Burst photos are 'in' at the moment, and rightly so. While no use at all for traditional photography stars like coastlines and sunsets, when it comes to action shots of kids, pets and wildlife, it can be very helpful to take short sequences of photos so that you can pick the best one later - and hopefully be pleasantly surprised. Now, 'burst' mode is part of third party utilities, commonly, e.g. here, but I thought it worth highlighting that Belle FP2's Camera application includes a burst-like mode out of the box.
I've often proclaimed that the most natural way to use the Nokia 808 is in one of its 'PureView' modes, i.e. using the oversampling to produce the legendarily 'pure', noiseless pixels, rather than shooting in the somewhat artificial 'full' resolution modes, which expose the usual raw sensor pixels and their noise. However, when using the intuitive PureView zoom, you effectively end up down at the same 1:1 pixel use. Is this a problem? Exactly how far can you zoom in anyway? When should you use PureView zoom and when should you try to resist? Hopefully I answer these and other questions below.
Yes, yes, the headline sounds like an episode title from The Big Bang Theory, but I'm actually referring to something that occurred to me while writing up my feature on tweaking the Nokia 808's photo output to mimic 2013 user preferences. Buried in the changes there was switching the 'JPG quality' to 'Superfine', but the inclusion of this change was somewhat arbitrary, so I thought it worth investigating this one camera setting on its own. Is fiddling with JPG quality worth bothering with? What are the pros and cons?
Having completed a round of Nokia 808/Lumia 1020 comparisons, it's very evident that the Nokia 808 PureView and Nokia Lumia 1020's cameras are very, very close overall, though also with very different characteristics. As is common for other 2013 smartphone cameras, the Lumia 1020 is set up to deliver more saturated colours, sharpened details and lower JPG compression. In contrast, the Nokia 808 has always erred on the side of an ultra-natural, muted, unprocessed look. But how easy and effective is it to fiddle a little in the 808's interface to deliver similar 5 megapixel results to the 1020?
As a regular compiler of smartphone 'top 5's in The Phones Show, I find myself regularly finding myself happiest at least one generation from the current bleeding edge of technology, somewhat oddly. Causing me to stop and muse - what you might not have considered is that there are far more benefits than disadvantages in doing this, not least of all in helping your wallet out a little.
While working on my review of the video capture side of the new Nokia Lumia 1020, I took the chance to do some back to back comparisons, on my phone jig, with its PureView predecessor, over on Symbian, the Nokia 808. The side by side footage is below, for your interest, covering quality, colours and zoom capability. Summary: the Lumia 1020 footage can be classed as 'better' overall, but there are pros and cons on each side and in the end it's the OIS system that pulls the 1020 ahead. Interesting stuff!
Anyone remember the heady days of late 2010 and early 2011, when a rash of twenty or so 'HD' games appeared for the likes of the Nokia N8? Some great titles, many still listed on my Games Directory, with a few other classics arriving in 2012 and one or two in 2013 (e.g. Tennis in your Face and Undroid). However the release in the last few weeks of the appalling Monsters University tie-in from Gameloft has got me thinking - is Symbian gaming now effectively dead?
A couple of days ago, I pitted the Nokia 808 against the new Lumia 1020 directly, concluding that the latter's images were more processed but did have the advantage of being more immediately attractive to non-purists. In addition, there was the flexibility of the 'live' photos (of which more in our dedicated AAWP review part). My gut feeling is that these devices from Nokia are some way ahead of the chasing pack, so why not put this to the test?
In advance of the rest of our Nokia Lumia 1020 review coverage, I wanted to deliver an answer to the question that just about all of our readers are asking. Specifically, can the Lumia 1020, with its slightly smaller (though BSI) sensor and image processing differences, deliver images that are as good as those from the existing Symbian-based Nokia 808?
Hopefully somewhat topical, given the All About sites' imminent Lumia 1020 review coverage, I show here how the Symbian-running Nokia 808 PureView can also do the 1020's trick of shooting first and zooming/reframing later. Of course, this function has been in the 808 since its launch, and yes (Windows Phone fans) the facility isn't as slick or as fast as on the 1020, but it's still a capability that's worth exploring and highlighting.
.jpg){kind=icon}
