TechnoBuffalo Lumia 920 Review

theeboredone · Nov 8, 2012

Whatever it is, I don't plan on buying the 920 until this "software" update comes out from Nokia. Then I will consider it. It's either that or wait for the next gen of WPs.

MaulerX · Nov 8, 2012

Calot said:
I find the pictures taken by that individual to be by far the crappiest I have ever seen.

Did he use macro mode?

I agree 100%.

Even the reviews that thrashed it for it's"weight" were able to take way better pictures than that. There is no way close up pics look that blurry using macro mode.

vlad0 · Nov 8, 2012

Winning Guy said:
Thank you for that post. I thought it might be due to the shutter staying open too long, but I don't have anywhere near the expertise to explain it.

You mean in day light ? I can't be 100% certain, but that would cause the image to be over exposed because of the shutter staying open for longer than necessary.

What I think might be happening is their jpeg processing is tuned for low light, but it doesn't switch to "day light" when it needs to, so it keeps applying that same aggressive noise reduction, when it doesn't need to, and that is why we loose sharpness.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8205/8163529074_e4c4a2c6da_o.jpg

They are softer, but its not that bad and its fixable for sure.

thinkmac · Nov 8, 2012

I am a little surprised to see the review on the camera. I haven't pre-ordered one yet, and now I am on wait-n-see mode. I need to see a review from WPCentral or something to see how well photos look.

One of the biggest complaint I have with iPhone is shaky and blurry photos, and I really hate to see iPhone5 topping Lumia 920 on this one. As a current iPhone4 user (not 4s), the hyped camera from Lumia 920 has been the major motivator for me to switch platform. So.. WPCentral..waiting on your review!

vlad0 · Nov 8, 2012

ColeHarris · Nov 8, 2012

vlad0 said:
You mean in day light ? I can't be 100% certain, but that would cause the image to be over exposed because of the shutter staying open for longer than necessary.
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Not necessarily because you have to take into account the ISO setting which also plays a huge part in exposure, a low ISO setting (100) would likely counteract the decrease in shutter speed.

robinleck · Nov 8, 2012

vlad0 said:
I thought you guys would like this:

Click to view quoted image

from a kind new owner here: Nokia Lumia 920 PureView Thread - page 19

Love it, Thanks V Much

mikewp · Nov 8, 2012

ColeHarris said:
WARNING TECHNICAL INFO BELOW IF YOU?RE EASILY BORED PLEASE ADVERT YOUR EYES!

.

The problem is I haven't seen any photos that are overexposed. So.. If you are at f2.0 (wide open) and letting in all the light you can, then increasing shutter speed is going to underexpose the shot. I just wonder if they have a couple issues. 1 being it just isn't focusing correctly in daylight and 2 their in-camera processing is off.

And I'm glad someone brought up the comparison shots shots in the review. Man, those Lumia shots look like crap. I almost thought that maybe he had mistakenly swapped camera identifiers on the shots.

I have realistic expectations for pics taken with a camera. Pixel peepers need to get a life. Having said that, the daytime pics coming from the phone should AT LEAST be able to match those coming out of the iPhone.

Either way, I've got...hopefully.. my cyan Lumia on order and coming soon. Looking forward to taking my own shots.

ColeHarris · Nov 8, 2012

mikewp said:
The problem is I haven't seen any photos that are overexposed. So.. If you are at f2.0 (wide open) and letting in all the light you can, then increasing shutter speed is going to underexpose the shot.

Thats the problem I don't think the 920 is shooting all the way open or even close to it at day, its probably shooting at something like f11 to compensate for the incorrect shutter speed which is a result of faulty coding. So for example the 920 is likely shooting during a sunny day outside at something like f22 1/30 ISO100 which is completely wrong and probably the result of the blur that we've been seeing, what it should be shooting at in that situation is something like f5.6 1/160 ISO100. Thats just my guess though, I'd have to run some tests to be certain and sadly I don't have my 920 yet

TexasLabRat · Nov 8, 2012

ColeHarris said:
Thats the problem I don't think the 920 is shooting all the way open or even close to it at day, its probably shooting at something like f11 to compensate for the incorrect shutter speed which is a result of faulty coding. So for example the 920 is likely shooting during a sunny day outside at something like f22 1/30 ISO100 which is completely wrong and probably the result of the blur that we've been seeing, what it should be shooting at in that situation is something like f5.6 1/160 ISO100. Thats just my guess though, I'd have to run some tests to be certain and sadly I don't have my 920 yet

