Is the Same 20 MP Enough?

[Yazen]

I think Yazen's post nails it - and another way to see the same thing is check out smartcam.club and allaboutwindowsphone.com - the 808 still runs neck and neck, imaging wise, with the latest phones.

Edit: the 1020 is usually off in colors, but the OIS and BSI sensor bail it out in some cases as well. But it is also slow as mud all the time.

The interface on newer apps is improved (oh, I would love some manual focus), but one thing I do appreciate is the accurate colors (no yellow cast here!) and the ability to tweak imaging settings - contrast, saturation, sharpness. If you want some more sharpening, have at it...if not, "apply in post".

Will have to wait and see what they trot out...I think they missed many opportunities to make WP and now Lumia *the* mobile imaging platform. Will see if they bother with any effort or slap a me-too sensor in it and a "ooh triple-LED" flash and call it a day.

If they leverage their partnership with Qualcomm they could work to develop a discrete imaging processor.

I once took over a hundred photos and still had plenty of battery to last me the day. Couldn't possibly do that on the L1020, even with the camera grip. Processing takes years!

The software interpolation techniques they use are inferior. Nokia 808 has the imaging prowess to downsample photos. Very resource intensive on a CPU, need an imaging processor.

Having a 41MP sensor on the 1020 is purely a waste of time. It's like taking all of your photos and scaling then down in Photoshop. The details aren't going to be as fine, so they sharpen their photos. End result looks worse than the original!

Idea behind PureView was to take a large resolution image to make an amazing smaller resolution photo... 1520 fails to do this. 5MP image is grainy and looks awful.

P.S: Hate how after the portico update phones like the 920 had yellow casting and Nokia/Microsoft never fixed it

 

[psiu_glen]

P.S: Hate how after the portico update phones like the 920 had yellow casting and Nokia/Microsoft never fixed it

This times eleventy billion.

The 808 might struggle sometimes in low light without a flash, but dang it gets them colors right ALWAYS. My 928 and 929 are pretty good, but turn the flash on and it can be a roll of the dice. Great shot. YELLOW SARAN WRAP! Kids frozen (928). BLURRY GREEN PEOPLE (929).

 

[hopmedic]

This times eleventy billion.

The 808 might struggle sometimes in low light without a flash, but dang it gets them colors right ALWAYS. My 928 and 929 are pretty good, but turn the flash on and it can be a roll of the dice. Great shot. YELLOW SARAN WRAP! Kids frozen (928). BLURRY GREEN PEOPLE (929).

Yes, I do hate to use the flash on my Icon. I almost NEVER use it, regardless of lighting conditions. I hold the camera as steady as I can, against something solid if possible, and go for it with the slower shutter speed, unless it is absolutely impossible with the conditions.

 

[psiu_glen]

By the way, NEW 808's are on eBay for $120 right now. Got mine about a month ago at $130. Big stash of Telcel units evidently - the boxes appear to be opened so they can be unlocked, but otherwise, mint.

As a camera it's still impressive, as a portable vacation media unit I'm looking forward to this fall. Micro-HDMI out, 3.5 headphone jack with TV-out, DLNA wireless video out, micro-SD, USB-OTG, FM receive AND transmit. Giggity.

Just an FYI if anyone wants a toy!

 

[maverick786us]

20.1 MP is sufficient. I own Cannon 70D which is a semi-professional DSLR. What we want is better image quality, with as much details as possible, without super-sampling it to mere 5MP. We can't leave low light images at the same time.

Optimus G4 has 16MP camera, and I believe it has the best smartphone camera (if we leave Nokia 808 and Lumia 1020 aside). When you compare the image quality, the amount of details, it is much better than Lumia 930. Off course 930 uses 2.5 year imaging technology that is used in Lumia 1520.

But imagine a 20.1 MP camera with details, clarity as good as that of Optimus G4, without super-sampling it to 5MP, for that we need bigger sensors, bigger lens and a power CPU. If you have bigger sensor, the image quality is always better, sharper, with more details, but the downside is, it takes time to capture and post-processing. For that you need a powerful CPU.

1520 and 930 were just the entry points. There is much more, that a 20.1 MP camera can deliver.

 

[Yazen]

20.1 MP is sufficient. I own Cannon 70D which is a semi-professional DSLR. What we want is better image quality, with as much details as possible, without super-sampling it to mere 5MP. We can't leave low light images at the same time.

Optimus G4 has 16MP camera, and I believe it has the best smartphone camera (if we leave Nokia 808 and Lumia 1020 aside). When you compare the image quality, the amount of details, it is much better than Lumia 930. Off course 930 uses 2.5 year imaging technology that is used in Lumia 1520.

