Juha Alakarhu on the best camera flagship ever created – Lumia 950 XL

Since Ali talked about the samples from the 950XL, let’s get some words from one of the main guys behind that camera. Ex Nokian, now Director of Imaging Technology Development at Microsoft, talks about the Lumia 950 XL and the best camera they’ve ever created. There’s a 5th gen OIS, Triple LED, f1.9 and 12.8K ISO.

The most exciting thing however is apparently on the software side.

What I find absolutely fascinating is that Lumia still retaining all that detail when you zoom in. My S6 Edge Plus takes great photos but I tend not to zoom in much unless there’s loads of outdoor light available. It’s improved since Note 4 but it’s still a bit disappointing that my 1520 still tends to produce better detail (less fishy artefacts)

The actual image from Ali’s post shows the actual red colour (looks off in the screenshot above since that’s a video of a phone screen).

Comparison:

Lumia 950 XL vs S6

My S6 also tends to artificially over brighten scenes. I’ve asked friends for their preferences, they tend to go for the 1520’s snaps as it seems to capture the ambience a bit better. I do like the speed of the S6E+ and overall the camera is reliable as long as you don’t zoom in haha.

Motion capture seems improved too on the Lumia (even with LED).

It’s difficult to tell from the video. Moreover, you’d expect the brighter/longer exposure to have a bit more blur (as Lumias – bar the 1020 – used to when they first started showing off brighter OIS improved shots).

The smart thing is that Lumia now recognises how the phone is being held. If it’s on a tripod, then it’ll change settings around (cos you can afford to have longer exposure and still be steady). It also takes into consideration what’s in the viewfinder. If it detects things moving then those settings will change too. A smart take.

Dual exposure

.Lumia now takes dual exposure info in a single image. There’s short exposure in the moving part and long exposure in the static part and gets the best out of both worlds. Again, a very nice evolution of previous computational smart camera stuff. The best bit is that it’s part of Auto and not something you have to manually select and hence never/hardly use (via Rich Capture which is on by default).  You can switch all that off.

I miss living images in my gallery :/.

I wonder what the processing time is now for RichCapture. Do I still have to wait? I couldn’t tell because Juha did a great job of presenting the device like a pro.

The speed of start up is really quick. Press the camera button (thank goodness for that) and it comes to life. My S6E+ has a double home button press to launch camera. That used to be really fast when I first bought it but it now occasionally lags. It’s definitely slower than demo units now.

Shot to shot is quite fast on the 950XL but Juha did turn off flash and rich capture.

Windows Central

Category: Lumia