Camera comparision between Lumia 920 and iPhone 5

onlineharvest

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They all beat the 920 in real life situations. About the only thing Nokia has going for it is low light. How often do you use your camera at night? I'm still waiting for update to get Nokia camera software off my phone so I can use during the other 90% of the time I use my camera, indoor and daytime photos. Camera was all hype to sell phones. Its no better than others and worse than some in real world situations.

When you think 'low light', don't make the mistake of thinking 'at night'
Often times, indoor light is considered low light. In Canada, after 4pm is considered low light.
What you can see with your eyes is not the same thing a camera sees.
 

Davidkoh

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I found auto usually aren't the best at finding the right settings, just need to use the manual settings to set ISO/exposure and so on and it can produce nice pictures.
 

socialcarpet

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Pardon my ignorance, but you're being sarcastic right...coz i really liked these pics!

Yes, I'm being silly.

These pics were taken with a 920 though, with everything set to auto (except for the macro of the flower). These were taken before the software update and there is NO post processing trickery done here. I am not a trained photographer by any stretch of the imagination either. The point is, the complaints about the daytime performance of the 920's camera are GROSSLY exaggerated. I've been taking great pics with my 920 since day one, day or night.
 

realwarder

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Here's a good comparison for both photo and video between i5, L920 and S3 that I found on Youtube.

Well done comparison althoug I don't know if this was done pre portico update:

<video>

Interesting comparison. It just made me think that at times/scenes I preferred a different camera.

Hard to know which was more accurate at any time since we really don't know the lighting.
 

uselessrobot

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I find it hard to believe that the Lumia 920 is losing out to the iPhone. I've done some comparisons prior to the software update and I was getting excellent photos indoors and outdoors in daylight. Color and brightness were excellent. Sharpness was every bit as good as the iPhone until you viewed the photos at 100% and saw all the image processing. The patch did away with much of the processing so that now the phones are nearly on par.

I still think the Nokia does a bit too much processing, but for all practical purposes no one will ever see it. Even iPhone and Galaxy S3 photos have noise at full size.

What I love about my phone is how I can get a good photos indoors and at night without a flash fairly effortlessly. That said, the technology that enables this seems a bit aggressive. There are situations where it blows out certain elements. I don't know if it's a hardware-based feature or not, but it would be nice to be able to disable it. The other thing I've noticed, mainly with videos, is if white balance is set to auto it sometimes goes crazy shifting back and forth between settings trying to compensate. It's easy enough to address, but I can't think of another camera I've owned where auto white balance has resulted in similar tendencies.
 

yetanotherguy

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I was put to shame yesterday by an S3. The picture (same picture) looked SOOOO much more brighter and cleaner on his phone than my 920. Everyone else around agreed.

I was most embarrassed :(

Apart from what pdskep mentioned, the S3 also has an AMOLED screen which is different from the 920.... also, Lumia 920 may be dimming the display based on ambient lighting which might give an apparent feeling of less sharper images. Having said that, I am not saying that 920 image was superior or something. Just saying that seeing on screen is not a good way of saying whether an image is higher resolution or not. Also, the 920 has to downscale an image more to fit in a smaller screen than the GS3. And finally, there is the algorithm that is used to do the downscaling that may have a lot to be desired too. In short, screen comparisons, a scientific no-no..... :)
 

Flagz

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I found auto usually aren't the best at finding the right settings, just need to use the manual settings to set ISO/exposure and so on and it can produce nice pictures.

That's not the everyday user though. When I'm taking pics at a party or the bar in not gonna tell the moment to wait let me adjust settings. Capture the moment bro. The 920 camera is better under photographer settings, but the iP5 is better under auto settings.
 

Beacio_mo

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I can do some photo comparisons one of these days as my wife has a 5 and I have the 920. On a computer monitor, post-portico pics look much better and sharper with better detail then before (I felt that the pre update pics looked a little too soft, even compares to my old GS2). Regarding iPhone 5 vs 920, the pics are very similar in detail if you adjust the 920s camera settings. I think auto mode the iPhone 5 is much closer to the correct colors without any adjustments. With adjusting the 920, it can match and exceed the iPhone 5's picture quality. BTW, I am far from a professional photographer; I'm more of a phone fanatic that has flipped from iOS, Android, and WP7/8 too many times.
 
