SlashGear and Engadget’s Nokia 808 PureView Galleries
Engadget have brought together, what seems to be, their own sample pictures from the Nokia 808 PureView.
I’m not quite sure who was tasked with taking the photos but they did decently enough. Going through the whole gallery, you can even see some of the 808 PureView team (though I don’t know how to look at anything beyond the compressed Engadget photos).
Some shots look terrible, i.e. not even in focus. At the very worst, it could be the 808 having difficulty focusing. Let’s hope we don’t see that fiasco manifest itself in some people’s testing introducing human error, like it did with the N8 eh when the 808 is compared. Camera wise, I think everyone knows it’s all about the Nokia 808 PureView. There are other things important in smartphones too, but whilst we’re on the topic of just imaging, well that’s where the 808 comes out on top.
A lot of the current crop of new gen competitor smartphones are having difficulty beating even the N8 so it won’t be too hard to guess how the 808 will do. Having said that, we still have not seen definitive comparisons to resolve just how much the 808 PureView has improved over the original N8.
http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/23/nokia-808-pureview-sample-images/
They’ve got a gigapan box at the bottom so you can zoom in and check out the clarity of the photos yourself. You’ll need Flash/disable flashblock to see it.
Oh hang on – SlashGear also has their own photos. Well, these ones look a whole lot better. For one, more are in focus. e.g. compare the cakes. Chris also takes the time to actually talk about his experiences with the camera. I can only see two lines of text in the first story linked. Chris has a good overview which you should definitely check out.
We’ve been consistently amazed by the output from the 808 PureView today, with the phone being capable of some astonishingly good shots both at maximum resolution and at the lower resolutions too. Colors are rich and accurate; noise is incredibly low.
http://www.slashgear.com/nokia-808-pureview-explored-hands-on-samples-23229573/
Great to hear that there’s little lag and that photo taking is real fast!
Composition can vastly alter our perception of a good photo and thus a good camera. It takes a good eye for photos to produce some really beautiful images. It’s not merely just about having a really good camera. Having said that, it’s important that the camera you have can take great pictures in pretty much all conditions. Reliability is hugely important to me and knowing that I can take out the camera and produce a picture worth keeping is priceless. It’s no good to have photos looking great only some of the time. It is also important to me that should you want it to, your camera can give you the freedom to push your photography. I think the Nokia 808 is the best camera phone to offer that.
Chris confirms that this is not the phone for Instagramers. Well, technically it is the best one if the app was available, but I get what he means. Why should Nokia try and create the Pure Quality only for people to crap it up with dozens of applied filters so the final image no longer resembles the photo you took? BTW I don’t know if it’s instagram or the quality of the phones taking the initial picture – sometimes the images look great when I see them as a thumbnail but look at the larger pic and they often look like trash. Perhaps if they had the N8/808 they could have that raw brilliance to work with/defile. I mentioned before that I think it’s great that Instagram is making people really interested in taking photos. What I think it is most brilliant at, however, is hiding the crappy quality and crappy shots. N8/808 quality not needed, just a potato.
Here’s a quote you guys will love:
If ever a phone could encourage people to reconsider Symbian, the 808 PureView is probably it, too.
http://www.slashgear.com/nokia-808-pureview-explored-hands-on-samples-23229573/
I’m a Nokia fan and although you might expect me to instantly love every Nokia product, I haven’t had a proper interest in a Symbian phone as big as this since the N8. Even then, along with my praises, I made my own reservations about possibly stepping down from Maemo.
http://mynokiablog.com/2010/06/04/why-the-nokia-n8-wont-be-like-the-nokia-n97-nokia-n8-vs-nokia-n97/
But I think (hope) that Belle FP1 has got a lot of the key issues I had with Symbian fixed. The hardware is much faster and the benefit of such an amazing camera with a very usable Symbian phone is quite appealing to me.
Cheers steelicon for the tip!
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Best quote
“N8/808 quality not needed, just a potato.”
some of them are overexposed, but overall the quality in pureview mode is amazing.
Seems to be some pretty narrow focal lengths in some of them..They could have been better in better hands.
This phone should have been marketed alongside Lumias.
There is nothing wrong with Belle on this phone.
