Lumia 1520 Camera Review...I am not impressed really

Nov 20, 2012
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(This is not mean to be a Phone war topic, i just needed something semi-comparable to compare with since i no longer have another Lumia besides a 521 to compare with)

So it has been officially 2 weeks since i got my Lumia 1520 and for the most part I love this phone a lot. It is the best windows phone to date. Except for one thing, the camera and it's colors. The colors are far darker than they are supposed to be. And it takes me several shots to actually get the best shot. I use Nokia's built-in Camera.

Now I am no photographer pro...Like most teens I am big on Quick images, Selfies, Party and Concert shots....But this camera is making me miss my 1520. And it is has been a long while since I've used a 920 but i seem to remember consistently better and correctly saturated photos.

I do think the sharpness is fine for the most part but this coloring is not correct all. My carpet looks more like the carpet on the LG G2

I can always go through and edit the color and/or exposure and brightness but i did not have to do this much on my lumia 1020(or even my 920) not to mention it is annoying at parties and dinners telling everyone...Wait a second, let's retake it. It's a bit blurry.

Also, I know FFC suck in most cases but the quality of the 1520 FFC seems subpar compared to the 1020. I am not sure why but it seems more grainier.

Below are the pics from Last week at Black Friday...Walmart was NOT that dark on the inside yet that is how my camera does.


The Next Pics Compare a Barbie Dollhouse between the cameras of the Lumia 1520 and the LG G2

Then the next group of pics i used the dolls to showcase what i mean and the dolls more or less represent my natural skin tone.


1. Group One(Black Friday taken with my Lumia 1520)
WP_20131128_18_28_51_Pro.jpg
WP_20131128_19_20_13_Pro.jpg
WP_20131128_19_20_18_Pro.jpg
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2. Group Two(The Dollhouse....Top pic is Lumia 1520 and the bottom pic is LG G2)
WP_20131130_12_49_57_Pro.jpg
V__5FCE.jpg

3. Group Three(The Dolls)
PicMonkey Collage.jpg
PicMonkey Collage2.jpg
PicMonkey Collage3 (1).jpg
 
Nov 20, 2012
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Oh yeah I read that article the other day but i am going to reread again.

But i fear you may be right lol...I am so used to my 1020 and it's camera(the speed of it never bothered me) that the camera of my 1520 bugs the crap out of me lol. Oh dear :D
You using the 1020 might have ruined your experience with any other camera. Have you read this article?

Windows Phone Camera Face-off: AT&T Nokia Lumia 1520 vs. Lumia 1020 | Windows Phone Central

George is a professional photographer he has some tips for you. The L1520 camera is not as good as the L1020 that is a fact. You make a trade off switching to the L1520.
 

Dave Blake

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One thing I have noticed is with the 1520 I get true color in photos. If it looks darker in real life that is what you get with the 1520. With the 1020 darker shots appeared lighter and looked better to me but were not a true representation of what I was looking at.
 
Nov 20, 2012
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One thing I have noticed is with the 1520 I get true color in photos. If it looks darker in real life that is what you get with the 1520. With the 1020 darker shots appeared lighter and looked better to me but were not a true representation of what I was looking at.

I think most of my issues with the 1520 camera are
1. Mental...I need to get my mind out of the 1020 mindset and realize this is a 20 Megapixel phone and not the 1020. Old habits and all.

2. Easily fixable with post editing software, that just annoys me when i have to do it to a bunch of pics at once....

But the LG G2 has poorer quality in regards to sharpness but the colors are more or less the correct representation than my 1520...My carper is not as Dark as it appears in the 1520 and the overall lighting of the living room was not as Dark as it appeared(It looks like mid-morning in the 1520 when it was like the middle of the afternoon). The doll is certainly not that dark though

One thing that i want to learn how to do (and i hope someone makes a guide of some sort) is utilizing my full power of my Phone's camera. It was cool having the 1020 and everyone seemed to recognize it from the commercials but aside from Instagram, Flickr, Tumblr and facebook photos, I never knew how to actually USE the camera's full abilities and that is also apparent with the 1520 since i am sure there is something i can do to probably have a better experience.
 

Blacklac

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ProShot allows you to create custom profiles, so you could adjust some settings as you please and have them saved for quick access. May be worth a look.
 

Blacklac

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proshot does still allow you to oversample correct?

Honestly, I'm not really sure what it allows for resolutions. With the 1020, it only takes up to 12MP. I haven't bothered to play around and see if it saves a 12MP & oversampled 5MP, or what. I'm sure it has been discussed on the ProShot thread, but its getting fairly long. :p
 

kevm14

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I see two main issues.

