My understanding of Camera. Is this correct?

[Codeworks]

Picked up a Lumia 1020 over the weekend. Obviously, I am impressed with the photos. We have yet to see the sun in Wisconsin since the phone was purchased, therefore I have yet to perform my 1020/DSLR/P&S shoot photo comparison... Although looking forward to the results.

There has been a lot of talk about the full (8-15MB) photos vs the smaller 5MP (3MB) photos. Here is what I have inferred by the multiple posts... Are the following assumptions correct?

1. Unless I am interested in cropping, etc... there does not seem to be much (if any) difference between the 2 photos, at least in my early testing?
2. using the digital zoom (swiping finger on screen) prior to taking the photo will not affect (in a negative way) either size photo?
3. All cropping must be don't within the pro photo application on the phone before transferring to a PC in order to get the best results?
4. When cropping within the PRO photo app and saving the cropped photo, this cropped photo seems to replace the pre-existing smaller (5MP) image, correct?
5. Using the MAC, there does not seem to be an easy way to retrieve the full size shots from the camera, only the oversampled shots?

Thanks.

 

[Muessig]

1. The smaller 5mp file is oversampled. This means for every 1 pixel in the smaller 5mp image, it's using up to 7 pixels from the 34MP image as reference points to make sure the smaller image has as little noise and is as accurate as possible.
2. The 1020 offers 3x lossless zoom, I presume that means prior to taking the photo. It will not affect the size of the photos.
3. Once you've taken the picture using the setting 34MP + 5MP and viewing the picture in Pro Camera, you can zoom in and crop the image any way you want to. This will not affect the original 34MP image. This makes sure the 5MP image is oversampled using the original image. You can transfer either file to your PC and still alter them any way you want after this point.
4. Correct.
5. There is a WP client for MAC's which should get all the photos from your phone. There should be files called "high_res" which are 7000 x 5000px wide, roughly and these are the 34MP images. There are also smaller images with another prefix on them that I can't remember but these are smaller resolution files and these are your oversampled 5MP images.

 

[tgr42]

1. Unless I am interested in cropping, etc... there does not seem to be much (if any) difference between the 2 photos, at least in my early testing?
2. using the digital zoom (swiping finger on screen) prior to taking the photo will not affect (in a negative way) either size photo?
3. All cropping must be don't within the pro photo application on the phone before transferring to a PC in order to get the best results?
4. When cropping within the PRO photo app and saving the cropped photo, this cropped photo seems to replace the pre-existing smaller (5MP) image, correct?

1. Zoom/re-framing aside, the 5MP version is just a resized version of the full-res version, with a particular resize algorithm and particular sharpness to it. Personally I find it over-sharp and would resize the full-res pic myself according to my preference if I wanted max quality, but the difference is not that huge and doesn't matter most of the time.

2-4. The digital zoom appears to have the same effect as re-framing after the fact. It only affects the 5MP version of the photo. Regardless of how much you zoomed in with digital zoom, the full-res pic will not be zoomed at all. Think of the full-res as your original raw image, and the 5MP as a final edited version. The phone just gives you some quick built-in tools to do the editing on the fly, instead of later on with a computer. If you want to use the phone's tools for this, the 5MP image will be your output. You can, of course, mix and match editing between the phone and the computer, and edit the 5MP or full-res pic, just be aware of what's going on.