Hi all, I don't actually own a 1020 - just a 900 - but I'm considering upgrading to it (or its successor) when my current phone dies.
I love macro photography, yet I've heard quite a bit of conjecture on whether the 1020's camera is good at it or not. I've trawled through tons of forums and i cant really find too much in the way of small subjects being photographed at a distance greater than a foot or so. I've read that ideally you can take a image at a distance and simply zoom in and crop, or take greater control with the manual focus and achieve better results through that. I cant seem to find samples to compare minimum focusing distance with a "normal" lumia, that is one that doesn't oversample and uses conventional digital zoom.
Detail retention is also an issue - post Windows Phone 7, most WP8 Lumias use quite an aggressive noise removal filter that nukes quite a bit of fidelity, i was kinda shocked when the 920 came out and saw image samples of what it did. The Lumia 900 is terrible with image noise, but i find that's only around the edges of the frame - which i can deal with in post easy enough. The central subject is generally noise free with a ton of detail.
Soo, yeah. I can get about 3 inches from my subject, focus, and then step in a few times with digital zoom without compromising the image too much. The results are often quite good, yet i have never seen a 1020 get as close for a comparison. Here's a pretty average unedited example at 100% crop, zoomed in three times from my 900. Probably too much, as you can see the aliasing\limits of the sensor, but an indication of how close you can get. That buttercup was around 13mm edge-to-edge.
A search for "Lumia 1020 Buttercup" brings up this, it doesn't really compare if that was as close as the photographer could get. Not sure what the result would be if he zoomed in 100%, but even from this resolution you can see the stamens have turned into amorphous blobs due to the noise filter.
Does anyone have any outstanding macro examples they've taken, or links to 1020 macro pics they've seen that really shine? Even DNG versions would be nice (if Black has been released yet?) I really want to get this phone, but it just seems to fall flat on its face for close up work.
I love macro photography, yet I've heard quite a bit of conjecture on whether the 1020's camera is good at it or not. I've trawled through tons of forums and i cant really find too much in the way of small subjects being photographed at a distance greater than a foot or so. I've read that ideally you can take a image at a distance and simply zoom in and crop, or take greater control with the manual focus and achieve better results through that. I cant seem to find samples to compare minimum focusing distance with a "normal" lumia, that is one that doesn't oversample and uses conventional digital zoom.
Detail retention is also an issue - post Windows Phone 7, most WP8 Lumias use quite an aggressive noise removal filter that nukes quite a bit of fidelity, i was kinda shocked when the 920 came out and saw image samples of what it did. The Lumia 900 is terrible with image noise, but i find that's only around the edges of the frame - which i can deal with in post easy enough. The central subject is generally noise free with a ton of detail.
Soo, yeah. I can get about 3 inches from my subject, focus, and then step in a few times with digital zoom without compromising the image too much. The results are often quite good, yet i have never seen a 1020 get as close for a comparison. Here's a pretty average unedited example at 100% crop, zoomed in three times from my 900. Probably too much, as you can see the aliasing\limits of the sensor, but an indication of how close you can get. That buttercup was around 13mm edge-to-edge.
A search for "Lumia 1020 Buttercup" brings up this, it doesn't really compare if that was as close as the photographer could get. Not sure what the result would be if he zoomed in 100%, but even from this resolution you can see the stamens have turned into amorphous blobs due to the noise filter.
Does anyone have any outstanding macro examples they've taken, or links to 1020 macro pics they've seen that really shine? Even DNG versions would be nice (if Black has been released yet?) I really want to get this phone, but it just seems to fall flat on its face for close up work.
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