The Great Camera App Comparison

[greedo_greedy]

Hey I'm sure there are so many here who are undecided on which is the definitive camera app in the Windows Store.
A lot of times I find myself unsure which camera app to use and so I decided to make a comparison for myself which I'd like to share with you. Fortunately I took a leave from work, giving me enough time to make this post.

I hope this helps anyone who is in the same situation as me.
In this comparison I used Lumia Camera 5, Lumia Camera Classic, ProShot and Sight Camera 360.
These 4 I believe are the best camera apps you can get in the store.

I took two pictures, the first with auto and the second I used manual settings.

Lumia Camera 5





Lumia Camera Classic





ProShot





Sight Camera360





Based on the results, it is always better to go manual and for me it most faithfully reproduces the colors of the scene.
Auto White Balance isn't really that great for all four, for me the sunny option works best for most conditions.

Lumia Camera 5 on auto sucks (This is with Rich Capture off)
Shadow detail is crushed and artificial sharpening is applied resulting in a noisy picture.
On the other hand, I quite like the Manual picture, it may be a tad too sharp but the detail is great and makes jaws drop when they first see it.

Lumia Camera Classic is the fuzziest looking of the bunch but it is very pleasant to the eyes. Especially the manual photo, the detail is just right and the colors are almost faithful to the actual scene.
The biggest drawback of this app is it's capturing speed. It is the slowest of the four and a steady hand is required otherwise you'd be getting a blurry picture.

ProShot is a nice compromise between Lumia Camera 5 and Lumia Camera Classic.
Sharpness is just right, colors are bold but not overly bearing. Speed is good but not yet as snappy as Lumia Camera 5.
It does not support shooting in .dng however for the RAW fanatics because the API is not made available to developers.
What's great though is that it shoots JPEG's utilizing the full pixels, 19mp for 4:3 and 16mp for 16x9 photos.
It also does not apply any post processing to the picture.
I wish Lumia Camera 5 would give us the option to shoot pictures in 19mp or 16mp JPEG's only.

Sight Camera360 is best for an average user. It's pretty quick and produces great looking pictures but manual controls is severely lacking for those who really like to manually set their photos. It is the easiest to use and therefore it's the best camera app for regular folks. It is also the only one that has its own picture editor.

At this point, I'm still unsure which is my favorite picture app haha!!!!
I hope this helps!

 

[HeyCori]

You should also do a comparison using the front facing camera.

 

[Laura Knotek]

Thanks for your excellent review! ☺ I always like to see reviews from regular users, not just from tech bloggers.

You've done a thorough comparison that will help a lot of 1520 users with photography apps.

Sent from my Nexus 7 (2013) using Tapatalk

 

[RumoredNow]

I think this is a good start on something, but just a beginning. For a real comparison we need more than just one scene and more than just one lighting condition...

With the exception of Camera360 Sight, I think all of your manual efforts are worse, not better. Too yellow. The manual on Sight corrects a dull flatness to the auto. But the others... I prefer the auto (top pic).

As far as my use... I'm collecting and using lenses. I like to switch between them and try and learn the strengths and weaknesses of each. As the saying goes, "horses for courses." Or imagine a golf bag; you have different clubs for different conditions.

That is not to disparage your efforts. I think it is a GOOD beginning. Let's see you stretch it out now to different conditions...

 

[greedo_greedy]

Thanks for the feedback :smile:

 

[greedo_greedy]

You should also do a comparison using the front facing camera.

Haha! the 1520's 1.2mp ffc is the weakest part of the camera.
I'm not a chronic selfie taker but the quality is really subpar.

If you're to choose an app for selfie taking then I guess the cake goes to ProShot or Sight because you can add filters to the image.

 

[JohnStrk]

Thanks for sharing this! :smile:

I recently got a new 830 to replace my 920. I don't have the full Denim update with Lumia Camera 5 yet and have not used the 830 camera that much. But I have tried ProShot, Nokia Camera, and MS camera and so far not I'm too impressed with the quality of photos compared to my old 920. But I will do some more testing once I have Denim.

 

[ScrubbyXD]

You have confirmed that my eyesight is bad as I really see no practical difference between them all.

I am hungry now though....off to lunch I go!

 

[melvintwj]

Great effort.

However, the thing with comparisons is that they are usually very subjective. I use Lumia Camera 5 on Denim on my Lumia 1520 on auto most of the time and I prefer the result over ProShot. I feel that ProShot is lacking in contrast, and something about it just puts me off. Rich Capture on Lumia Camera 5 is amazing too, although I wouldn't suggest leaving it on all the time. Only use it when needed, say, a high contrast scene which you really need the dynamic range. (Using in a wrong scenario = ugly picture)

I find that the UI for Lumia Camera (both old and new versions) is better that ProShot. I don't really like the whole "slanted" look that the developer described as "piloting a mach", whereas Lumia Camera's is clean, sleek, and consistent.

Again, great effort. I would make a comparison myself, but it's too much work for me (I am lazy).

 

[Jazmac]

I think this is a good start on something, but just a beginning. For a real comparison we need more than just one scene and more than just one lighting condition...

With the exception of Camera360 Sight, I think all of your manual efforts are worse, not better. Too yellow. The manual on Sight corrects a dull flatness to the auto. But the others... I prefer the auto (top pic).

As far as my use... I'm collecting and using lenses. I like to switch between them and try and learn the strengths and weaknesses of each. As the saying goes, "horses for courses." Or imagine a golf bag; you have different clubs for different conditions.

That is not to disparage your efforts. I think it is a GOOD beginning. Let's see you stretch it out now to different conditions...

I tend to agree. these apps set on auto did a fantastic job with light and color IMO. Manual shots in comparison are good but not as good.