But imagine a 20.1 MP camera with details, clarity as good as that of Optimus G4, without super-sampling it to 5MP, for that we need bigger sensors, bigger lens and a power CPU. If you have bigger sensor, the image quality is always better, sharper, with more details, but the downside is, it takes time to capture and post-processing. For that you need a powerful CPU.

1520 and 930 were just the entry points. There is much more, that a 20.1 MP camera can deliver.

I'd like to believe smaller pixels on a relatively small sensor is generally bad unless you are doing something with the data.

Unless they fit a micro 4/3s I'd like to see 8MP- 16MP cameras. HTC "UltraPixel" could have been great if they'd increased the sensor size and resolution.

Dedicated imaging processor is the most important upgrade they could make. Less CPU cycles wasted, more processing can be done to produce a higher quality jpeg.
But then again I may be thinking about it all wrong.

 

[Steve Adams]

what an awesome idea, m4/3s sensor, and have the black spot in the back a full lens. WOW!

 

[EMitchell]

MSFT / Nokia used to lead the pack when it came to the camera feature. That was the one feature that made the Lumia line stand out, starting with the 1020. Now here we are a couple of years later, the competition has risen to meet the bar set by MSFT / Nokia, I'm curious if MSFT will continue to lead by pushing the capabilities of the phone camera, or if they're planning to package the same hardware with some updated apps.

 

[maverick786us]

MSFT / Nokia used to lead the pack when it came to the camera feature. That was the one feature that made the Lumia line stand out, starting with the 1020. Now here we are a couple of years later, the competition has risen to meet the bar set by MSFT / Nokia, I'm curious if MSFT will continue to lead by pushing the capabilities of the phone camera, or if they're planning to package the same hardware with some updated apps.

With most of Nokia employees laid off from MS, I seriously started worrying, if their next flagship will have revolutionary camera. Using 2 year old camera hardware with tweek in software is not going to work. They need something revolutionary, that should completely outclass the camera of Galaxy S6 Edge.

 

[Steve Adams]

With most of Nokia employees laid off from MS, I seriously started worrying, if their next flagship will have revolutionary camera. Using 2 year old camera hardware with tweek in software is not going to work. They need something revolutionary, that should completely outclass the camera of Galaxy S6 Edge.

It will "outclass" every camera in a phone out there. MP are not the whole story, and who knows, maybe they will have a completely new 20mp sensor as well. Even with the lower MP count, it will still produce the best photos available.

 

[maverick786us]

It will "outclass" every camera in a phone out there. MP are not the whole story, and who knows, maybe they will have a completely new 20mp sensor as well. Even with the lower MP count, it will still produce the best photos available.

How could you be so sure? Did MS shared their secrets with you?

Yes MP is not the whole story. We don't need anything more than 20.1 MP. But that doesn't mean that MS should downgrade and drop the MP count from 20.1 (as in the case of current flagship) to something lower

A Lumia flagship with 20.1 MP camera, that should take better pictures with much better detail than Galaxy S6 edge is all that we need to outclass the current competition.

 

[EnemiesInTheEnd]

How could you be so sure? Did MS shared their secrets with you?

Yes MP is not the whole story. We don't need anything more than 20.1 MP. But that doesn't mean that MS should downgrade and drop the MP count from 20.1 (as in the case of current flagship) to something lower

A Lumia flagship with 20.1 MP camera, that should take better pictures with much better detail than Galaxy S6 edge is all that we need to outclass the current competition.

I don't think that they're actually downgrading the camera though. If I remember correctly, the 40megapixel images from the Lumia 1020 camera were faked in order to make up for the deficiencies that smartphone cameras had at the time. Microsoft knows a lot of people want Lumia 1020 successors and Microsoft executives themselves were fans of that device. I believe that Microsoft will deliver on a fantastic smartphone camera, even if it isn't necessarily this year. I have personally been impressed by the images I've seen from the Lumia 640XL so I'm not concerned.

 

[psiu_glen]

Faked? What are you talking about?

It had a ginormous sensor, OIS, a physical shutter, xenon flash, and was fully capable of 34/38 mp shots. The oversampling/reframing down to 5mp which MS is ditching was brilliant (obviously, dump it).

The oversampling/reframing on the 20mp Lumia's worked well also, squeezing quality out of the image when "cropping" down.

Oversampling on the original Pureview, the 808 worked amazingly well (perhaps better than the WP version) though it did not offer the reframing capability. It also offered the capability for full resolution images...

Can't fake the increased resolution any more than a dollar store p&s can fake being a top flight DSLR.

