I have a Nokia Lumia 1020 AMA

[shadyghost]

Anyone interested in some video tests of the 1020 check this out, Nokia lumia 1020 video test - YouTube. This guy has a TON of videos and all of them are incredible. Anyone still interested in bashing the 1020's camera can check this out for a more even analysis of the 808 vs 1020. Take special notice of the guy who simply downsampled the 38 image to 5 in photoshop. I personally don't see a big issue with noise but anyone who has doubts that the noise can be fixed through software take special note. Also there are some incredible images emerging now that pretty much puts the naysayers at bay. Just google (bing within last 24hrs.

 

[shadyghost]

Nokia Lumia 1020: Quick Hands On! : My Nokia Blog sorry forgot the link.

 

[umza]

Found this from Nokia Lumia 1020: Quick Hands On! : My Nokia Blog

"I emailed Elop today and this was his reply

““The oversampling in 1020 is much more advanced than in 808. In 1020, the oversampling is adaptive so that we prioritize the high amount of details in bright light, and we prioritize the low noise in low light.

This means that in bright light our 5MP images have higher sharpness and bit higher noise than 808. On the other hand, in low light our images use similar low noise tech. that we have in 808. The background for this implementation is that the subjective image quality tends to be limited by sharpness in bright light and noise in low light.

While we believe that this is exactly the right thing to do, I have also noticed that it has caused some confusion among the users. Naturally the parameters are fully tunable in future software updates if needed.””

Hope this helps"

 

[shadyghost]

What I find incredible about the video tests is the focus response. That alone is a massive upgrade to phone tech. I take a lot of video with my phones and have had the most recent flagship devices and all of them struggle with auto focus. Also it looks like the 1020 solves the most incredibly annoying issue I've had with every phone and most every point and shoot and that is the lack of manual focus. It changes the game as far as the macro shots go. I can't tell you how long I have tried to get my expensive Sony P&S and phone cameras to focus on the color red or white when shooting flowers but it is FRUSTRATING. When I had my nokia lumia 900 and GS3 I basically gave up trying.

 

[pavvento]

Quite honestly, I'm glad that you guys are sitting here debating over 20 pages about pictures. If they too grainy to you dont buy the phone.

Can we learn more about this phone besides the camera? This is an AMA.

1. So how is IPS compared to ClearBlack Amoled?

I really like the screen. There are times with weird indoor lighting that it has a bit of a yellow hue but otherwise it is awesome.

2. How is the glance feature? Does it really drain that much battery if set on?

Glance is good but not great. I haven't noticed a hit on battery and love seeing the time. It doesn't show notifications which means I still have to unlock it to check, partially defeating the purpose. Also, the charging indicator in glance and on the actual top of the phone aren't in lockstep- glance always looks around half full charge.

3. How easy of use is the Nokia Pro App? Has anybody tried taking a Panoramic picture?

Nokia Pro app is awesome. Panorama is the same app as before.

4. Battery life? Games with the 2gb Ram is it noticeably smoother?

Sorry, I don't play games.

Battery life seems real good but the Pro cam and photos definitely its harder than taking regular pictures with the 920.

Let's get some variations in this useful thread instead of bickering over pictures. This is a phone still right? Or are we just talking about a camera here?

See my responses above in the quoted text. A few pages back I linked to my Wordpress blog which has some more thoughts on the phone. Hope this helps!

 

[vlad0]

So the name of the game here is "adaptive oversampling" according to an e-mail from Elop himself.

The reason why there is more noise than the 808 in daylight photos is because they don't use as much of it during the day, so that they can get a bit more sharpness out of them

This is also why those night shots look so good.. because oversampling is working at full capacity.

Stephen Elop on Nokia Lumia 1020 adaptive oversampling and image quality (vs 808) more controls in future updates : My Nokia Blog

"The oversampling in 1020 is much more advanced than in 808. In 1020, the oversampling is adaptive so that we prioritize the high amount of details in bright light, and we prioritize the low noise in low light.
This means that in bright light our 5MP images have higher sharpness and bit higher noise than 808. On the other hand, in low light our images use similar low noise tech. that we have in 808. The background for this implementation is that the subjective image quality tends to be limited by sharpness in bright light and noise in low light.
While we believe that this is exactly the right thing to do, I have also noticed that it has caused some confusion among the users. Naturally the parameters are fully tunable in future software updates if needed.””

At least now we have an explanation from Nokia on the noise thing. I think there is more to it than just the oversampling algorithms, but at least they acknowledged it.