Is engadget just relaying SlashGear’s article or were they invited to capture the same objects and publish their own articles?? For me, the objects are the same but SlashGear pictures have more quality and engadget in their typical fashion, do not do Nokia’s justice =_=
You Noticed too?
yeah, its pretty obvious.
Totally underwhelming presentation.
What is up on Nokia’s mind? These pictures are awful! Either the lens was dirty or it has an awful flare performance, just like the N8. With time I’ve learned that I had to improvise a hood by putting one hand above the phone in order to avoid this excessive flare coming from the lenses.
Some pics at relatively low ISO (160) are pale and have very low saturation, just like those cakes shots.
I wonder why they would do that? Why would they invite all these reviewers at the Zeiss HQ to do such a bad presentation. Even the place selected was utterly uninspiring!
I am mesmerized by this lack of sensibility coming from Nokia.
As to Engadget’s samples… Typical.
Look at the examples of zooming they’ve published. They are all out of focus. I wonder if they have focused first on the ground and then pointed to the horizon.
Do they think we are morons?
Somewhat unrelated but I’m curious: has anyone who handled this phone know what’s that black strip at the bottom of the rear of the phone? Is it rubber to prevent slippage?
yes, primarily for Camera grip.
wait till gsmarena gets it
they are the only ones good with
mobile camera
I have a feeling DPreivew might do a review of the camera as well.. now that would be proper
I already sent the request to DPreview. You should do as well. If they review that camera, it would be amazing to compare it with others in their database.
BTW, I’ll also publish a proper, comparative (to even the Nikon D700) review as soon as I get the 808…
There’s going to be a bunch of us doing comparative reviews.
Just a shame that my SLR isn’t that great, but I do have some nice glass (50mm F1.8), but the A200/FT1/N8/808 will be a nice selection. May see if I can get colleagues to bring along their EOS550D and iPhone 4S …
What’s the price comparison of your phone to the 808?
*slow clap* =))
You blog at iPhoneLife right?
yup
yeah a lot of the shots didn’t look too good its as if they had some greasy fingers on the phone
looks like nokia brought these guys out to the same spot which is a good sign that Nokia is trying at least some
even still the detail in some of those shots is quite good
well at least there not has bad as the time Engadget did did that bloody n8 shots (that look worse then anything i have ever taken in my almost 3 years of owning that phone).
but still has that thing where the shots are decent, but other website ie slash-gear make a show of them.
really i have said it before , if many other websites are using the same device and getting much better results you have to ask yourself if the device is at fault or more likely the users(Engadget staff).
How about Engadget just taking pictures and not polishing them by tweaking before shooting?
I hate to see demo pictures perfected before they were taken. That’s just unrealistic and gives false impressions.
Engadget is not to be trusted in anything on the 808. They made the N8 photos look like crap, said they probably had a faulty device and would fix them and never did.
You can easily tell the difference between the pics from engadget and the ones on Slashgear. Its as if engadget had purposedly screwed up theirs.
lol @ the difference between the engadget pictures and the slashgear pics. Honestly, its like they used 2 different phones. The slashgear pics look amazing.
@Paul, Eric, and Recruta:
Great comments….
Anyway, I think it’s a great move from Nokia so if engadget bash Nokia 808, they have another back up from SlashGear.
And, most people do “point-and-shoot” with their iPhone or the like. They never play around with ISO, exposure, White Balance, etc. No matter how great Nokia N8, the first time I own it, my shot was worse than HTC Desire. But, as I learned how to tweak it, it keeps on getting better……
So, we should expect from “Automatic” mode, Nokia 808 could “besting” other competitors…
But seriously Engadget…. they are just like a joke….
It’s nice to see some shots made by amateurs. After all it’s all about amateurs who will use the 808. There may be a couple of pros but those are just the minority.
If Engadget is willing to provide us some realistic photos made my amateurs and not by all tweaking pros, that will tell us how good the device is in the hands of the real users.
It’s sad to see a phone camera working well only if you tweak it. Most of the everyday occasions are just those point & shoots. Not those where you set every possible setting manually.
Im pretty sure, that any amateur will make much better shots with my N8 than with any other phone.
Are you suggesting that the N8 in the hands of amateurs is better compared to the 808? Probably not.
It’s true that a better camera gives even amateurs more possibilities. However it’s not that simple. It’s all about the usability, how well the device fits into your hand and espesially what happens when you actually take the picture. In most cases the automode should be the most polished and best mode there is. People tend to take pictures and not tweak with the settings.