Most smartphones...L920 included...are fixed aperture. Pretty much the only two variables available are shutter speed and ISO. That should, in theory, make it easier to program...but then you have to take into account all the processing that happens...noise reduction to reduce jaggies, white balance, JPEG compression, etc. In pictures that have features that "look like" digital noise like the above posted scene with the naturally-jaggy green leaves, the noise filter seems to go ape-**** and softens the picture to mush. I also think a lot of the issues are that the camera is not auto-focusing on the correct part of the frame by default. There was a picture posted in the technobuffalo review with a mask and a tea cup where the photo actually seemed to be focused on the wall behind the mask through the eye-hole of the mask..thus making the foreground objects (mask and cup) out of focus and blurry. That particular issue can probably be gotten around by tapping on the screen to specify the focus point rather than relying on the button and having the camera guess where you want the focus point (I'm guessing...I don't have a L920 to play with yet).

All theoretically fixable issues in software...even if it's as simple as being able to turn off the brain-dead auto settings and giving a bunch of customizable profiles to use that allow the user to specify digital processing levels and the like in the short-term while they work on the intelligence of the auto-setting for a long-term fix. The physical imaging components don't seem to be the problem else the night-time photos would suck as well...and they don't.

Another thing to remember (and has been mentioned a number of times in various threads) is the relative difficulty in maintaining focus in shots using such a wide aperture. You seem like a camera buff, so I don't have to tell you..but for others here's an interesting reference I found on the subject (not apples-to-apples since they are talking about professional-grade camera gear and not smartphones..but the concepts are the same):

http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2010/10/how-to-shoot-with-wide-aperture-lenses

Working with Narrow Depth of Field

All of the above problems only cause a fraction of the trouble people have when shooting for the first time with a wide aperture prime lens. At least 90% of the first-timer problems shooting at wide aperture have to do with controlling the very narrow depth of field (the area of the image in sharp focus). How narrow? An 85mm lens shot at f/1.4 on a full frame camera focused on an object 6 feet (72 inches) away has a depth of field just under 2 inches. Anything closer than 71 inches away is out of focus. Anything further away than 73 inches is out of focus.

I literally have a conversation once a week that goes “this lens is really soft, look at this image!”.
“Nope, it’s really sharp, look at those eyelashes. Its just that her nose and her ears are out of the field of focus. Only her eye is in the plane of focus.”

In order to use a wide aperture lens properly, the photographer must have a good grasp of what the depth of field is with the lens (s)he is using, and at the distance (s)he is shooting. There are a number of good online depth-of-field calculators and several iPhone and Droid apps that provide a calculator you can carry with you. If you want and in-depth discussion on depth of field, I wrote an entire article on it here.

But a few practical rules should help in most situations:

For a given lens and aperture, depth of field is greater the further the subject is from the lens. The depth of field of the 85 f/1.4 I mentioned earlier was 2 inches when focused 6 feet away, but it’s 4 inches when focused 12 feet away, and 2 feet focused 30 feet away.
Stopping down increases depth of field some, but not that much at these wider apertures. For instance, stopping down the lens above from f/1.4 to f/2.2 at 12 feet increases the depth of field from 4 to 6 inches.
Wider focal length lenses focused at the same distance in front of the camera have a much greater depth of field. For example, a 35mm f/1.4 on a full frame camera has a depth of field of 9 inches when focused 6 feet away, a 3 foot depth of field when focused 12 feet away, and a 21 foot depth of field when focused 30 feet away.

The narrow depth of field makes focusing difficult, but, more importantly, the slightest bit of front or back focus can put the image entirely out of focus. Since every lens focuses slightly differently on every camera, I don’t recommend shooting a wide aperture lens unless your camera has autofocus microadjustment. Without it, getting perfect focus at such a narrow depth of field is a bit of a crap shoot. That also means, obviously, you need to actually use that feature and tune your camera and lens to focus optimally.

sinistar25 · Nov 8, 2012

Nice review. But damn, after all the hype around it's camera, it's photos look like garbage beside the iPhone5 photos, hopefully it can really be fixed by software updates.

zeronoise · Nov 8, 2012

I thought we had control of shutter speed(I know we do of iso) in the 920...if so can somebody that knows what they are doing take some pics in manual mode and see the results then

thinkmac · Nov 8, 2012

I found other reviews
Nokia Lumia 920 review: Windows Phone 8 and (a little bit of) camera magic -- Engadget
Lumia 920 Review: Just Too Damn Heavy

Gizmodo is obivoulsy biased in many ways (see the url path), but if you judge by all three reviews (including technobuffalo), they all point out that Lumia 920 does decent at night time compariing to other devices. But during day time, Lumia 920 isn't fairly too well. The OIS does work well though in video mode

vlad0 · Nov 8, 2012

There are only a few phones out there that have variable aperture.. I can think of only two: the Nokia N86 and the Samsung Pixon 12.