 

[Kissanviikset]

I like that adaptive downsampling method. 808 daylight photos lacks bit of sharpner due over cleaning of noise. Interesting to see how it works in true low light photos.

 

[Yangstax]

So the name of the game here is "adaptive oversampling" according to an e-mail from Elop himself.

The reason why there is more noise than the 808 in daylight photos is because they don't use as much of it during the day, so that they can get a bit more sharpness out of them

This is also why those night shots look so good.. because oversampling is working at full capacity.

Stephen Elop on Nokia Lumia 1020 adaptive oversampling and image quality (vs 808) more controls in future updates : My Nokia Blog

"The oversampling in 1020 is much more advanced than in 808. In 1020, the oversampling is adaptive so that we prioritize the high amount of details in bright light, and we prioritize the low noise in low light.
This means that in bright light our 5MP images have higher sharpness and bit higher noise than 808. On the other hand, in low light our images use similar low noise tech. that we have in 808. The background for this implementation is that the subjective image quality tends to be limited by sharpness in bright light and noise in low light.
While we believe that this is exactly the right thing to do, I have also noticed that it has caused some confusion among the users. Naturally the parameters are fully tunable in future software updates if needed.””

At least now we have an explanation from Nokia on the noise thing. I think there is more to it than just the oversampling algorithms, but at least they acknowledged it.

So there is a hope that the 'adaptive oversampling algorithms' can be tuned as needed in the future software update. That's encouraging. It would be better that this 'adaptive oversampling' can be turned on or off by the users. I'll probably choose to leave the oversampling on at all time, day or night.

 

[Jaripi]

So there is a hope that the 'adaptive oversampling algorithms' can be tuned as needed in the future software update. That's encouraging. It would be better that this 'adaptive oversampling' can be turned on or off by the users. I'll probably choose to leave the oversampling on at all time, day or night.

Nice idea. Hope that Nokia will read your comment ...

 

[LumiaChemist]

the oversampling is always on, otherwise you wouldnt get a 5MP pic.
"adaptive oversampling algorithms" refers to the method of interpolation.
I would guess bilinear resize for the night and bicubic sharper oder or* (motherlanguage came through xD) lanczos4 for daylight.

But i doupt the interpolation itself is adaptive, i think they go with bicubic or bilinear and if the image is iso 100-200 the image gets sharpened, else no sharpening is used.

 

[Heatnup]

here is the Mario one .

https://skydrive.live.com/pagenotfounderror

The 1020 pictures here are not the 41MP images, neither of these pictures appears to be the high res originals when you check the image dimensions and the file size.

In comparison, the High resolution images from my Nokia 920 when downloaded to a computer via usb cable come in at 3552 x 2000 resolution and near 3.84MB each. Those specs are consistent with 8.6MP. When I view the same pics on Skydrive they suck since skydrive reduces the image quality and size.

 

[vlad0]

I like that adaptive downsampling method. 808 daylight photos lacks bit of sharpner due over cleaning of noise. Interesting to see how it works in true low light photos.

That's why the 808 has manual controls over sharpness.. scale from -5 to +5 ... and at +5 daylight photos look pretty sharp

But in auto settings, yes.. the 1020 will be sharper by default

 

[JustToClarify]

that photo is sharp AND clean, I can't believe they didn't implement sharpness control in 1020...probably will come with an update

 

[lostaggie]

Interesting and matches up with a lot of comments here...

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/flow/item/17994_The_first_Nokia_808_vs_Lumia_1.php

 

[Flavio76]

People are talking about comparison 808 versus 1020... With all due respect, anyone did the pocket comparison. I mean , how does it feels in your pocket?

 

[vlad0]

People are talking about comparison 808 versus 1020... With all due respect, anyone did the pocket comparison. I mean , how does it feels in your pocket?

The 1020 will take a little more room in your pocket .. its got couple of cubic centimeters on the 808

Nokia 808 PureView vs. Nokia Lumia 1020 - GSMArena.com

But it depends on your pockets I guess haha

Anyway, impressive job by Nokia on the packaging of the 1020.. a lot of cutting edge tech packed in there, I just hope there was room for some heat shields on the board.