 

[anon(8141431)]

I am pretty sad of the bad quality of lumia camera 5. Before LC 5 my 830 used to take decent pictures in low light . But now it just overexposes the **** out of things and by the time I am done fiddling with the manual controls, the shot I wanted to take will be over.

 

[HeyCori]

I am pretty sad of the bad quality of lumia camera 5. Before LC 5 my 830 used to take decent pictures in low light . But now it just overexposes the **** out of things and by the time I am done fiddling with the manual controls, the shot I wanted to take will be over.

Try switching back to the classic camera.

Lumia Camera Classic | Windows Phone Apps+Games Store (United States)

 

[anon(8141431)]

Try switching back to the classic camera.

Lumia Camera Classic | Windows Phone Apps+Games Store (United States)

But, here is another thing. The super speed of LC 5 ruined me. Now I am looking for a perfect balance between speed and good quality .

I think I am going to try 360sight.

 

[greedo_greedy]

I really wish for the camera algorithms and the speed of Lumia camera 5 baked in together in a future update. Here's hoping.

@arjunan
Sight is an excellent camera and worthy of recognition. If manual controls isn't what you're after then I believe it's great.

 

[HeyCori]

I've used Camera360 Sight before and was impressed.

 

[heickelrrx]

If you look for quick shot default system camera handle it well. But when it come to detail lumia camera is the answer.

The good news is few feature of Lumia Camera is included on Default System camera in next OS update

 

[mccririck]

I use Sight Camera360 for the reason the OP mentioned - it is really easy to use. I like ProShot a lot but i dont have the experience yet to utilise the manual settings properly.

 

[Dietrich Cleijne]

I don't think you can judge cropped pictures posted on a website, there are to many variables that influence what people get to see.
I see a lot of comparison sites where they review smartphones and their camera's, and for one thing they never ever take a look at the raw picture that the L1520 produces, but rather look at the standard jpg.
I can understand why certain biased reviewers would do that, because if they were taking the .dng picture into the account there just wouldn't be a comparison possible. What comes out of this Lumia blows every other (except for the L1020) smartphone camera out of the competition.
There is no IPhone or Samsung that comes close.
And yes i did my own comparisons.

 

[gpobernardo]

I've made a few comparisons between Microsoft Camera, Lumia Camera (Classic) and ProShot in the ProShot camera app thread, and then more recently I included Camera360 Sight in the comparison. The main criterion in the comparison was detail integrity at high levels of magnification.

However, the comparison was for the Lumia 1020, not the Lumia 1520 - perhaps I should start a different thread for our L1020 users.

I'll post the comparison below, but basically Microsoft Camera with live digital zoom came at first place, followed by ProShot with level 1 sharpness.

Here's the latest comparison:

As promised, here's the comparison with the addition of Camera360 Sight. For those who might be following the comparisons, the Lumia 1020 with the latest OS version and Denim update was used. Lumia Camera here isn't the same as Lumia Camera 5.

As usual, ISO 100 but this time under bright sunlight, giving an exposure time of just 6/10000th of a second. The target is a piece of text (in Filipino, with some bits of English) around 20 meters away. It's interesting how the ISO setting of Camera360 Sight can't be controlled but given the lighting conditions it automatically chose ISO-100, making the succeeding comparison valid:

Microsoft Camera with live digital zoom:
View attachment 104928

Lumia Camera:
View attachment 104929

ProShot (Sharpness Level = 0):
View attachment 104930

ProShot (Sharpness Level = 1):
View attachment 104931

Camera360 Sight:
View attachment 104932

At first, the image taken with ProShot with level 1 sharpness stands out from the rest of the images, but that's most probably due to the increased sharpness level. Let's have a closer look.

Based on clarity and recovery of detail, ProShot with level 1 sharpness indeed has improved, this time without the smudge artifact given by the fact that the exposure time is a lot shorter this time. (I didn't upload the result with level 2 sharpness since the image was just too grainy.) This improvement in detail clarity brings ProShot closer to Microsoft Camera with live digital zoom making the comparison a bit trickier this time.

The detail produced by MC w/dz is more "complete" or "well-formed" compared to that of ProShot (level 1) - notice how some parts of some letters started to "disappear" in ProShot (level 1) while the details were still visible in MC wdz. This could be due to the slightly decreased brightness and slightly better contrast in MC. These are emphasized in the "Always Be Careful" piece of text in the smaller sign beneath the larger sign - the letters from ProShot (level 1) are slightly more washed out than those from MC wdz.

Hence, ProShot wins in terms of color saturation and over-all sharpness, but Microsoft Camera still wins (but this time only narrowly) over ProShot in terms of detail recovery at high magnifications - sharpness doesn't directly translate to detail recovery, since sometimes sharpness only means more grain.

Interestingly, Camera360 Sight is next in rank after ProShot level 1, though there's something slightly off with the color balance since the photo from C360S looks a bit reddish.

Lumia Camera, the supposed camera app flagship, follows shortly after C360S taking fourth place out of five with almost the same amount of detail (well-formed letters) as with MC but with a lot less sharpness. The smudge artifact has also disappeared, but again that's most probably due to the current shutter speed.

And, at the bottom, consistent with older comparisons (much older ones), ProShot (level 0 sharpness) comes at fifth place with the least amount of detail recovery.

Hence, for bright lighting conditions, the ranking would be (from top to bottom):
1. Microsoft Camera,
2. ProShot (Sharpness level = 1),
3. Camera360 Sight,
4. Lumia Camera and
5. ProShot (Sharpness level = 0).

Thoughts, anyone?

 

[Sunil kumar Teki]

Front camera using Lumia 5 sucks to the core, classic is better..but never Lumia 5....it sharpens the poor quality image