Damian Hinting at Other Techniques to Achieve Pureview; Oversampling Optional?
In yesterdays post about the rumored 8Mp in the Lumia 920, we touched on the possibility of other methods to achieve 808 Pureview quality photos/videos without the need for the gigantic sensor. Here’s one of the tweets I had referenced regarding the matter; as you can see Damian as always stressed on the fact that Purview is a mix of both Hardware & Software to achieve astounding results, ending with “there are many ways this can be applied”. As of now we’ve only heard of a single way applying pureview to reality which is oversampling, but in reality it’s not a very reasonable solution considering the size of the sensor required as well as the price of said sensor + Greater lens aperture and a hundred other reasons that are too technical for my understanding.
At this point it’s also worth noting that apparently the Nokia People have been referring to the 808 as the Pureview Pro which would lead us to believe that it was never meant to be the baseline standard of the pureview concept, I’d also like to remind you that as they told us at MWC “The reason we went with such a ridiculously large number of pixels was to put an end to the MegaPixel race, it’s not the number of pixels you have; but what you do with them”. And in case you were about to suggest a slightly higher amount of MP with some lighter form of oversampling, I’d like to point out that Damian also said that a Pure-View lite would be out of the question for the N8s camera as even that doesn’t have enough pixels to get the desired results.
All of which would lead us to assume that Damian’s team have been hard at work trying to find a way to do away with the crazy 41Mp sensor and find a work around; hopefully that’s exactly what they’ve achieved in the upcoming 8MP Pureview. Although I can’t seem to figure out a way to achieve loss-less zoom without the need for oversampling and ditching some pixels, I’m sure some sort of new video stabilization would greatly help the video quality (Damian previously excluded image stabilization as the stabilization technique in videos is based on the gyroscope, which for some reason can’t be applied to stills) but the removal of loss-less zoom would be disappointing, but then again us tech geeks are a hard crowd to please. I think 99% of the population would be satisfied with whatever Nokia has up its sleeve as long as it takes amazing photos, but my two-cents say to expect the Perfect Pixel, without the perfect Zoom.
And my thoughts about the upcoming devices as a new Breaking Bad fan:
And just to add to the excitement, @Nokia just tweeted this along with “Can’t wait!”
Category: Lumia, Nokia, Symbian, Windows Phone
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Heyyo, names Ali- Currently a fourth year Dental Student from Chicago; studying in Jordan. I love all sorts of gadgets almost as much as I love my cookies! (Have: Green Nokia N8, Cyan Lumia 800, Black N9, Stormtrooper White Lumia 900, Black 808 PureView, Red Lumia 920). Follow my twitter handle '@AliQudsi' - no pressure. Thanks.Subscribe
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lets think for a while, that the leaked 920 is NOT the final version, that may mean that it could have all the pixels to do pure View PRO or:
some kind of instant multi shot, like bracketing but made at really high speed, like 10 ms and put together using algorithms, but using only small image sensor (12-8 mp).
or
they just managed to make a crazy insane expensive/thin sensor using nanotechnology in a carbon based sensor.
too much redundancy. damn i need some sleep.
i think this i close to the truth:
“some kind of instant multi shot, like bracketing but made at really high speed, like 10 ms and put together using algorithms, but using only small image sensor (12-8 mp).”
i suspect something like that to. multishot to one picture, if the 808 can capture 1080p video with the entire 41mpix sensor at 30fps.
how easy would i be to capture 7-8fps 8mpix and combine them all to one perfect picture?
What are we going to do about sharpness tho ? That shutter speed better be very quick (doubtful), or you might want to carry a tripod with you.. in case you want to take a photograph.
a 10 ms shot can be performed with the tech available now. but it could be very hardware intensive to do it that way.
fast speed cameras perform like that, so the fast shutter speed could help avoid the use of tripod.
100 ms is already good to avoid motion blur.
are you on purpose trying to destroy all my dreams
kidding, but yes, you might be right, which would turn this type of “pureview” into still-shots only, and no movement at all.
High speed shooting has been available in digicams before like Casio EX-FH100. With only a 10.1 mpix sensor it can capture great low-light image by combining many high speed shots taken in a single press of the button. Ths is similar to PureView, although pixel binning in 808 is really Nokia’s innovation. The ultrafast sampling of Casio allows videos at 1000 fps…superslow motion movies at low res or normal speed HD with no motion blur…
So, this time-based Pureview ha’s been done before on a digicam. It is NOT “fauxview” as some suggests. However, it will be the first implementation on a camera phone with Carl Zeiss lens and new added image processing technology. Thus, even with only an 8 mp sensor, it can match the same 8 mp Pureview image of 808. But it cannot do lossless zoom which can only be done with a large sensor, though it can however do motion blur- free movies at normal speed or a low res slow mo.