1) The tone curve of the 1520 tends to boost the shadows and mid-tones less. That almost reminds me of the JPEGs my Nikon D70s used to make. Incidentally I loaded different tone curves into the camera (a perk of the dSLR) until I found the one I liked.

2) The 1520 appears to be exposing in a way to preserve the highlights. If you look closely, every single one of your test images includes a bright highlight that the exposure meter is biasing heavily toward. That also has the side effect of lowering the brightness of the mid-tones and shadows. The 1020 overexposes more often in auto mode from what I've seen so they obviously backed away from that (the 5S handles highlights very well by the way).

You talk about blurriness...that's just the default shutter speeds used.

Let me be clear: While everything you point out is legitimate, there is nothing wrong here that can't be fixed with a firmware update. And none of it has to do with how many pixels are in your images. There is no reason the 1520 images cannot have the same "look" as the 1020, or any other tone curve.
 

Mark Reed2

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Been testing it today and its not so great with low light, passable but not "wow look at that" daylight (bright) is fine for me.
My issue is with the videos, daylight is good but not amazing, but low light sucks, the noise is OTT (started a thread myself showing this issue) and as you said I hope a software/optimise fix is on the way.
 

giantenemybird

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IMO in those 1520 vs G2 comparisons you posted, the 1520 looks better. Yes, the G2 is naturally brighter, but the 1520 photos look more crisp and detailed.
 

hipporama

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IMO in those 1520 vs G2 comparisons you posted, the 1520 looks better. Yes, the G2 is naturally brighter, but the 1520 photos look more crisp and detailed.

Agreed. You can't even read what's written on the stickers in the second comparison shot of the dolls with the G2. But in the 1520 pic it looks clear and sharp.
 
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vlad0

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The darkness you are seeing is a trend from the Symbian days which is another sign that the black update is indeed based on the Symbian jpeg algorithms more so than the previous WP ones..

From what I can see the 1520 has a very good camera.. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the first samples.
 

cubanaso

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2013_12_03_11_45_45_OneShot.jpg

I took this one with my 1520 using OneShot. I believe it came out pretty good. It has been said that playing with the settings as opposed to using auto yields better shots. With the 1020 auto worked fine but with the 1520 it doesn't look as good with auto. As you can see here with OneShot and a few tweaked settings I was able to capture a nice shot, proshot works well too.
 

mitsuyager9

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I was actually really Impressed with my 1520 compared to my 920. The colors are wayy more accurate and it's alot sharper too. I haven't used the 1020, but it's the best camera phone out so I would imagine anything would be a downgrade.
 

kevm14

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Been testing it today and its not so great with low light, passable but not "wow look at that" daylight (bright) is fine for me.

Yeah the 920 really went for attention, for a reason. Though there is always a push in consumer-level digital imaging to get those mid-tones boosted. I don't know why. Sometimes I wonder if all anyone wants is high key everything.
 

falconeight

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(This is not mean to be a Phone war topic, i just needed something semi-comparable to compare with since i no longer have another Lumia besides a 521 to compare with)

So it has been officially 2 weeks since i got my Lumia 1520 and for the most part I love this phone a lot. It is the best windows phone to date. Except for one thing, the camera and it's colors. The colors are far darker than they are supposed to be. And it takes me several shots to actually get the best shot. I use Nokia's built-in Camera.

Now I am no photographer pro...Like most teens I am big on Quick images, Selfies, Party and Concert shots....But this camera is making me miss my 1520. And it is has been a long while since I've used a 920 but i seem to remember consistently better and correctly saturated photos.

I do think the sharpness is fine for the most part but this coloring is not correct all. My carpet looks more like the carpet on the LG G2

I can always go through and edit the color and/or exposure and brightness but i did not have to do this much on my lumia 1020(or even my 920) not to mention it is annoying at parties and dinners telling everyone...Wait a second, let's retake it. It's a bit blurry.

Also, I know FFC suck in most cases but the quality of the 1520 FFC seems subpar compared to the 1020. I am not sure why but it seems more grainier.

Below are the pics from Last week at Black Friday...Walmart was NOT that dark on the inside yet that is how my camera does.


The Next Pics Compare a Barbie Dollhouse between the cameras of the Lumia 1520 and the LG G2

Then the next group of pics i used the dolls to showcase what i mean and the dolls more or less represent my natural skin tone.


1. Group One(Black Friday taken with my Lumia 1520)
View attachment 51474
View attachment 51475
View attachment 51476
View attachment 51477

2. Group Two(The Dollhouse....Top pic is Lumia 1520 and the bottom pic is LG G2)
View attachment 51478
View attachment 51479

3. Group Three(The Dolls)
View attachment 51480
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View attachment 51482

I think the 1520 was protesting, taking all those ghetto fabulous pics.
 

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