One of the reasons why Nokia has lost it’s market share was the need for tweaking a little bit everything.
808 is not yet on market, i didnt’ cound that one
It will be interesting to see how well 808 will work in the hands of the amateurs. It’s design is very unfamiliar for mobile phones. Is that kind of a design something that messes up some pictures taken by amateurs or is it’s huge size going to work for increasing the quality of the pictures? Time will tell, but it’s certain that something is going to happen because of that design.
The actual design may resemble a flashlight or some other unknown tool and it may turn off some buyers but it will not make the pictures automatically worse. It just might be the other way around.
Are engadget’s pictures taken in full 38 mp mode?
Funny. Almost everyone want just those 38 Mpix and the actual interest in PureView is minimal. It’s actually hard to understand why anyone interested in full power of the camera, would want to take sub 38 Mpix pictures. It’s still possible to do the PureView effect in software after the image is taken. However if you take the picture using PureView 5 Mpix it’s not possible to convert it back to 38 Mpix.
So if the most important part of the design is that ability to take 38 Mpix images, it shouldn’t be a problem to add that camera module to the Lumia and just take 38 Mpix images. That’s what people want after all.
While it’s obviously true that you cannot upsample the 5mp picture into a 38mp one and recover the lost detail, afaik the “pureview” signal processing algorithms are quite advanced and they work before the image is compressed into jpeg, so the in-camera resulting 5mp picture should probably be better than downsampling a 38mp jpeg file into 5mp in photoshop. The only way to get the same would be if the phone could store 38mp raw images and nokia had provided a raw converter.
The PureView is just about adding several pixels together. This has been done for years and it’s really not so complicated task to do. Sure, there can be more and less advanced techiques but it’s still just adding pixels. Which can be done on software. What it comes to jpg images, it can be done from 38 Mpix image because the jpg is not too compressed.
If the jpg was too compressed, those 5 Mpix images would be just too scrubby with or without PureView. What would be the point in compressing jpg too much? That would ruin the whole idea of PureView.
So, for an advanced user there really isn’t any compelling reason to shoot the pics in less than 38 Mpix.
i think you’re confused/mistaken
Have you seen my pixel-level sharpness tests in my MWC reports?
Even the 3Mpixel binned images have at least as good detail as that of a 10-12Mpixel Bayer sensor.
That is, there IS point in using binned modes. Another advantage is their being MUCH faster to store the images (not that the 38Mp mode would be THAT slow…)
No, those I haven’t seen. Surely there is a huge difference in those images. But that’s not the point and I’m not comparing 808′s images to anything produced by some other device.
The point is that the actual PureView process can be done after taking the picture. Actually the device does that instantly after taking the 38 Mpix image and stores the 5 Mpix version.
There are uses for taking less detailed images, but somehow majority of peoples are interested in about those 38 Mpix ones.
Speed is another issue. Now if it takes over a second to take two pictures with the 38 Mpix mode, it will be tempting to use those artificial PureView modes with less pixels. I don’t recall what was the best resolution with the PureView effect but it’s probably 12 Mpix max with a reasonable impact on the image quality.
It’s interesting to see how long it will take for someone to release software for getting the PureView effect for the 38 Mpix images. Maybe even for other resolutions and phone models. If the PureView effect is done in software there are really only a limited amount of countries where Nokia could use patents to prevent that from happening.
Currently, it’s not known whether PV is “just” simple, blind pixel binning (as would do any image resizer tool on the desktop) or is Nokia’s claim true – that is, they DO do some DSP and other “magic”.
PureView is deninitely not some simple pixel compounder. However it is something that takes several pixels and produces one of those. The same thing can be done in software no matter how complicated the actual process is.
It is not identical to any other resizer. No way. It’s much more sophisticated, but it’s certainly no more magical than than the other products that are claimed to be such a thing.
Nokia has told us the idea behind the PureView and that’s all doable in software. If it isn’t, can you point out or guess anything specific which would require special hardware not possible to implement in software?
You don’t really know how pureview works do you.