Overall, this will still be a great camera on a fully functional cellphone! We’ll see in a few hours…
I don’t see any reason in your argument as to why a zoom cannot be present in such a set up. Granted that it wont have the zoom capacity of the 808 but methinks it should still be able to pull at least a bit of zoom resulting in a smaller file size eq. 5mpx-3mpx and below.
The midseason finale of breaking bad was awesome. And bad for Walter too. :\ kinda rooting for Jesse now. He is like the good guy when compared with Walter.
Damian should have addressed the bullcrap that Engadget has been writing. They’re trying to call the next cameras “faux view”! There are new people working there but it seems they still have their Pre-windows phone anti-everything-Nokia-related BIAS!!!!!!!
i expect an epic comment in disquss with 1000+ linkes from Damian tomorrow, putting every single coment made before just deep under 6 feet of dirt.
I actually feel bad for him.. knowing how much work he put into the pv pro project, and now not being able to use it because of the OS.. it sucks.
Well i think he wants to see people buying the products he has been part of. Something that really hasn’t happened for a time.
Excuse me? 34% of the world bought Symbian devices to use as their smartphones before Elop rocked the boat. That’s an order of magnitude greater than the market reach they have available with WP.
You are repeating this without any proof or deeper knowledge about WinNT. Why are you spreading this always?
Give me any other logical reason as to why they can’t use the PureView system they already have in hand..
I don’t buy the design excuse..the 808 is fine.
I don’t buy the “cost” excuse.. these phone are supposed to turn the company around, so they need to be the best Nokia can produce.
Juha Alakarhu just gave an interview where he said:
“Changing the OS is not a problem, it is not an obstacle” Juha Alakarhu, the head of Nokia’s camera development assures.
“There is not that much OS-dependent elements (in PureView” he highlights.
“The intelligence lies in the graphics processor”
————————–
Sorry, but I take Juha Alakarhu’s words instead of your speculations.
+1
May be they are working hard to make pureview for Lumias. But the truth is, they have to make a Lumia pureview to prove “Changing the OS is not a problem, it is not an obstacle”. Till then the new OS is only obstacle in the path of pureview.
Anyway, as we all know, it’s less likely to expect best of both the worlds from Nokia. This nature has let them down in past. 808 is one of the very few Nokias that doesn’t have much compromises.
Let’s hope they learn something from those mistakes and begin to give their best tech in all coming devices.
Yes but sometimes the os (wp7,7.5 or android for example) have some limitations regarding camera sensors and cpu/gpu units used…
I have to remind you that pureview was developed for symbian not other platform(s)
So do not believe all the thinks you head ,try to think by yourself do not let others to think for you.
So do not believe all the thinks you *hear* ,try to think by yourself do not let others to think for you.
Yeeepp, if OS does not support the needed GPU -> game over for PureView…
So, it is a OS/driver issue…
So where is the PureView if that was the case..?
The thing is, that all it needs is only one OS-dependent i.e. Symbian-dependent element and PureView on WP won’t happen. And it looks like there is at least that one element preventing WP PureView. Otherwise they’d have no problem making an 808 with WP in it.
If WP PureView is such an easy thing to do, they would have delayed the release of 808 a few months and brought it out this fall with WP8 and not with Symbian at all. The fact that 808 was made with Symbian reveals how hard it is to bring PureView to WP.
eh dude, still have the link to the article?
Well, maybe you don’t buy it but take a look around. All smartphones which are sold in volumes right now are rather slim. This is what average joe is asking for. Maybe you or me could live with a big bump but the majority cannot.
So, after all you want Nokia to ignore the whishes of the majority of customers who simply don’t want to have thick phones? (…and forget about educating them to like thick phones again)
Plus, you still don’t have any proof for your theory but keep spreading it like it was a fact.
In all likelyhood, when the name PureView was decided on, they knew the types of implementations they would use – including whatever is released tomorrow.
I don’t think pixel-binning is the ONLY thing Damian and the guys have been working in the Nokia labs (remember Elop’s comments of N8 only being “a fraction”, what if the 808 never was the rest, but only a part). The next PureView product may be using some of the other developments they have been working on during the past years, knowing they must solve the quality issue for very thin devices as well.