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fancy0479

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I can do some photo comparisons one of these days as my wife has a 5 and I have the 920. On a computer monitor, post-portico pics look much better and sharper with better detail then before (I felt that the pre update pics looked a little too soft, even compares to my old GS2). Regarding iPhone 5 vs 920, the pics are very similar in detail if you adjust the 920s camera settings. I think auto mode the iPhone 5 is much closer to the correct colors without any adjustments. With adjusting the 920, it can match and exceed the iPhone 5's picture quality. BTW, I am far from a professional photographer; I'm more of a phone fanatic that has flipped from iOS, Android, and WP7/8 too many times.

I've taken many photos with my 920 in various situations.
I've found these problems:
1. White balance is very inaccurate. (e.g. color too blue indoor)
This could be fixed by manual setting white balance. But I think a phone's camera should do pretty good at AUTO.
This happens to be the most irritating issue for me.

2. Night photos are too bright comparing to what human's eyes see.
This could be fixed by toying with EV and ISO, yet it should be fixed.

3. Glare of nearly any light source at night.
I didn't find a way to fix this.

4. A bit soft.
The least important problem for me (already at PR1.1).

I could only hope Nokia could fix 1.2.4 in a future update, esp. the White Balance problem.

btw, I've written a mail to Elop, and he's replied that he will forward these comments to the team.
 

V J

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I have 2 920's (one is with Nokia right now because of overheating and battery issues) and with both phones I can safely say this:

- Lighting and white balance is *almost* always accurate, much better than my old Lumia 900/800 and E7, and on par with the N8.
- Sharpness is disappointing when zooming in (neither have Portico as I'm in Australia and we don't get it until later) and comes a tad below the iPhone 5 and even moreso than the N8. But not so far below though as to make the low light performance an unfair trade.

In addition to better sharpness and detail, the iPhone 5's camera also has a *much* faster shutter due to continuous auto-focus in picture mode. What this means is the photo is taken almost at the same instant your finger touches the shutter icon as opposed to the "touch to focus" system the 920 employs which adds a second or so of focus time from when you touch the screen, which is less forgiving if you don't have steady hands.

These details in real life usage are very minor though. Yes in a straight out normal point and shoot comparison (with proper lighting) the 920 will lose out to an iPhone 5 (my partner has the iPhone 5 and I've tested this multiple times). Their photos will come out sharper and will be captured faster. However, in return what you get with the Lumia 920 is low-light magic. When all other phones will be practically useless and will be producing garbled, smoky, hazy photos when capturing low-light scenes from afar (where the flash is rendered useless) the Lumia will consistently produce low-light pictures with incredible detail (considering how dark the scenery is) and lighting.

All of the above are unbiased facts. I am a Nokia fan and have used nothing but Nokias in my life but I don't make excuses for their shortcomings. But for me I consider it a fair trade that the Lumia produces excellent daylight photos (face it, they are excellent even if not the best) and in addition, will amaze anyone with it's low-light performance every single time. I like having a camera phone that produces great results, day or night.

Having said that, I've had issues with my 920's that are actually making me think about jumping ship to the iPhone 5 (if this second 920 fails me then I'm jumping ship). But make no mistake, the 920 has some literally UNIQUE selling points that hold me back from letting it go, and the camera is one of them. The others being better daylight visibility from ClearBlack technology, ultra-sensitive touchscreen, and Nokia's Photobeamer app (if you haven't tried it you damn well have to, trust me).
 

TK2011

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I have 2 920's (one is with Nokia right now because of overheating and battery issues) and with both phones I can safely say this:

- Lighting and white balance is *almost* always accurate, much better than my old Lumia 900/800 and E7, and on par with the N8.
- Sharpness is disappointing when zooming in (neither have Portico as I'm in Australia and we don't get it until later) and comes a tad below the iPhone 5 and even moreso than the N8. But not so far below though as to make the low light performance an unfair trade.

