Camera Help (pictures blurry when zoomed in)

[ryzama]

Hi Everyone,

My Sister and her family came up for Christmas, and I have been chatting it up with my brother-in-law about phones.

He has the brand new Samsung S3, and we were comparing phones. I soon enough told him how amazing the camera is on the Lumia 920 and he wanted to see. So I showed him some pictures and he said they look nice... then when he went to pinch zoom on a couple of them. To my surprise they go all pixel-ated/blurring when zooming in. I told him I had never done that and he showed me some pictures he had taken on his S3.. when he pinch-zoomed on his pictures, they were CRYSTAL clear, even when zoomed in all the way!

What is wrong with the Lumia 920, or what am I doing wrong. I am not a photographer and just take pictures casually. However all my pictures look terrible when zoomed in, and his do not. They retain their crystal clear image quality. Does the S3 just flat out have a better camera, or what is going? This is really bothering me as I thought the Lumia 920 was right up there with all other mobile phones?

 

[iSicle]

I think your camera is fine, have you tried looking at the pictures on your computer? I actually don't own L920 myself but I've been playing with some at the store and noticed the same thing. My guess is that the picture viewing on WP8 (or L920) won't actually zoom to 100%, or any way near to it, for some reason that someone at the programming end decided in all his/her wisdom.

My suggestion is, check the pictures on your computer and see if they still look pixellated.

 

[George Ponder]

Is the blurriness with the live view or final picture?

 

[Keith Wallace]

On a similar-ish note, when I zoom in all the way with my Lumia 920's camera, the pictures flat-out come out blurry. I was just testing the camera out for the heck of it (haven't really gotten to since the update), and when I zoomed in on the Christmas tree, the camera (and picture) were both really blurry. Is this maybe something where the OIS doesn't do as well when zoomed in, and it becomes more sensitive to shake? I tried zooming all the way in on a light fixture, and it came out very clearly, but the pictures of the tree did not.

 

[vlad0]

Someone correct me if I am wrong, but all smartphones (expect one certain Nokia) use the conventional scaling/interpolation method of zooming.. which in very rough terms actually has to create pixels that do not exist (when you zoom in) and therefore the pictures come out blurry... unusable for the most part. So.. I wouldn't expect any miracles from the 920 sensor when it comes to digital zoom. My iphone 5, and virtually all smartphones (except that one..) have that same issue... the iphone won't even let you zoom during video.

 

[James8561]

the zooming in the lumia photo hub is terrible. try judging pictures on a large monitor. after all they are 8 megapixels and the phone's screen is not even 1 MP

 

[George Ponder]

Someone correct me if I am wrong, but all smartphones (expect one certain Nokia) use the conventional scaling/interpolation method of zooming.. which in very rough terms actually has to create pixels that do not exist (when you zoom in) and therefore the pictures come out blurry... unusable for the most part. So.. I wouldn't expect any miracles from the 920 sensor when it comes to digital zoom. My iphone 5, and virtually all smartphones (except that one..) have that same issue... the iphone won't even let you zoom during video.

You are correct. Basically, the camera crops and enlarges a portion of the image and stretches the pixels to the point where image quality is lost.

Digital zoom still has a lot of room for improvement but it's gotten better. When you zoom in the image view is shaky, blurry and just plain sucks. Once you capture the image though... the software should fix a lot of the blurriness that you see in the viewfinder. It won't be perfect, but it's gotten better over the years.

For now, the best zoom for Smartphone cameras is the foot zoom.