My Nokia N8 12MP Camera Is Better Than Your Compact Digital Camera (Really?)
One of the biggest selling point of Nokia N8 smartphone is its 12 megapixel Carl Zeiss lens camera with Xenon flash for high resolution photos (4000 x 3000 pixels) and HD video recording (720p). The camera sensor size is 1/1.83″, with ND filter, geo-tagging, and face detection.
Is the smartphone’s camera better your compact digital camera? Let’s find out by yourselves!
Here are the sample photos I took using Nokia N8 camera at 12 megapixel resolution and upload to Flickr without editing/touching/modifying/blah-blah.
outdoor, afternoon. Clear and nice color.
Read on for other sample photos and HD video test.
outdoor, afternoon. Same time as previous photo. You see the different?
Indoor, low light, flash on. The Nokia N8 camera flash is as powerful as your compact digital camera!
outdoor, evening, low light. Notice the light flare.
outdoor, afternoon.
indoor, closeup, low light.
outdoor, low light, closeup. This was taken at the nearest distance possible using closeup mode.
Click here for Full 12 megapixel resolution photos.
Nokia N8 HD video recording test
The following is the HD video shoot using Nokia N8 with “video stabilisation” on, without editing and upload directly to YouTube using web-based uploader.
You might want to watch the HD video at full-resolution.
My two cents
Overall, I like the quality of Nokia N8 camera, especially at closeup. It cannot beat a 12MP DSLR’s quality but, for the first time, the quality is competitive to a compact digital camera.
It is nice to have a camera in pocket which also serve as a smartphone at the same time.
Do note that high megapixel DOES NOT mean better quality. It only means you can have larger print of the photo, say a human-height size poster.
If you are taking pictures using Nokia N8, try to avoid using the Xenon flash whenever possible. Yes, the flash is more powerful than other smartphone’s crappy LED flash but the output, most of time, is disappointed. Also, flash is battery monster.
