Yesterday at Photokina I made a video where you will see Nokia’s Ari Partinen comparing the low light performance of four different smartphone cameras.
Ari is the guy that has been making all those fabulous shots with the Nokia 808 PureView, the ones no different continents Nokia has used to show what was coming beginning of this year. In this comparison you will see the Samsung Galaxy S III, iPhone 4S, Nokia 808 PureView and the Lumia 920.
Now, with my Nokia 808 PureView I have made a near perfect shot of the famous “dark room” Nokia uses for this demonstration, and I’m quite proud of it (see below). But it took a lot of special settings (high ISO, long timing) to realize it, whereas the Nokia Lumia 920 just does it fast an in automode, without flash. It was really impressive to witness how easy that goes!
One thing though (my bad): at the end of the video you will see my Nokia 808 has a hard time finding the right focus – that is probably because autofocus was on and the lamps at the ceiling mirroring in the several displays are confusing the sensor. Sorry about that, I think the final results are still evident. Enjoy!
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I have seen this tests in the dark room. Lumia 920′s pics look like much better BUT when they take picture there is something similar to a flash that lightens up the subject. How con they compare those pics with the others? You can clearly see that iPhone, Galaxy and 808 did not have any flash or flash like light during the shooting and Lumia 920 had.
It’s not flash, it the autofocus assistance light to determin the distance to the subject. The other phones don’t have that autofocus assistance light. This light will not be used as flash, the shot is made after the assistence light.
[...] to “600 nits”.Mind you: I have no reason at all to doubt the result (I’ve seen a great comparitive test with my own eyes, filmed it, you can see the result for yourself via the link). Therefore, I really [...]
Andre, you are right, but the average automatic shooter at a NYC hipster party will not understand he has to keep his camera steady and wonder why the moving girls are al blurry.
Automatic mode on the 920 mostly serves for easy hand held low light pictures of non moving objects.
A situation where you have time to 1) adjust 2)find a way to steady your camera.
Getting more impressed over pureview 2 as time goes by. A really nice innovation! Go Nokia!
And yes, maybe not as innovative as pureview 1, but it’s another form of creating good quality images and making photography easy anywhere anytime.
Still waiting for a PV combo!!!
[...] to Mark at PureViewClub.com here we have the great video showing off how good the Lumia 920 PureView Camera with Optical Image [...]
Precisely. I would like to see an ISO 800 on 808, instead of automatic mode.
I’ve been surprised by the quality, in PV mode (5 MPx), of an iso 800 low light shot on my nokia 808. 1600 is too high, but 800 gives great results (noisy if you really zoom), but brighter than reality.
Of course, if the subject moves, it wouldn’t work.
So next tests should be:
creative mode, iso 800 on nokia 808 vs nokia 920, on static and dynamic subjects.
Then we would see how the 920 is complementary to the 808.
I don’t think you can say it is complementary – optical image stabilization probably affects image quality a great deal. I would love to have OIS in the 808 :-)
I just think that by comparing auto modes only you can get a false feeling that the 808 somehow takes bad low light photos, when in fact it doesn’t. The 920 might be better, but the 808 sure takes good low light photos as well!
I’m sure when the photographer is standing still, the 808 will be the clear winner; however, if he or she is moving while taking some pictures, the 920 will be the winner because of OIS. The point is, the higher aperture(?), the more light is coming in, but it will be blurry even if you move by a mm.. That’s where OIS comes in–to lessen or make blur vanish.
you should change the title to “Lumia 920 a clear winner in auto-mode”, because this one is deceiving
Everything that makes taking good quality pics easier is welcome. I for sure could use ois in low light for casual shooting and in moving vehicles. But, most pics are taken under normal circumstances and the quality and options (?) on the 808 is better, even in low light conditions with a little tweaking and a tripod (according to Damian Dinning).
Good stuff. Waiting for a pureview 1 & 2 combo.
Now it is nice to compare the auto modes for demonstration purposes, but I would really like to see is compare:
- take a photo with the Lumia 920
- take a photo in PureView mode, 8Mp, high ISO on the 808
Compare these two shots.
Because I can see it is easier to take good dark shots with the 920 in auto mode. But what I would really like to know is: if you take your time, tweak the settings, how do these two phones really compare?
I second that, except for the high ISO part, it must be the lowest ISO possible to take the picture without blur, beeing handheld. The higher ISO is, more noise, and that SUCKS.
Thats why Damian Dinning said that the 808 had ultimately better low light performance – pureview reduces noise. The 920 can’t compete with this. Even though the aperture is slightly bigger (F2.0 vs F2.4), pureview means that ISO800 is not overly noisy. At 5mp, even ISO1600 is quite good. Combined with a 2.7s exposure, this will trounce pretty much anything out there (920 included).
Most low light situations fall into 3 categories:
1) close subjects – use flash
2) distant, stationary subjects (eg. landscapes) – use tripod
3) somewhere in between
1 and 2 => winner 808
3 => winner 920
I’m not taking anything away from the 920, I think its great. For night time happy snaps (ie. not “set up”), it has the edge. For deliberate (ie. “set up”) shots, a tripod and 808 is superior.
the first shot on this page is what you are asking for.
a high iso slow shutter shot of the black box with the 808
As long as your subjects are not moving, so i will keep my new 808 since it will be better at concerts or places where the subjects are moving, since it has a bigger sensor.
Also i still hope that somebody will make a Multishot noise reduction mode for the 808, where the camera could take several shots at 8mp at high iso and do an average on them, so the quality would improve.
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Nokia 808 rocks, u must have used 50ISO+CREATIVE MODE+FOCUS LIGHT!!
in this lighting condition, a picture without blur using ISO 50 is (almost?) impossible with it beeing handheld. Even with ISO 100 it’s damn difficult. Not beeing handheld kinda misses the point.