I don’t know how it work… I only care of the qualitys of the final product, and holy cows, they’re astonishing… Lord US, well I dont know what he want, but has made a good point, people associate higher number with higher quality, and if Nokia doesn’t promoto PureView Mode, most will go directly to cam seetings just to set it up to full res pics, fortunatelly full res pics are really good too, PureView mode just put it in another level…
@Lord US PV mode isn’t software only, it’s a combination of soft and hardware, the first is Nokia propietary alghoritms the second is a DSP co-processor that handle a huge amount of info coming from the image sensor, the second one is the “guilty guy” that isn’t allowing PureView on Windows Phone (It’s no so easy to implement co-processor due to MS restrictions on the Hardware)
No it’s not, and please inform yourself on signal processing before assuming that Photoshop-like image manipulation and pixel averaging is even close to the general principle of oversampling used in the PV. The DSP on 808PV uses far more data than just pixel saturation/luminosity when cramming pixels together to get the final 2/5/8Mpix image – the data that is permanently lost once the image is saved. It has nothing to do about cramming pixels together as at the point where PV operates there are no pixels to talk about. Once the signals from individual MOSes are processed through PV algorithms, then and only then pixels are created, which is a fundamentally different principle to pixel averaging, and which is why there is almost no noise in the PV processed images – if it was done by pixel averaging the noise would affect individual pixels at least in their luminosity component, and in low-light conditions they would severely affect the saturation as noise (blips) pixels usually have high saturation.
If there was a RAW export from the sensor with all the collected data (signals, not sub-pixels like in many RAW formats), and Nokia’s post-processing algorithms available outside of the 808PV’s DSP stack, then you could claim that there is no point (except for the lower file size) in taking 2/5/8Mpix images w/ PureView enabled.
I’m not refering to some Photoshop-like image processing.
I guess you have some source for that claim about using so much data that will be destroyed after the image is saved? Sure, jpg compression does some damage but it does the same thing to those 5 Mpix images.
Now, Nokia has told us that they add several pixels to one. I didn’t talk about averaging pixels and that can’t be the only way PureView works.
I don’t think there has been specs floating around for the PureView image processing. It would be nice to know how much each element affects the resulting pixel.
If the 808 is not capable of producing those RAW images and something very important for the PureView is really lost, then there is definitely lot’s of improvements left for the PureView technology. Maybe we will see the upgraded PureView in Lumia?
You just need the data from the sensor and after that you can do the PureView effect in software.
I asked because i’m intrested in how much better the downsampled images are if you look at noise and sharpness…
omg i threw that one with the girl blowing the dandelion into photoshop and had a bit of fun with PP and MY GOD I didn’t really have to do anything and it is stunning!
There’s also a first look and images on flikr on gizmodo uk
More pictures from the “same event”:
http://recombu.com/news/the-nokia-808-pureview-a-camera-that-will-make-us-switch-to-symbian_M17801.html
A little difference to those Engadget-jokes, don’t you think? What is wrong with those bastards, do they think that their readers are idiots?
Maybe… They’re hardcore Apple lovers… and you know how act Apple lovers when they can’t justifict its blablabla
Folks, loo at these samples for the same venue, taken by the guys at http://www.ephotozine.com:
Scroll down to the benchmarks to see the difference between Full Resolution @ ISO1600 and 5MP @ the same ISO. The Pure View is indeed magical in terms of noise reduction and detail preservation!
I won’t post links to the pics here because the last time I did my comment got blocked.
Gizmodo showed some nice photos, and really liked the camera.
Article: http://gizmodo.com/not:apple#13378643001824Gallery: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gizmodouk/sets/72157629874936788/
—-
However, what i really don’t like are their comments about Symbian.
“In my limited time playing with the Symbian Belle platform it seemed OK; not on par with Android, iOS or Windows Phone, but decent enough for a “dumbphone.” There was a bit of sluggishness when swiping across screens, but it performed snappily enough actually within apps.”
WTF ? How is Symbian Belle not on par with WP ? I have both N8 and Lumia 800, and WP is FAR from functionality and smartness Symbian Belle on N8 offers. Actually it’s WP who’s much closer to dumphones without having real multitasking, file system access, mass storage mode… Don’t get me wrong, WP is smoother, elegant (my personal taste) and has brighter future than Symbian, but that’s all…
Yes, it is again very childish review about Nokia Belle… they are trying to say that Nokia 808 is a low end device!
