Macro Photography Blog

Here are two low light videos from the new Nokia 808 PureView. I must say this is impressive. Camera phones tend to struggle to capture low-light scenes and often tend to blow up the light source.

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Nokia has announced its 808 PureView smart phone — or shall I call it a compact camera that takes and makes calls, texts and does much more — and slapped in an insane 41 megapixels resolution on a 1/1.2-inch sensor, the largest sensor of any smart phone so far. You know the physics — the larger the sensor, the better the image quality.

So I’m ditching my plan for an Apple again in favour of a Nokia, like the way I ditched the iPhone 4 in favour of Nokia N8 in 2010.

Here’s a disclaimer though: I’m a Nokia convert since the N8 so I maybe a bit bias in my write up. So be forewarned

So here goes: before you accuse me of being swayed by the number — 41MP on a camera phone is mind-boggling indeed — let me assure you that yes, pixel count is not everything and that a 10-megapixel camera phone will be good enough for shooting with a camera phone.

What makes the 41 megapixel useful though is not about shooting an image at that resolution, though you can do that if you wish, but how the resolutions are used in various shooting condition.

Nokia explains this in a white paper, detailing the technology used in the 808 PureView sensor.

Ian Delaney at the Nokia blog explains this further, saying such a resolution isn’t about shooting pictures the size of billboards! “Instead,” he said, “it’s about creating amazing pictures at normal, manageable sizes.”

“The technology means that taking typically sized shots (say, 5 megapixels) the camera can use oversampling to combine up to seven pixels into one “pure” pixel, eliminating the visual noise found on other mobile phone cameras. On top of that, you can zoom in up to 3X without losing any of the details in your shot – and there’s no artificially created pixels in your picture, either.

Otherwise, you can use ‘Creative Shooting Mode’ to capture images at high resolution – 38 megapixels; then reframe, crop and zoom to find the best “picture within the picture” after the image has been shot and before saving it at convenient sizes for sharing and storage.” [Source: Ian Delaney, Nokia.com]

Nokia 808 PureView with Belle OS

The other aspect that makes the camera appealing is its sensor size. At 1/1.2 inch, it is bigger than the sensor on the N8 which is 1/1.83 inch, and bigger than the sensor on Panasonic LX5, Canon PowerShot S100, Olympus XZ-1, Leica D-Lux 5, Nikon P7100, Ricoh GRD IV and Samsung EX1 which are typically 1/1.63 to 1/1.7 inch.

Put the sensor behind a f2.4 Carl Zeiss optics, and you’d probably have the best camera phone on the planet to date, that is, perhaps, until Apple update its iPhone 4S and incorporate a competitive camera package in a smart phone.

Below are sample images of the Nokia 800 PureView. The full resolution samples of the 800 PureView can be seen here.

The only thing that makes the 808 PureView “less appealing” than the iPhone 4S is the fact that there aren’t many excellent apps around for the Nokia; there’s no Hipstamatic for Nokia, for instance

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In about less than a week from now, Nokia is to announce a new smartphone that promises “pureness” in depth, details and definition.

Nokia as a camera phone particularly interests me because I own an N8, a camera which I bought after debating with myself whether to go for the iPhone 4 instead. The N8 won over the iPhone 4 because of its superior sensor and therefore superior image quality.

Damselfly macro with Nokia N8 plus Retromatic app

History is now repeating itself: I’m actually planning to buy an iPhone 4S within the next couple of months but with this new Nokia coming on stream, I can foresee myself debating with the option again — Nokia or Apple.

One thing that I can conclude from owning the N8 is this: I’ve got the best camera phone with me but at the expense of not having the best photography apps around, all off which are seemed to be made-for-iPhone only.

Watch the teaser below and mark February 27 in your calendar:

Via 1001NoisyCameras.

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