In addition to better sharpness and detail, the iPhone 5's camera also has a *much* faster shutter due to continuous auto-focus in picture mode. What this means is the photo is taken almost at the same instant your finger touches the shutter icon as opposed to the "touch to focus" system the 920 employs which adds a second or so of focus time from when you touch the screen, which is less forgiving if you don't have steady hands.

These details in real life usage are very minor though. Yes in a straight out normal point and shoot comparison (with proper lighting) the 920 will lose out to an iPhone 5 (my partner has the iPhone 5 and I've tested this multiple times). Their photos will come out sharper and will be captured faster. However, in return what you get with the Lumia 920 is low-light magic. When all other phones will be practically useless and will be producing garbled, smoky, hazy photos when capturing low-light scenes from afar (where the flash is rendered useless) the Lumia will consistently produce low-light pictures with incredible detail (considering how dark the scenery is) and lighting.

All of the above are unbiased facts. I am a Nokia fan and have used nothing but Nokias in my life but I don't make excuses for their shortcomings. But for me I consider it a fair trade that the Lumia produces excellent daylight photos (face it, they are excellent even if not the best) and in addition, will amaze anyone with it's low-light performance every single time. I like having a camera phone that produces great results, day or night.

Having said that, I've had issues with my 920's that are actually making me think about jumping ship to the iPhone 5 (if this second 920 fails me then I'm jumping ship). But make no mistake, the 920 has some literally UNIQUE selling points that hold me back from letting it go, and the camera is one of them. The others being better daylight visibility from ClearBlack technology, ultra-sensitive touchscreen, and Nokia's Photobeamer app (if you haven't tried it you damn well have to, trust me).

Sounds like you could use the Portico update that improves daylight sharpness. After the update, I think you will find the daylight photos to be more or less the same quality against the iphone. Nothing surprising there because primary situation IOS really shines is in low light. In low light, there's no comparison. iphones and samsungs give you worthless pictures. Not so with L920. That to me makes L920 a clear winner by far.

Another area L920 kicks competitor's butt is video, I think. For video, we can see IOS's advantage both in daylight and low light.

I agree that L920's auto exposure and white balance is very good. I thought AE is actually better than my Nikon D7000!

Regarding "faster" shutter of iphone 5, I am not sure you want the shutter to go off at the instance you touch the camera. It will cause more shake than if you shutter went off a second or two AFTER you press the button or whatever. DSLRs have "delayed exposure" feature just to avoid the shake from finger motion and mirror slap.
 

TK2011

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Except for the last one where the background is blurry. So is this best lumia 920 can do or there is further room for improvment with next firmware release?

LOL. Blurry background in the last shot is what's often called bokeh. People pay thousands of dollars on high end DSLR and lenses to get beautifully blurred out of focus effect like that.

Read about depth of field here:
Depth of field - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 

TK2011

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I've taken many photos with my 920 in various situations.
I've found these problems:
1. White balance is very inaccurate. (e.g. color too blue indoor)
This could be fixed by manual setting white balance. But I think a phone's camera should do pretty good at AUTO.
This happens to be the most irritating issue for me.

2. Night photos are too bright comparing to what human's eyes see.
This could be fixed by toying with EV and ISO, yet it should be fixed.

3. Glare of nearly any light source at night.
I didn't find a way to fix this.

4. A bit soft.
The least important problem for me (already at PR1.1).

I could only hope Nokia could fix 1.2.4 in a future update, esp. the White Balance problem.

btw, I've written a mail to Elop, and he's replied that he will forward these comments to the team.

1. Auto WB works great for me indoor and out. What kind of lighting is giving you trouble?

2. All kinds of cameras underexpose snow scenes and overexposure black curtains quite often in auto mode. That's what EV control is for.

3. Is your lens clean? This post shows dirty vs clean lens comparison:
http://forums.windowscentral.com/nokia-lumia-920/200218-43.htm#post1847709
 

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