“The 808 feels incredibly solid, and doesn’t flex or creek at all – it’s certainly doesn’t feel cheap or tacky, like other low-end Nokias do.”
Actually Nokia 808 is a low or middle end device what it comes to smartphones. With a great camera.
Unfortunately just one great component won’t make a high end smartphone.
Symbian is too complicated and too clumsy compared to the WP. Sure, it has more features and the OS is matured. Actually Symbian is so matured that it is almost rotten and has been spoiling Nokia’s reputation for years.
The bad thing is that WP has such a bad reputation among Symbian users and Nokia’s bad reputation is preventing users from other platforms switching to WP.
There are several reasons for this bad reputation of WP among Symbian users:
1) Microsoft itself. Many Symbian/MeeGo users are among those who doesn’t like Microsoft for their infamous history of abusing their monopoly position and their behavior in general. Not to mention privacy issues related to three big OS companies (Microsoft, Apple, Google).
2) Closeness of WP. Symbian/MeeGo users are used to open OS. Many of them are big proponents of open source and openness in general. After all, even Linus Torvalds was a Finn, and Nokia is Finnish.
3) American origin of WP. Unlike WP, Android and Mac/iOS, Symbian/MeeGo both have european roots, and even this might be important for some.
4) Weird UI design, which might not suit everyone (not talking about eye candy now).
Ok, there might be some more points like these. None of them is so important and the next one:
4) Lack of functionality. There’s many features i miss on WP, but for me the most important is full access to my files. Both, through file manager and when connecting to PC (mass storage mode). I want to connect my Lumia anywhere, including my work PC, without having to install any software. This is my “smartphone definition” requirement.
btw, i have N8 and Lumia 800, so i can compare.
“The bad thing is that WP has such a bad reputation among Symbian users and Nokia’s bad reputation is preventing users from other platforms switching to WP.”
What about HTC and Samsung smartphones with WP ? Why their sales are so bad ?
That’s a bit because of Microsoft’s reputation. Mostly because there are already mobile operating systems that are popular and good enough for the users. Why would a regular user get any third OS when there are two with a certain future?
The sad thing is that Nokia was already at a dead end with Symbian and MeeGo. The first one had it’s horrible reputation and the second one was a nice try but not sufficiently nice to be able to get a real momentum. And even less enabled to do that with the the dead end announcement.
MeeGo wasn’t a dead end. It has far more potential and had bigger momentum, until Elop ruined it, than WP hasn’t had in its existence. Elop artificially made MeeGo a dead end by killing it last year. WP is the real dead end OS. The abysmal sales alone show that.
And WP is dissed, because it is a crappy OS. It’s so limited in so many ways, that it’s not really a smartphone OS, and it’s also ugly as hell.
“Symbian is too complicated”
Sure, if your IQ is under 100. But then again people with IQ under 100 shouldn’t get a smartphone at all.
*zing!*
By that definition Symbian is so complicated that 50% of the population can’t use it. That’s just what Symbian is about. It’s really complicated and you have to really know how to use it to get it work.
It’s funny to think that Symbian is the only smartphone because it really requires intelligence from it’s users.
@Lord US…You know, I don’t think Symbian is complicated, but instead I think it is unnecessarily tedious to use – so many steps to do simple things and/or things other OSes would require half the amount of steps to accomplish. With that said, I am looking forward to stashing my N8 in a drawer as soon as the Nokia Lumia Apollo phones hit the store shelves (maybe even sooner)!
I believe anyone can navigate Symbian and that it DOES NOT require a lot of intelligence to do so; However, if one doesn’t want to experience joy when using a mobile device, Symbian (^3, Anna, Belle, FP1, etc) is the OS for them
That’s one of Symbian’s problems. It’s not very comfortable to use.
Sure, you can listen music from the Spotify, or you can do it in the Symbian way and just read the notes. You get the melody but for most of the people those notes just kill the joy.
LOL Nice one!
Oh gawd have you seen Engadgets camera comparison?
As usual, biased. They didn’t even use the full res.
Engadget is not using the full resolution? Yes, they have to be biased because they are not using the full resolution. Oh why is Engadget using PureView instead of full resolution?
It would have been so much better if they were using the full resolution instead of the PureView when they were reviewing the PureView.
Curses!
Amazing!!