Camera group test: Nokia N86 8MP, N97, N82 and Samsung i8510

N86 is the clear winner. With adjustable aperature it should be.
N97 seems to suffer the same fate as N95, slightly over-exposed photos, still very good quality for a phone camera.

Fantastic, this is the kind of test that everybody has been begging for!

Can you PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE (hmm.. more begging) take a picture in pitch black/very dark condidtions with the flashes on but say 2-3 meters away rather than very close like in your snail picture. I would love to see the difference between Xenon and Led under such a scenarion. PLEASE! :D

I did a bit of tweaking on the colors and levels of N82 and N97 images. The best I could get out of the N97 image was much nicer and colorrealistic than that of the N82 (=more bluish). I think there is a lot of space for firmware improvement. Shaming the N86 even a bit ;-) Give it a try yourself!

(/me looks at the N97 strawberries shot) Those strawberries are rotten; you'd better throw them away... (now /me looks at the N86 shot) No, wait! They're still good, and they look delicious! Seriously, what's wrong with the N97's camera?!?
Also, the flash test shows what I've maintained for a while now, namely that two leds are not necessarily better than a single one. In the N97 shot the grass in the two lower corners appears darker, while in the INNOV8 one both lower corners are well-lit.

The N82 is dead?
The N86 - "Nokia's new Nseries imaging flagship"- make it completely obsolet?
I own a N82 and for me the photographic performance it is super important, so in this case: it is mandatory the upgrade?
Wath do you think about it?
I'll appreciate all your opinions. :)

Are these all handheld shots, or did you use some form of stabilisation to enable a degree of consistency between the non-flash pics?

viipottaja - since you asked so nicely (and because I know you're a regular commenter), I've just popped outside and taken one more group of photos as you suggested. Sorry the subject is a bit boring, but it is quite revealing.

snoyt - yes, you can tweak the images and get interesting results. I definitely expect the N97 camera to improve with future firmware. Potentially quite a lot too.

Unregistered - yes they are all hand held pictures. I really like to take the i8510 strawberry one again if I could (so I'd suggest ignoring it). Stabilization would help, but its rather artificial compare to the typical real world shot.

Thanks Rafe! Really appreciate that. And indeed, quite interesting results. I was expecting the N86 to do ok, but am still very suprised to see it perform that well. Obviously, N82 is still better but not quite as big a margin as I would have guessed.

Every time there is camera review there is a flame war of Xenon vs LED. The following article compares the benefits and disadvantages of both (though the manufacturer is biased towards LED) when used in cell phones.

http://www.cap-xx.com/news/photoarchive.htm#Xenon

Once you read it I hope you will know that there is just now way to stick that cap into any of the new slim phones...

Besides, it's all software nowadays anyhow since there is only a handful of cmos manufacturers left.

Most objects(my wee daughter i mean) wont be that still tough....would be crucial to see how n86 performs, in low light/moving objects versus xenon on N82.

thanks , czarnikjak

rafe, i always hear that firmware updates improve camera performance and it does (it certainly did on my n96) but nokia are using the same camera modules and sensors in these devices, what is stopping them from using an already good algorithm on another device using the same camera and flash hardware then it would be good out of the box, right?

Steve...

I too have to echo many of the comments above...

Can you PLEASE take some of PEOPLE in dark or low light conditions.

In other words the EXACT sort of photo we really ARE likely to be taking most, and for whcih, the absence of a Xenon flash used to make things a waste of time.

We all want to see if the new LED Flash of the N86 makes it at least a possible option.

As these are arguably (under those conditions at least) the very sort of photo we are most likely to take (us normal people, not you clever techno sorts - winks), then these are what we also want to see included.

As such, by not including these sort, you'[ve left as much UNKNOWN and not answered for us, as answered, wher the N86 is concerned.

If doing these sort of shots means a FAIL, at least be honest enough to show us this.

On the other hand, if it is a revalation and shows that it is possible of a decent fashion, it will be great news.

But as it stands, without these sort of shots, we simply know nothing/are no further forward in answering one of the burning key questions of the N86...

Cheers mate - great review as ever, excepting these omissions...

1. I'd like to see a low-light test of a moving subject. say a crowd scene or band at a pub. you can try the video under the same conditions <smile>

2. I'd really like to see how the i8910 would go in this test. cf the i8510

3. Please do a video comparison too!

@Rafe .. yes the N97 will improve out of site with firmware updates. Hopefully we don't die of old age first.. or wander off to buy an iPhone, Samsung or Sony.

