Camera
Where should we start? Looking at the Lumia
920’s specifications, we found so many exciting things: an 8.7 megapixel
backside-illuminated sensor combined with the Carl Zeiss lens which
automatically focuses at F/2.0, the return of PureView brand of Nokia, the
promisingly excellent low-light performance, 1080p video recording, and the
optical stabilization (for images as well as video) – the first floating lens
and sensor in a phone which will ignore the very small shake when letting in
too much light. So, does Lumia 920 deserve that title of PureView? It is hard
to say.
Nokia
Lumia 920’s back camera
First of all, in terms of how much Nokia
can bring to the UI of Windows Phone 8’s camera, it seems a little limited.
Accessing the camera application (or holding the camera physical button) and
you will be warmly welcome to the familiar camera interface simply, but a
little sparse. Obviously, compared to all changes and built-in options for 808
PureView users, this might be a big disappointment, but according to the
automatically captured images of that Symbian device, which impressed us so
much, we are not really worried. Nokia attempted to fix this at some level by
adding other features via the Lens systems of Windows Phone 8. From Windows
Phone store (and from the exclusive collection of Nokia), you can install the
panorama function, burst shot and even a GIF creator; these apps can be
accessed from the program list of the phone and the arrow symbol on UI camera.
The
comparison between photos captured by Lumia 920 and other competitor’s
smartphones
We started to take some sample pictures and
see how different the pictures captured by the Lumia 920 compared to other
PureView predecessors and formidable competitors in the smartphone market. During
the testing period, we took the new Windows Phone of Nokia into comparison with
many other strong camera-phones, including 808 PureView, HTC One X+, Apple
iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S II, Galaxy Note II and LG Optimus G. We carried out
these testing scenarios with a very high expectation, and in the extremely low light
situation, where most of the phones failed to impress us, Lumia 920 really
improved and did a good job. Yes, there were typically some ISO noise appearing
and the results were not always splendid, but the low-light picture of Lumia
920 always took the first best place among the group. The images were not
blurred and quite clear, an obvious enhancement from the usual messy quality
due to longer shutter time in other cameras. Everything from contrast to color
reproduction in low-light images of the 920 was really outstanding compared to
any other camera that we used to check, which deserved what Nokia claimed in
that aspect in advance.
Unfortunately, the same statement is not
true for daytime photography. Here, the 920 usually creates images which are often
subtly soft. Different situation showed that this problem happened more often
than other cameras, but it appeared consistently in all poses, whether macro or
focusing on distant subjects. We were sure that there was no dust on the lens
and checked four different 920 phones to confirm the results, but on each
phone, we saw the same symptoms. Just like the lens itself could not focus in
the right way. We spoke with Nokia about this issue and were told that there
was at least one component were changed to improve the definition – but it
could not explain why we did not see any of this problem when going to Finland
to check the 920 last month. This softness usually led to some excess fuzziness
in low-light too, but we found out that we could compensate for it by
decreasing the exposure to -1/3 or -2/3.
The
full-light picture
We did not say that pictures captured in
daylight are bad – they are actually quite beautiful. But in this case, Lumia
920 could not create good enough images to defeat the rest. In fact, the Lumia
920 usually stayed in the average level among the hyper phones we listed above.
Another small complaint was the white balance which was usually off in the
murky condition outdoors (808 PureView has the same problem with the
fluorescent indoors), made some of our pictures turn to yellowish – however,
manual setting could improve this.
We hoped to check the corrected software on
the device to make sure whether it improved everything, and we truly hoped it
could make it, but at the moment, 920 customers can be forced to choose whether
the high-quality low-light pictures are enough to offset the often unstable
performance when the sun is on the head. Just bear in mind that the
smartphone’s stabilization is a miracle, saving some shots that we thought they
must have been messily blurred. It is another example of the real improvement
from Nokia – but has been not completed yet.
We also found that the 920 had trouble in
metering the scenes we offered. We often had to decide to capture a detailed
skyline or a well-lit subject. Of course, the HDR mode does nothing wrong.
Admittedly, the low-light performance defeat every other thing now, but that
performance somehow cost you some degrees of detail that you might not want to
get rid of in the full-light condition. We suggest you look over our images
gallery – we tried to take pictures in as many different environments as
possible. Noise artifacts are low (again, in low-light conditions especially),
and the file sizes show that Nokia has not compressed much. However, we still
cannot avoid the disappointment with these results; after all that
comprehensive camera performance still somehow leaves us with regrets.
A
fine photo captured in full-light condition
Better news, video recording is
surprisingly quick and stable thanks to OIS. Walking with the phone while
recoding video causes a little stutter – especially when compared with what we
are used to seeing in other smartphones, while the autofocusing can quickly
stick to points that you are interested in. You will create best videos ever on
smartphone, without any motion sickness-inducing shuttering. The phones usually
produce muted colors in our videos – we think this is still an exact
presentation of the scene. Similarly, sometimes the white balance will
automatically change while filming, which means that our videos will sometimes
jump from warm yellow to cold blue; which will absolutely benefit from some
software adjustments.
