumia 800 Indoors
Reason for post
So this post was inspired by a few things, firstly, during his review of my Nokia N9, Steve Litchfield , @stevelitchfield on Twitter, appeared to have issues with the macro photography mode on my phone in the video review he did.You basically have to hold the virtual camera button until the focus point turns blue, but as Steve rightly stated, a camera phone REALLY should have a physical camera button ! So, anyway, I thought I'd check it out ? Secondly, as pointed out to me by @mobileyog on Twitter , I have three of Nokia's operating systems on my current phones, Symbian on the E7, Meego on my N9 and Windows Phone Mango on my Lumia800, and as I haven't posted anything new for a while, and the most popular piece I've done was a camera comparison, I thought I'd do another one, comparing how the different OS's and cameras performed.
Phones Show Review of my N9 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iWipaFX9Myc
Both the N9 and the Lumia, as far as I know, have the same camera unit, an 8 Megapixel Auto Focus unit, however the Lumia has a physical camera button, demanded by Windows Phone, and the N9 has a virtual 'button' on the screen within the camera app, the E7 also has an 8 Megapixel camera, but it is EDOF (extended depth of field) which means it is in effect fixed focus and through software everything from about 30cm out should be in perfect focus, this however makes mcro photography almost redundant !! Some people like EDOF, some hate it, I quite like it, as I'm not the greatest photographer in the world, as you'll see if you continue to read on !!
More Indoor Macro going down E7, N9, Lumia
Also as all three phones have recently had somewhat major software updates (Nokia are doing rather well in the SW update field lately !!) I was also interested to see if any improvements had happened in the camera dept with my phones, certainly the camera menu in the E7 seems different and the whole of the UI seems a bit quicker in the N9 ? I tried to take screen shots of the camera menus, but only the N9 ones worked, so I haven't bothered posting them !
So anyway, here are the pics from the three phones, I've tried to compose them as closely as possible to each other and taken them in different lighting conditions, some inside and some outdoors on a sunny afternoon, and as Nokia camera's are something of a buzz word at the moment with the recent announcement of the Nokia 808, I thought a few pics may be appropriate :)
Default and macro shots in Calverley Woods
Kirkstall Abbey Leeds
Conclusion
Well my unskilled and unprofessional opinion is, that all three phones can take a decent photo in decent light and set to auto, the E7 is easy to use, but not much good, as well documented, with close ups, but seems a little better with Belle, and that of my two AF phones, for some reason, the N9 seems to take better photos overall and that there may be some more work needed on the SW front, which is apparently due to arrive shortly. The other thing I learned is that it really helps to get a decent photo if you have some skill and imagination, and maybe practice is something that vastly improves ALL cameras ?
Thanks for reading
Minor update, took a few more shots, just with N9 and Lumia and posted to Flickr today, the Lumia didn't fair as well with macro !!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenquin58/sets/72157629630594531/