I really don't think they should be matching the iphone, but rather matching their own previous camera centric smartphones.. that should be sufficient.

doublebullout · Nov 8, 2012

vlad0 said:
What I think might be happening is their jpeg processing is tuned for low light, but it doesn't switch to "day light" when it needs to, so it keeps applying that same aggressive noise reduction, when it doesn't need to, and that is why we loose sharpness.

I agree with Vlad. The OIS should decrease blur in all shooting situations, including well-lit shots. Higher shutter speeds reduce blur even more. What we're seeing is not blur, but rather a general decrease in sharpness. The most likely culprit is that the noise reduction part of the picture processing is too aggressively applied for lower ISO numbers. Also, that f2.0 fixed aperture is great for low-light, but not as good for well-lit shots. A wide aperture will tend to introduce some softness to the shot anyway. A narrow aperture, like f11 or higher, will tend to result in sharper pictures. So it could be the combination of a fixed wide aperture and aggressive noise reduction.

Sent from my The New iPad using Tapatalk

Andreas · Nov 8, 2012

Trying to find a phone for my old folks and the 920 seems nice.
They tried my HP Pre3 so are used to webOS and hence thought Android to be a bit cumbersome. Do you reckon a WP is the way to go, perhaps the 920 is overkill for them though?

chrgeorgeson · Nov 8, 2012

Andreas said:
Trying to find a phone for my old folks and the 920 seems nice.
They tried my HP Pre3 so are used to webOS and hence thought Android to be a bit cumbersome. Do you reckon a WP is the way to go, perhaps the 920 is overkill for them though?

Personally I think the HTC 8X or S might be more there style.

blacksea00 · Nov 8, 2012

still ...
at this moment..
1. 808
2. N8
3. Iphone 5
4. Lumia 920
5. I don't care

So if they don't fix this problem with camera i go to another brand.
I just sold my N8 for Lumia 920 and now i just cry about this.

mikewp · Nov 8, 2012

ColeHarris said:
Thats the problem I don't think the 920 is shooting all the way open or even close to it at day, its probably shooting at something like f11 to compensate for the incorrect shutter speed which is a result of faulty coding. So for example the 920 is likely shooting during a sunny day outside at something like f22 1/30 ISO100 which is completely wrong and probably the result of the blur that we've been seeing, what it should be shooting at in that situation is something like f5.6 1/160 ISO100. Thats just my guess though, I'd have to run some tests to be certain and sadly I don't have my 920 yet

Cole,
The lense is fixed at f2. I've checked out a few photos that have retained all the exif data and it seems they showed reasonable iso settings and shutter speed for the situation. There is a software fix coming soon so hopefully we'll see some significant improvements. Just no reason at all for the daytime shots to look as bad as some are.. The photos out of my 800 with a smudged lense look better. Could be that some of the shots are purposely being taken bad, like focusing somewhere other than the main object in the photo. Just have to wait and see when the phone comes

ColeHarris · Nov 8, 2012

mikewp said:
Cole,
The lense is fixed at f2. I've checked out a few photos that have retained all the exif data and it seems they showed reasonable iso settings and shutter speed for the situation. There is a software fix coming soon so hopefully we'll see some significant improvements. Just no reason at all for the daytime shots to look as bad as some are.. The photos out of my 800 with a smudged lense look better. Could be that some of the shots are purposely being taken bad, like focusing somewhere other than the main object in the photo. Just have to wait and see when the phone comes

Huh for some reason I thought it was a variable aperture, thats a shame. Well I'm still not convinced that its entirely a result of the processing either, I've seen some photos that were just blurry, not missing detail but just extremely blurry and it stands that the only thing that can do that is a low shutter speed or missed focus. Like you said though it could be a problem with the cameras auto-focus not focusing where it should, and with the lens being fixed at f2 that would be all the more apparent. However the iPhone 5 has a f2.4 fixed aperture which isn't a huge difference yet it still seems to be able to produce more clarity in most shots so I still find it likely that this is a software and not a hardware problem. Anyways I guess this is all just speculation, we won't really know anything until we get our hands on these things and do some more conclusive tests, which hopefully will be very soon!

TechnoBuffalo Lumia 920 Review

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