Or perhaps the developments relate to re-imagining mobile video photography, not an insignificant step there either, if they come up with something cool.
I seriously doubt the 808 PureView Pro is the only thing they have been cooking up in their labs, nor do I think WP8 is the main reason they are not putting that in now – I think they are aiming for volume with these products. I think 41 megapixel phone is not a volume product.
it might not be a volume product today, but that doesn’t mean it will never be one.
With you the glass is always half empty. I like to see some innovation and if they can do that in the (supposed) size of the 820/920, I’m more than happy. Stop crying, try to see a company that is at least trying to do some real innovation. We all profit from that.
That is exactly why I am not keen on Nokia these days.. the innovation days seem to be over.
Seems like you’re not keen on anything, other than jumping to negative conclusions without actual proof.
An 8MP camera would be disappointing yes, simply from a marketing standpoint but if there is some innovation with the hardware, then it wouldn’t be so bad or disappointing.
Damian and his team should move to Jolla. They are wasting their talent in Nokia.
I know, JUST finished watching it an hour ago; but I think the end of season 4 was better, when he simply said “I Won.”
Okay.. one more time
image quality is directly related to the pixel quality and the optics.
Bigger pixels -> more light -> better quality.
Pixels size is directly related to the sensor size and how many mpix they’ve decided to “cut” the sensor into.
With PureView pro on the 808 we have very small pixels (1.4 microns) but because there is so many of them, they combine ~7 of them into one, and clean all the noise along the way, to achieve better picture quality. AS far as I know, the “combined” pixels is around 3 microns, still not as good as a native 3 micron would be, but much better than a 1.4 one.
So we have two ways, at least that I know of.
1. Big sensor divided into a small pixel count, for example the sensor from the 808 cut into 10-20Mpix.
2. Big sensor divided into a huge resolution, but letting the software combine pixels to achieve better quality, which also allows for zooming.. brilliant idea overall.
And, all of this combined with great optics, like the ones found on the 808.
All of this requires space.. until they find a new way to capture light, there is no way around it.
Nokia published this: http://europe.nokia.com/PRODUCT_METADATA_0/Products/Phones/8000-series/808/Nokia808PureView_Whitepaper.pdf
which was an attempt to educate the consumer.. its not about megapixel count.. its all about the quality of those pixels. Now they expect us to buy into the story that a small sensor can do the trick ?
I don’t know about you, but I am not going to buy an inferior product, knowing well that they can do WAY better.. they already have. Its obvious that the OS is the “bottle neck” here.. they have the system ready to go, just use the 808 body with a better screen and a new SoC…
There’s reason to believe, or at least wait and see because the guy talking about this is DAMIAN GOD DAMN DINNING.
I am waiting for them to tell me how big the sensor is…
There is no contradiction. You’re just not getting it. The 808 sensor in a thin body filled with dual core chips and mega res screens = a product that will be far too expensive to produce.
What would you rather have, an 808 which you can have now or a super powerful 2012 spec windows phone that’s on par with the N8 and better than any Android in image quality? You can’t have both. Nokia’s not the old Nokia that can toy around anymore. They need to go for high volumes high quality and low production costs.
they are already producing the components for the 808 pureview system, and the investment into the technology is already made. In fact, it will much easier to make money back by selling it on their “volume” lumia lines, and not in an overpriced Symbian phone..
I don’t buy any excuses.. if they could make it work, it would have been on a lumia phone for sure.
Or not. That camera bump can be a major turnoff for many.
I agree, an 18mm thick phone would have a limited market.
I’d rather have neither – I’m not all that into photography (tho I’d be very interested if there is programatically exposed access to the DSP stack, one can do some very funky things with signal processing on that) and I’m completely uninterested in the WP. Hey, you asked what would I (we) rather have – tho, ~96% of the market appears to share the same opinion.
Sometimes good enough is good enough… the huge majority of iPhone 4 buyers think its camera is good enough, so they don’t need a big fat camera hump sticking out the back like on the 808. They would rather have a well-rounded package than a device with just one standout feature.
By the time you Instagram the bloody thing it all ends up looking like it came from a pinhole camera
Sometimes us geeks think we need the very best, when the common public will settle for much less. Guess who the manufacturers will listen to…
yes, good enough is good for the mass, and can and have to be produced in volumes (->good profit).