I mostly use my phone camera for pictures at the table in a pub with friends. Seeing something similiar would be great. The xenon flash should be a clear winner there, though, as everyone are fairly close.

I would love to see Nokia release a S60 candybar with the N86 camera and a xenon flash. Kinda like the N82, but just the camera replaced. Replacing it with the N86 keypad would be nice too :tongue:

SE C901 have a xenon flash and is 13mm thick. That's certainly thin enough for me.

the n82 the darknight is here to stay..n82 still has the best captures in the dark..if they would have put in a xenon plus led for video recording noting can beat n86..but i guess i will hope for nokia to make 1..

Did you see me asking for a thin phone? All I asked for was Xenon.

S60 fans have always been used to oversized bricks and don't really care for girly razor thin phones. I think this is a classic case of missing customer focus. Nokia has enough bandwidth to release separate devices for all customer segments. Great you've released a multimedia computer for the mass market in the guise of N97. Now its time for you to release a multimedia computer for S60 fans, one that has a bigger processor, more ram, better sound quality and ofcourse Xenon.

another winning article for N86 :) it is no doubt the best camera phone at the moment and deserves to be called the N82 upgrade..

maybe you could also compare video capture between the 4 phones

Thanks a lot for the comparison Rafe. You have done a wonderful job here in showing the strengths and weaknesses of all these devices.

Can you please add some snaps of people as requested by the other posters?

And I agree that the n86 is producing lovely pictures. Only thing that is bothering me is that bluish tingle of the LED Flash in the picture of the car. But like you said, that's an extreme case and will come up not that frequently.

Rafe, for the car and chair in the dark, you use automatic scene or you use night scene, because it does make quite a lot of difference, tq

To answer the question about shooting people, Rafe and I haven't shot 'social' scenes yet because we can't shoot each other easily (too far apart) and we really don't want to shoot our non-geek family and friends (who'd hate to be up on the net for all to see).

Anyone here own an N86 and have an active night life in a place where it's acceptable to take photos? Or have 20-something friends who don't care about being photographed? Feel free to submit more samples to Rafe or myself.

Rafe,

Thanks for the comparisons! It's definitely interesting to see how the variable aperature improves low-light non-flash photos. I hope this is a sign of a future in which camera phones have more of the technology seen in regular cameras.

One question: Did you really feel that the N86 had better color reproduction in general? Since I can't compare the photos to the real settings it's hard to say. To me the N86 images looked oversaturated. Of course, this is a popular way to go in digital cameras and with film. People feel like more and brigther color is "better" or more "real." But to me it seems fake. Sadly (since I've been looking forward to the N86), I felt that the i8510 often had what seems like the most realistic (lower contrast, lower saturation) images. I think this may be why the i8510 struggles, as it were, with the sky. It is the oversaturation of the other devices that makes the blue of the sky more apparent, even if perhaps that does not reflect the actual conditions. The N82 to me also seems a little better on colors, insofar as its images are less saturated (something I hate to say, since I'm tired of people carrying on so much about the greatness of the N82). I'd hate to think that Nokia has decided to go for the cheap over-saturated look that so often dominates consumer photography. It would be interesting to see, in Steve's review, some shots with color charts that could more scientifically test the color accuracy of the phones.

That said, it was stiking to see that the N86's LED flash seems to lack the bluish cast that LED flashes so often impart to images. That's definitely an improvement.

cb474

The dual Led of N86 it´s a desillusion, as expected...:frown: Without a Xenon flash it´s not possible to have a great all situation camera.

Hi Rafe,

thans for review. I agree with that Nokia N86 8MP is a very good camera so I will buy it. But at this moment, I must say that pictures from N86 are not good as they could be. It looks like a big compression in jpegs so details are missing. In the comparison with i8510 I think that i8510 takes a better shots (sharper) and in more cases better color submission. N86 take colors in hot spectrum, but i8510 in more realistic cold spectrum. I hope that next few firmware releases will patch this disadvantages in N86. It does not change the fact that N86 8MP is the best non-touch screen smartphone ever.

JKA

Why? Because of Xenon? I think you should wait until you see further comparisons in low light between N86 and N82, I think you'll be surprised. Yes, from a freezing the subject perspective xenon will always be better than LED but I wonder out of all the pictures you have on your PC's hard drive how many are taken with flash?

Agree, N82 is superior on inside photos, where the Xenon flash do the good job.
But the market go tell if Nokia it´s on right track, and I think they don´t, and the declining of market share it´s a consequence!