 

[TexasLabRat]

that photo is sharp AND clean, I can't believe they didn't implement sharpness control in 1020...probably will come with an update

Sharp and clean until you look at the sky...and lo and behold...the same grainy block "mess" that folks are crucifying the 1020 over. It would seem that the 1020 defaults to maximum sharpness when compared to 808...and I agree with you that the 1020 just needs a sharpness widget to tone it down and it will be apples and apples in daylight. I have a feeling that a lot of the cool stuff the pro-cam app brings to light is due to custom coding that leverages the Hexagon DSP module (instead of the "normal" camera chip on the SoC) for the crunching and so having an application interface that allows for selectable sharpening is likely a time-consuming programming issue that will eventually make its way to the phones. From what I understand, using the DSP is a lot like programming for gpgpu in that the code is similar to writing shaders that are fed to the chip..which is very different than what one would do on the cpu as part of the general purpose code in the app itself which leverages the existing MS API's to the "normal" hardware like the multimedia ("camera") chip etc. I'm still digging into this but that's my impression so far..and correlates with prior Nokia statements on how a lot of low-level code development was needed between them and Microsoft in order to pull off the processing that the 1020 requires on the MSM8960 SoC platform.

Taking Elop's response with a grain of salt, I'm guessing that Nokia went with the sharpness-to-the-max path as a direct result of the pissing and moaning about the overly soft, smoothed images from the 920 when it was launched. The pendulum swung too far and perhaps they didn't have time to implement an adjustable sharpness control due to the aforementioned technical/time to market challenges so they chose settings that would address prior criticisms. Also, you can always apply a smoothing filter to a sharp original and get a nice looking photo...it doesn't work the other way around nearly as well so if Nokia's going to err I prefer it to be on the sharp side since I can smooth it out in photoshop if I want later.

 

[Yangstax]

Adaptive oversampling on 1020.

Lumia 1020 has “Adaptive oversampling” different from oversampling used on 808 PureView!!

 

[kalel_1000]

After playing around with the sample photos posted on Nokias website at Nokia Lumia 1020 ? Nokia ? Press

I have realized that to get 5 mp pics without that ugly grainy noise, the full res 34mp photos can be re-sized in photoshop using bicubic or nearest neighbor methods. This produces photos very similar to what we are used to seeing from the 808.

Other than that, Nokia's 'adaptive' oversampling, while having a lot of detail produces just too much noise and over-sharpness.

I am sorry if I came of as very negative early on, I have no personal problem against the 1020. I have decided I will be getting one as well but just because I have supported Nokia from the beginning and always gave their products a chance.

Difference between the 808 and the 1020 for me would be that I will be shooting most of my photos only in full res on the 1020 versus the 5mp i used to shoot on the 808.

 

[JustToClarify]

Sharp and clean until you look at the sky...and lo and behold...the same grainy block "mess" that folks are crucifying the 1020 over. It would seem that the 1020 defaults to maximum sharpness when compared to 808...and I agree with you that the 1020 just needs a sharpness widget to tone it down and it will be apples and apples in daylight. I have a feeling that a lot of the cool stuff the pro-cam app brings to light is due to custom coding that leverages the Hexagon DSP module (instead of the "normal" camera chip on the SoC) for the crunching and so having an application interface that allows for selectable sharpening is likely a time-consuming programming issue that will eventually make its way to the phones. From what I understand, using the DSP is a lot like programming for gpgpu in that the code is similar to writing shaders that are fed to the chip..which is very different than what one would do on the cpu as part of the general purpose code in the app itself which leverages the existing MS API's to the "normal" hardware like the multimedia ("camera") chip etc. I'm still digging into this but that's my impression so far..and correlates with prior Nokia statements on how a lot of low-level code development was needed between them and Microsoft in order to pull off the processing that the 1020 requires on the MSM8960 SoC platform.

Taking Elop's response with a grain of salt, I'm guessing that Nokia went with the sharpness-to-the-max path as a direct result of the pissing and moaning about the overly soft, smoothed images from the 920 when it was launched. The pendulum swung too far and perhaps they didn't have time to implement an adjustable sharpness control due to the aforementioned technical/time to market challenges so they chose settings that would address prior criticisms. Also, you can always apply a smoothing filter to a sharp original and get a nice looking photo...it doesn't work the other way around nearly as well so if Nokia's going to err I prefer it to be on the sharp side since I can smooth it out in photoshop if I want later.

hmm yeah it's a little bit visible in sky but don't forget it's 8 MP photo (compared to 5 on 1020) and I compare it to 1020 pictures not smooth 808 5 MP photos so it's all relative..and I don't think you can smooth it that easily, I mean it's easier to sharpen the photo to your liking than to smooth it back to look natural because you can't always remember how natural looked like...