But. When the once-king-of-the-hill tries to come back it has to show something to amazing, unquestionably unbeatable magic. Just to show it is able to make it.
It can be overpriced like hell, who cares? Just to shut up faces of the competitors and naysayers.
Maybe that overpriced, super-high-end niche model is coming next year, as has been hinted at. We’ve seen a supposed leaked slide months ago of a “Pureview Pro” Lumia with a big hump and the suppposed 41MP unit inside. That would never be a huge seller, because the hump would turn off a lot of people.
Slim/thin Lumia is going to be the volume seller, so I am eager to see what innovation Nokia achieves with the camera while keeping to a slim and thin body.
I have a 808 and I don’t think that whatever tech they put in the 920 will best it, but please let’s give Damian and all the imaging team at Nokia our trust for just one more day and stop the negativity! There are other tricks beyond the ultra high resolution sensor that you can use to increase the image quality and kick the butt of the competition one more time.
Some rare but already commercial concepts: 3-layered sensor like Sigma’s foveon (someone posted an old nokia patent for a sensor of this type); high speed burst and merging (already use by several brands for in-camera HDR and low-light pictures); combination of high- and low-sensitivity photosites for enhanced dynamic range (like in Fuji’s EXR sensors); and many other things that are not yet commercial tech, such as graphene sensor, quantum dots, etc., that still sound like science fiction today.
There’s a real good chance the image sensor being used on the 920 is 16mp
I think Damian and the guys have been working on multiple technologies for years, knowing they can’t put a 41 MPix sensor in every phone because it would be too thick and too expensive. They need something that improves the experience on thinner devices as well. New management probably saw the potential in the labs and decided to go for “PureView” with all these different technologies they have been working on, I’m pretty sure when the name “PureView” was coined, they knew the different types of technologies they were going to use the name with. We saw the first with 808, now we are about to see the second idea with the 920.
I am actually pretty interested to hear what they have cooked up and if both 820 and 920 will have it.
as soon as they reveal the sensor size, we will know if they are fooling around, or if we are going to see good image quality. I doubt that they can even get to N8 levels.. the phone won’t even have xenon.
Just keeping expectations low.. that is all.
Well, if they reveal a regular sensor and just some gimmickry called PureView then sure I’d agree – but I don’t think the number of megapixel will be the deciding factor. It will be more this: Is there true hardware/software innovation there? Is there some new method worthy of the PureView monicker? We don’t know what that method might be and how the sensor is/works yet. I think lowish megapixels (8 MPix) now seem likely, but that to me still doesn’t say anything about possible innovation within.
I have hope now that Damian has decided to comment that they’re actually going to introduce something innovative.
I think it will be 16Mpix count, but like I said, that doesn’t matter if the pixels are tiny.
The senor needs to be bigger than 1/3.2″ .. there is really nothing they can do with that @ 16Mpix count, or 8.
Here is a cool table of most sensor sizes
http://i.imgur.com/JTYx4.gif
1/1.8″ would be nice..
I thought the pureview phone as we know it wasn’t coming till H2. So perhaps this is more of a marketing phone in till they can get the real deal to into production.
Or maybe they have actually been developing an alternate technology for the more important thin phones? I’m pretty sure we’ll see a 41 Mpix WP8 device next year, but it will still be massive and a niche device.
We just assume the 808 is the thing Damien and guys worked on and then took it downwards from there, what if they have another lab-tangent working on innovative solutions for smaller phones. I think the keyword here is innovation, more than size or megapixels.
If they show something new, something worthy, it will be more than a marketing gimmick even if it isn’t an 808 PureView.
The only thing that can improve the image quality of the thin phones for real, is a several times more sensitive sensor than what is available in the world now. That kind of sensor is not here yet. So there’s no way they can make a proper N8 quality camera without putting a big sensor in = making a thicker phone.
And not putting in Xenon flash tells me all about how serious Nokia is with the image quality i.e. not serious at all. A Xenon flash is a must in a proper camera.
I think they should give a different name for different innovation so that people won’t confuse… like MagicView cause people already set their mind PureView is oversampling/superpixel like what Damian highlighted before.
Similar discussions are familiar from many markets. It was a blasphemy decades ago when Audi brough out a quattro four-wheel drive car using Swedish Haldex multi-plate clutch instead of the Torsen differential. Although, ironically, the first Audi quattro didn’t use Torsen either… nor do the very latest, best ones either. But anyway, for many people quattro means “Torsen”, which is a very good piece of technology indeed. A PureView Pro of sorts.
