Nokia N9 camera introduced by Damian Dinning

Damien Dinning has promised to bring us an article all about the N9 camera, and that he has. Tweeted by @Nokia/@Nseries

http://conversations.nokia.com/2011/06/27/damian-dinning-on-nokia-n9-imaging/

Up to that, we’ve been content looking at his tweets and teaser info.

• http://mynokiablog.com/2011/06/22/nokia-n9-faster-at-taking-photos-than-iphone-4-every-other-camera-phone-on-the-market-n9-next-month/
• http://mynokiablog.com/2011/06/21/video-nokia-n9-video-sample-and-damian-dinning-talks-about-the-n9-camera-imagingdoneright/

Damien’s challenge – how to reduce camera size but still have performance CLOSE to industry leading N8? There’s going to be a massive 70% reduction in size compared to N8. Not reduced to 70% N8 size, N8 camera reduced 70%.

Some features Damien has talked about.

• Industry-first imaging sensor which is FULLY optimised for BOTH 16:9 AND 4:3 images
• Industry-leading Carl Zeiss optics
• Super wide-angle optics – the widest in the industry. Up to as much as 60% more viewing area than other broadly comparable devices
• f/2.2 aperture – largest ever in a mobile device
• Extremely responsive, especially switching from stills to video and vice-versa and shot to shot
• Touch AF for both video and stills
• Full time continuous AF in BOTH video and stills plus face detection
• HD video with stereo audio (still one of very few devices that provide high quality audio recording in video)
• Seamless workflows optimised for speed or editing & sharing
• Zoom in to images directly in the post capture view, edit and share all without leaving the camera – the most seamless mobile imaging experience
• Non-destructive editing of images – go back to the original image at any time. Undo or redo edits even months later
• New high power dual LED flash – 20% more powerful than our previous most powerful LED flash despite its compact size
• Geo tagging with place names rather than just co-ordinates
• AMBR – Automatic Motion Blur Reduction
• Not forgetting the touch to share of images between handsets using NFC technology

Main topics

New Generation Sensor

You get proper widescreen 16:9, not just 4:3 with top and bottom cut off.

Small footprint

Keep camera small, but quality high and good low light performance. N9 design cannot have a protrusion. 12MP in a smaller sensor would produce lower quality photos, so a move to 8MP again. Nokia doesn’t believe in adding pixels just for the sake of it (*cough, HTC 16MP when 5MP is still SHITE*)

The actual sensor in the N9 is 8.7MP. Another limitation is Xenon, but it does use the most powerful dual LEDs from Nokia yet, 20% brighter than their best apparently (the N86, and trust me, that’s exceedingly bright for LED).

Larger aperture, latest generation sensors as well as reduced pixels improved low light performance.

Nokia aren’t providing excessive artificial sharpening, with little or none at all unlike competitors (which Steve Litchfield has pointed out in his articles). Less noise, not oversaturated eye gouging colours.

N8 vs N9?

“I think the N8 can still retain its crown as world’s best camera smartphone given it’s all-round performance is so good, but given the N9’s camera is 70% [!] smaller, I think the team have done a really great job in getting as close as they have. In fact, for some people, in some situations, you may prefer the Nokia N9. We’ll share some sample images with you all very soon.”

Flexible autofocus options

Touch focus and continuous autofocus for film and stills, 10cm to infinity.

• Touch to focus, press capture.
• Capture instantly captures,
• long press capture button to focus and capture
• Continuous AF in stills cuts the AF lag time. When you point at a subject, N9 is already focusing.

Improved workflows

Fastest camera phone evvar! Start, click, capture.

Non-destructive still editing

• Edit images without harming picture quality. Quite often even desktop equivalents reduce picture quality when editing photos (especially when putting back into jpeg)
  

There’s no talk yet on the changes to the N9 camera interface which itself is leaps and bounds over all Nokia generations. See this rant.

Cheers Alee for the tip too!

Category: Maemo, MeeGo, Nokia, Nseries