Lumia 1520 low light images

[Bahamen]

But even after Nokia Black update, people have complained about softness issue under normal lightening conditions, and acknowledge that Nokia is ignore its 1 yr old flagship device, because of its total focus on new devices.

I believe the initial feedback on 1020 is that some people prefer a more natural, less sharpened look and it seemed Nokia may have toned down the sharpening/saturation in Black. So it may now look a bit soft. In fact, if you look at the 808's images it tends to be rather soft although rich in detail.

I also wouldn't say that Nokia is ignoring the 920. The 920 already has pretty good image quality for its time, and among its peer. Given the fixed hardware it may be difficult to push any major improvements to it unlike for the 1020. For example, capturing RAW does make more sense for cameras with larger sensor (i.e. 1520 and 1020). Likewise, if Nokia were to develop Lytro-like technologies in future, it would be impossible for them to transfer such technologies to the 1020 simply because of hardware limitations. Granted they can continue to optimize the imaging algorithm (which they did with Black), or introduce new camera apps (which they did with Refocus/Nokia Cam), but you can't expect any major improvements on the 920. My reading of Nokia's strategy is that they are going to focus on new breakthrough technologies, but where possible they will try to push new things to lower devices. Think about it, the 920 did not originally come with Nokia Smart Camera, it was supposed to be a new feature for the 925, but eventually it came to the 920 as well. If there is enough demand for it perhaps Nokia may someday enable RAW capture for 920, but I think at this point the 920 may not benefit too much from that.

What I think all the Pureview devices need at the moment, is the ability to determine the sharpness/saturation level. This is something missing in the 1520/1020 as well. I do think they will enable this option at some point, and likely the 92X will benefit from this.

 

[maverick786us]

Looks like, even after purchasing 1520, I will keep my 920 for video recording and low lights.

 

[Shredcow]

Ah, looks like it's correct for now - the 1520's low light features are somehow worse than the 920's.

Generation step up? Lumia 920 (2012) cam shootout with Lumia 1520

 

[Kissanviikset]

Here is demonstration how big difference there is if you use auto settings or manual settings for low light photos.

Auto settings https://lyczeg.dm2302.livefilestore...GTdA9wIVc/WP_20140128_22_09_08_Pro.jpg?psid=1 ISO 1000 1/6s
Manual settings https://lyczeg.dm1.livefilestore.co..._APpn6rGk/WP_20140128_22_08_31_Pro.jpg?psid=1 ISO 200 0.75s

Little bit more light
Auto settings https://lyczeg.dm2304.livefilestore...TpT39JJTc/WP_20140128_22_06_22_Pro.jpg?psid=1 ISO 800 1/11s
Manual settings https://lyczeg.dm2301.livefilestore...M8XhfgZZU/WP_20140128_22_06_58_Pro.jpg?psid=1 ISO 100 0.75s

As you can see high ISO value ruins image quality quite large scale. I just set ISO manually to 100 and 200 and OIS took care of rest. 0.75s shots and very sharp looking still.

Maybe future updates makes thinks better and highrer ISO values doesn't ruin photos so much. Just don't use auto settings on low light shots :wink:

 

[ragingklu]

I'm ok with having to manually adjust settings, but one thing that is (was?) nice is that you can bring the phone out of your pocket and hold the camera button, and be ready to take a pic in no time at all.... Oh wait hold on.... Need to adjust because it's dark. Just a second... Ok... now let's take the pic. Meh, it could be worse; at least it does very well on manual settings. Sometimes that can cause you to miss your window though.

I don't know what they're going to do about the crap video in low light though.... It's shamefully bad.

I do miss the camera's overall "feel" from the 920.