The point is, Haldex behaved quite differently than Torsen – arguably a lot less well, but it had other merits such as fitting into smaller cars with different engine layouts. These cars are very big sellers and the market is just growing. You can’t realistically put into a Torsen into so small cars without huge compromises. So Audi was able to make four-wheel drive small cars that were more economical to make and drive and build, with the cost that the quattro brand now stood for one more thing.
So the question is, should Audi have called it something else? Audi A3 4wd instead of A3 quattro? Audi TT 4wd instead of TT quattro (also a Haldex car)? Heck, even the R8 doesn’t use a Torsen but an Italian style of quattro. I think the jury is out on that one after all this time – no, they should not have. quattro brand is not really diminished, it is bigger than ever thanks to it expanding beyond Audi’s traditional Torsen cars (both downwards thanks to Haldex and upwards like the Audi R8) and it is a major selling point to regular people who want a “special” Audi. The quattro.
Now, obviously the moral of this story is: don’t make a two-wheel drive Audi and call it quattro. The thing about quattro is still the four-wheel drive.
Same with PureView, it must be associated with easily distinquishable difference over non-PureView models from Nokia. Only then can the brand retain its value.
I’m not sure Carl Zeiss has been used as wisely by Nokia, its shine has diminished in recent times due to e.g. lackluster N9/800/900 cameras.
gsmarena says in its review for the n9 that n9 camera does pretty well,so if the 900/800 have the same cam hardware wise of the n9, maybe wp7(7 not wp in general) has limits to show the full capabilities of the carl ziess lens and nokia couldn’t do anything about except using it as a marketing tool using the fact there’s indeed a carl ziess lens in the 900/800.
still they shouldn’t use the carl ziess moniker except for good quality cams
Well, considering I own an N9 as well, I think it is only marginally better than the Lumia one – a slight difference in software optimization. The N9 camera sensor is not that great, that is the biggest issue.
Let’s face it, Nokia has had real trouble in high quality miniaturized camers for the past years. They have excelled with bigger sensors and the like, but the small ones have been a bit of failures.
Here’s hoping it changes tomorrow.
If they got different name for different technologies. In future products that can put several adjectives for their new phones eg: PureView + MagicView = Unbelievable imaging….
Instead of just PureView alone…
Just get an 808 and jobs done..
Yeah, but then there’s that Symbian thing….
whatever tech they will bring and whatever work around they came up with,i think this assures that they r not using the pureview name just for the sake of marketing,
Thats true, according to this tweet..
“Damian Dinning @PhoneDaz
#PureView is about blending optics, pixels and image processing in new and different ways to allow you to do things you otherwise cannot.”
However, the purpose of the 41mp sensor was to exploit Pureviews potential.. It looks like the 808 will remain the King for some time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOGV7dukfjk&feature=g-all-u ONE MORE VIDEO!!!
http://m.wpcentral.com/nokia-photo-sensor-patent-looks-take-hump-out-pureview-cameras
Heard of liquid lens anyone? From what I read, you can change the focal length by manipulating the shape of the liquid. Apparently, it also provides some sort of optical image stabilization solution although I’m not quite sure how all that works. Insane.
Eh, it’s supposed to be announced tomorrow. No point in speculating, I’ll just wait
Today, new sensors/processors are larger and more powerful than the old, these allows us to make better photos and videos, this feature is a landmark in the promotion of a technological product, as it is a cell phone, and we can see this every day in every expo tech, blog, magazine etc..!.
41 mega pixel sensor is gigantic!, so, why not use an 21 or 24 mega pixel and be different from competitors.
Maybe, Hardware & Software:
a) LumiaWP8 graphics sensor/processor – software, cannot operate high megapixel raw data and his final result is only 8 megapixel images.
b) This sound propaganda against Nokia own development and product Nokia 808 PureView from inside Nokia to gain track to LumixWP8 with inferior Hardware/Software than Nokia 808 by the way, a development of 5 years ago!
Nokia 808 PureView was an entire Nokia development and Lumia is a copy of a Nokia N9, made by the US design office of Nokia. It is common knowledge that the “technological” users we do not like the copies.
The 41mpix doesn’t make it huge… its the physical area of the sensor, the sensor in the 808 could have been 20Mpix, but the size of the “hump” would have stayed the same..
You see someone passing a Korean [SAMSUNG] guy so quickly…..lol