Why no ND filter in Lumia 1020 ?

[amrut_m]

Calling out all Photo enthusiasts
Remember the 808 Pureview had a ND filter in it ?
Also Most of the Nokia N series phones too had a ND filter, so why did NOKIA skip it with Lumia 1020 ?

 

[Crasstoe]

Calling out all Photo enthusiasts
Remember the 808 Pureview had a ND filter in it ?
Also Most of the Nokia N series phones too had a ND filter, so why did NOKIA skip it with Lumia 1020 ?

I can only assume that they wanted to let as much light as possible into the sensor for better low light performance, and an ND filter would hinder that. They have got round this by allowing you to control the exposure compensation when taking the shot, and coupled with RAW there is no need for an ND filter to be built in. If you have something like BeastGrip like I do then you can add as many filters as you feel necessary... never found the need for an ND filter myself though with RAW support.

Obviously it is my presumption, not words from Nokia, but I reckon they were probably thinking along the same lines.

 

[amrut_m]

I can agree with you about the low light performance.
but would it affect so much ?

As OIS and long exposure's are the tricks in 1020's camera optimization.
Saw this comparison to me 808's sensor is perfect just needed 2014's camera optimization and OIS, etc

Here's a link to a camera comparison between 808 and 1020.
from small lens: Nokia Lumia 1020 vs Nokia 808 Pureview - 41MPix duel

 

[Crasstoe]

With his long exposure shot the 1020 should have had ISO set to 100, leaving it to AUTO is unfair as the 808 was not also set to auto. Below is proof that the 1020 is very capable and can produce better images at this type of photography than the article you linked, and this is with me using the thing!

To counter the final argument of skin tones I would recommend shooting in RAW and using the colour profiles released by Nokia, they give great results.

I prefer the 1020 images, but it is all personal preference so nobody is right or wrong. I feel the 1020 is a superior camera, however it has to be used in a different way to the 808 in certain circumstances such as night photography.

 

[vlad0]

My guess is that it has something to do with the OS .. maybe they don't have a hook to control a mechanical component like that just yet, but I am sure that it will be added at some point if they want to go in that direction.

I can only assume that they wanted to let as much light as possible into the sensor for better low light performance.

The ND filter on the Symbian photo oriented smartphones wasn't fixed..

On the 808 you can also manually turn it off and on

can produce better images at this type of photography than the article you linked.

Here:







The only real advantage the 1020 has is the longer exposure times.. the 808 is limited to 2.7secs

 

[mickydale]

How do you load the raw/dng color profiles?... I am new to photo editing through pc

 

[amrut_m]

thx guys,
Myself have clicked long exposure pic's but then I just wanted to know whats was that 1 thing made Nokia not adapt a ND filter in 1020,
see 808 was programed in such a way that it had a ND filter so the images produced where altered and processed with respect to ND filter.

I would love to see the ND filter make a come back on Nokia Phones in some point of time.
the good part of having ND filters is that 808 was a perfect Photographer phone,Images could be shot using long exposures in day light too.


Now, I dont say 1020 is a bad device, I use the 1020 as my personal Device and love every bit of it.But a few more things wouldn't have hurt :wink:

 

[Crasstoe]

I had no idea that the ND filter wasn't fixed, that's fantastically engineered!

Maybe the next "1020" will see a return of such innovation.

 

[vlad0]

ya.. here is the 808

Its an ND8 filter which is worth 3 f-stops

Source: Nokia 808 PureView - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As far as I know the N8 and the 808 are the only two devices that have mechanical ND filters on board.

You know.. you can always use your sunglasses to achieve a similar effect, especially if they have decent polarized lenses

 

[amrut_m]

Finally got a Reply from Juha Alakarhu the guy behind Imaging for Nokia Phones.
according to Juha " we wanted to use all the available space for the optics"

when i asked would it increase the thickness?
"it increases the thickness unless we would do thinner optics"

 

[neonspark]

cheap. just get one and put it in front of the phone. It's what I do.

 

[vlad0]

^ that makes sense... its always going to be a fine balance between form and function when it comes to the camera. If you ask me they should just go for a 1 inch sensor and not care about the size, but I am probably the "1%" so its not going to happen.

The fact that they managed to fit such a big sensor and the adequate optics in those small housing is impressive. Just look at the difference to conventional camera modules

"From left to right, a front-facing camera, an 'entry level' camera (probably 1/4", but not a million miles from the camera size used in most other smartphones of today), the Lumia 1520's 1/2.5" camera (so very similar to that in the imminent Galaxy S5) and finally, on the right, the Lumia 1020's 1/1.5" unit, positively dwarfing the rest. In fact, every time I look at this photo and then look at the Lumia 1020,"

I also found a cross cut 1020 module, you can see how much depth is needed for it to fit in the housing.

you can also kind of see how the optics look like, and from what I can see they are very similar to the 808's

And here you can see that the 1020's module is indeed thinner than the 808

How is that difference distributed across the smaller sensor, xenon flash capacitor, and the missing ND filter .. only Nokia's engineers know for sure

 

[neonspark]

I think this is a stupid problem with a stupid simple solution. All they need is to center the lens on that aluminum disc and thread the edges. In no time there would be companies producing not just ND filters but polarizers and graduated NDs. In fact I wouldn't put it past that somebody would start mounting big lenses on the thing. The metal disc was such a lost opportunity because it is a good material to create a thread which can then mount endless accessories.

 

[vlad0]

The metal disc was such a lost opportunity because it is a good material to create a thread which can then mount endless accessories.

They might do just that in future models..

 

[anon(8555314)]

It could also be done with the Camera Grip if they didn't want to do it with the phone itself.

 

[Marko Mylosewitz]

This is interesting, your thread is all about night photography and long exposures, nobody writes about real purpose of NDfilter, to stop bad influence of sunrays on photos.

I have both N8 and 808.

I found NDFilter is most useful in day light (very bright sunshine). I surprised how good are photos in that kind of weather conditions. Photos are like from some outdoor photo studio. With NDFilter even on direct sunshine photo as having more contrast, there are no whiteness, colors saved corectly, shadows are fantastic.

I hope some next generation of Lumia will have NDFilter at least as some additional equipement. Until that, use welding glass and Adobe Photoshop

 

[vlad0]

^ yes, that's what its there for

The problem with the 808 is that it doesn't have manual exposure control like the 1020, so the ND filter is used to slow the shutter down by forcing it to stay on.

Example:



There was no way for me to get anything over 1 second without forcing the ND filter .. it sucks, but its the only way.

 

[Bahamen]

ND filter serves to reduce the amount of light entering the camera system. For the Lumia 1020, the lack of ND filter has been compensated by the really fast shutter speed of 1/16,000. In fact, the 1020 has a shutter speed which is more than 5x faster than the 808's max shutter speed (a little slower than 1/3,000). So for the 808, the ND filter was a matter of necessity due to the limitation in max shutter speed, whereas for the 1020 it was not required. The only advantage that the 808's ND filter has, compared to the 1020's fast shutter speed, is to allow slow shutter speed to be used in strong lighting (e.g. to capture water-flow motion). This is an extremely limited use-case. Throughout my time using the 808, I have taken lots of long-exposure pictures, but all of them are in lowlight (which you do not need the ND filter), and not a single long exposure picture was taken during daytime. So, the ND filter to me has zero purpose.

 

[vlad0]

^ yeah.. it also adds an extra element to the assembly, so if it can be avoided I am all for it.

 

[Ed Boland]

There was a guy on here right after the 1020 came out that was strapping various ND filters to his phone with rubber bands. Actually had some pretty cool shots... There was a thread here IIRC...