A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose… A famous line from a poem by the American artist Gertrude Stein that always echoes in my mind when I see a picture of a beautiful rose. Now since the weather outside is still cold and moist and I’m home with some irritating kind of flu, I decided to make some close-ups of one of the roses I bought yesterday.
To compare, of course – that’s what I do :-) This time you will see a 4:3 a 16:9 and 16:9 even closer shot of that rose, captured with the Nokia 808 PureView first, Nokia Lumia 920 second and Sony Xperia Z third. After that you will see two 640 x 640 crops from the original 4:3 shots.
These shots are resized, you must know it will help your judgement a lot if you will have a look at the originals I posted in dedicated set on Flickr as well. Note that the picture resolution changes on the Lumia and the Xperia when you change the format.
All settings were on auto on all devices. The Nokia 808 PureView was on 8MP, except in the close-up (to get just a bit closer I chose 5MP). I didn’t use a tripod. Took all shots with the roses near the window, the light was absolutely the same in all shots.
First in 4:3 – Nokia 808 PureView
Nokia Lumia 920
Sony Xperia Z (13MP)
Now in 16:9 – Nokia 808 PureView
Nokia Lumia 920
Sony Xperia Z (9MP)
Now even a bit closer – Nokia 808 PureView
Nokia Lumia 920
Sony Xperia Z
To conclude this post, you’ll find two 640 x 640 crops from the 4:3 originals of all shots.
Nokia 808 PureView
Nokia Lumia 920
Sony Xperia Z
Nokia 808 PureView
Nokia Lumia 920
Sony Xperia Z
So that’s what I could do for you. If you like, you can crop till you drop from the originals I put online on the dedicated set on the PureViewClub Photostream on Flickr.
What do you think? Is Sony’s Xperia Z really underperforming that much in this case? Remember I’m not a photographer, so I’m looking forward to your comments on these close-ups – as far as I can see, I have the impression all camera smartphones perform pretty well in fact, but the Nokia 808 PureView has the most detail… Please correct me if I’m wrong.
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Well, having taken a detailed look I can say that the Xperia z offers, at least in this case, better dynamic range. Unfortunately, I noted it sharpens the photos a bit too hard, which seems to lead to some artefacts on the edges of the leaves.
You can see the better color range in the final crops. Where the 808 and the 920 seem to struggle rendering the full pink range of colours (check the bright areas, they end up showing big areas of white or saturated pink, more evident with the 920) the Xperia shows a better transition and colour range. This is more likely thanks to the exmor rs sensor on the Sony device.
The lost information on the Nokia shots can lead to some trouble when post editing the pictures.
The resolved detail however is a lot better on the 808. The 920 and the Xperia digitally try to sharpen the picture with no more information than the original picture itself (unlike the 808, which gets to downsize a bigger photo) and will never look as natural as the 808 one, although the 920 still deal with it a bit better than the Xperia.
At least that’s what I noted, and it’s my humble opinion. Would love to see more comparisons under a controlled environment, with a tripod and manual settings, just to check noise levels on all those phones under different ISO settings as well as throwing in the legacy N8 to see if Sony finally managed to grab the second place (under the 808, of course)
Looking at the noise in the Macro shots, the Xperia Z looks to have less and the outer lines seem to be more vivid, IMO ;)
Marc, thanks for the 640 x 480 crops of the images, it makes it much easier to pixel peep, rather than having to load each image individually in flickr :)
It seems with Roses, the 808 advantage is not so apparent apart from the more pleasing back ground blur bokeh. Detail wise, although the 808 does show more than both the Xperia Z and the 920, it is not that much more detail, and if you are not comparing these images, the extra detail the 808 reveals would not be missed.
Looking at the details closer, the Xperia Z in some circumstances may show more detail with less noise than the 920. This is one of those cases where the Xperia Z not only resolved a fraction more detail than the 920, but the colors seems to have a more pleasing tone to it. As for gradients of the purple, both the 808 and the Xperia Z does a remarkable job at rendering smooth transitions between the different shades. The 920 in contrast has harsh gradients mixed with more pronounced noise grain.
From this closeup comparison, it can be seem clearly, that the 808 is still the leader, but only by a margin. Again Sony’s over zealous noise reduction may have compromised detail, of which the 13MP badging does seems somewhat undeserving. The 920 has it’s own character, it seems to render images in it’s own distinct way, it may not be to some peoples taste, but to some, it may be exactly what they want.
I suspect Nokia may have rushed out the 920 with haste, to compete against the likes of iphone 5. In doing so though, they have compromised the amazing quality and possibly tainted the “pureview” branding. Instead of bring out a amazing camera, the 920′s camera just seems ordinary with the onlu inovation being the optical stabilizer. It is not all lost though and it may be possible for nokia to redeem themselves here. If the 920 has anything like the 808′s camera processing engine inside, may they too can do pixel binning from 9.7MP to 4MP, similar to the HTC. This would result in much cleaner images, plus a ability to a small zoom may be possible, but this is speculation, and this superb processing engine found in the 808 may not exist in the hardware of the 920.
Thanks for this, again. More comparisons coming up soon I hope. Wish I already had the HTC One to join these tests!
1 808
2 xperia z
3 lumia 920
Underperforming? The Xperia shots looks better than Nokia 920, The colours are perfectly reproduced as in the ones from 808. The 920 colours are not natural.. That rose looks like a violet or something
marc do tell us, which camera was closest for reproducing the colors accurate to what your saw in real life
Well, you know: it’s kind of impossible to tell – also your PC screen is of (big) influence. If I would have to choose, I’d choose the Nokia 808 PureView. The Lumia 920 seems a bit too pink, the Xperia Z a bit too pale. But the differences are quite small, I must say, in my opinion.