 

[hopmedic]

Faked? What are you talking about?

My guess is that he's referring to the faked video about how great the 920 camera was. Not quite the same, but related.
Nokia's new PureView ad is amazing, too bad it's faked | The Verge

 

[EnemiesInTheEnd]

My point is, the Lumia 1020's camera was a 41 megapixel camera to compensate for deficiencies in smartphone cameras that don't really exist anymore. The average flagship 16-20 megapixel smartphone camera in 2015 takes images as good or better than the Lumia 1020.

 

[psiu_glen]

My point is, the Lumia 1020's camera was a 41 megapixel camera to compensate for deficiencies in smartphone cameras that don't really exist anymore. The average flagship 16-20 megapixel smartphone camera in 2015 takes images as good or better than the Lumia 1020.

Unless you want to zoom in. 808/1020 with that high of a resolution you get lossless zoom and still reap the benefits of oversampling on the way there.

Not sure where the dismissiveness comes from. Megapixels with nothing else aren't much help, but *all other things being equal*, a higher resolution IS better.

This first page of the 808 review at DPReview covers the oversampling and zoom capability pretty well, btw:

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/8083837371/review-nokia-808-pureview

(As an aside, going back to even my Icon from the 808 is tough now, just from the standpoint of being able to be a bit further back from the action.)

 

[EnemiesInTheEnd]

Unless you want to zoom in. 808/1020 with that high of a resolution you get lossless zoom and still reap the benefits of oversampling on the way there.

Not sure where the dismissiveness comes from. Megapixels with nothing else aren't much help, but *all other things being equal*, a higher resolution IS better.

This first page of the 808 review at DPReview covers the oversampling and zoom capability pretty well, btw:

Review: Nokia 808 PureView: Digital Photography Review

(As an aside, going back to even my Icon from the 808 is tough now, just from the standpoint of being able to be a bit further back from the action.)

If I wanted to zoom in, I'd be using a point and shoot or DSLR. I'm dismissive because the Lumia 1020 camera is currently ranked something like 6th place among smartphone cameras at Dx0mark. The 41 megapixels is pretty much meaningless these days.

 

[psiu_glen]

If I wanted to zoom in, I'd be using a point and shoot or DSLR. I'm dismissive because the Lumia 1020 camera is currently ranked something like 6th place among smartphone cameras at Dx0mark. The 41 megapixels is pretty much meaningless these days.

DxoMark refuses to retest anything. 1020 on Portico is it. If a Canon gets a significant firmware update? Too bad as well. Their reviews are also composite scores, which if you read the review you would see - for stills it is among the best (brought down mostly by what should have been software correctable WB/color issues) while it was lackluster in video performance.

We're not discussing P&S or DSLR cameras...with that kind of thought progression, the 4mp Ultrapixel should have been the bestest. Or heck, go back to film cameras. Maybe the old hooded cameras. Even better, let's wait while I get my easel out and paint the scene...

Good enough? A fancy shmancy flip phone, a Palm Pilot, a nice 1 mp Kodak, and maybe a fanny pack for it all. Ooh and my Discman...

edit: lol, looked at dxomarks rankings. Anyone using those as a key part of their argument...

 

[EnemiesInTheEnd]

DxoMark refuses to retest anything. 1020 on Portico is it. If a Canon gets a significant firmware update? Too bad as well. Their reviews are also composite scores, which if you read the review you would see - for stills it is among the best (brought down mostly by what should have been software correctable WB/color issues) while it was lackluster in video performance.

We're not discussing P&S or DSLR cameras...with that kind of thought progression, the 4mp Ultrapixel should have been the bestest. Or heck, go back to film cameras. Maybe the old hooded cameras. Even better, let's wait while I get my easel out and paint the scene...

Good enough? A fancy shmancy flip phone, a Palm Pilot, a nice 1 mp Kodak, and maybe a fanny pack for it all. Ooh and my Discman...

edit: lol, looked at dxomarks rankings. Anyone using those as a key part of their argument...

Well, I don't have to use them as part of my argument. All of this year's flagship cameras are on par with the Lumia 1020's camera.

 

[Gautam Bhatnagar]

sorry, possibly slightly off-topic but i guess my own issue is mainly from low light use cases... and i don't know particularly why the following would be the case... but my lumia 1020 consistently gets better pictures than my 920, and much better than all the iphones my friends have including the 6 plus.

is this some magic due to the higher mp count, or is it more likely due to better OIS, bigger sensor size or something than these other models...

either way i'm loathe to lose it to when i upgrade to whichever win10 flagship... anyone else have this experience?