Videos: Nokia N8 Street Night Shots and remarkable digital zoom (plus night shot filmed and edited on the N8)
A couple of Saturdays ago whilst waiting to pick up my mate from the train station, I took a couple of very low light street videos.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS-kcyubZPA]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m31aVxzDiI]
I remember being really surprised with the outcome as the video was remarkably bright. Not that you’d necessarily be in such situations – what’s nice is that you can rely on the N8 to capture great video in pretty much all conditions. Also with my surround sound, playing back the audio feels like I’m there again staring at the traffic – the rumble of the buses – the chatter of the people – with that stereo separation it adds depth to the playback experience.
Finally a very understated feature is that near-optical zoom esque digital zoom which doesn’t loose detail. Using the full 12MP sensor, it just gradually “crops” a 1280×720 portion of the video. It’s like when you’re viewing a photo in the album. You’ve got a specific window of 640×360 (say 1280×720 when in video) but the full image that you can zoom into may be 4000×3000. You can keep zooming in and the image will not go blurry
Below are some screenshots from the youtube video (adds artefacts) which was then printscreened and mashed into jpg (more artefacts) but there’s no noticable degredation.
One thing to note though is that YouTube seems to purposely modify contrast and saturation.
Check out the initial wide shot and the closer zoomed in shots. If this was your standard digital zoom of yesteryear, we’d just have the static 1280×720 pixels and just blow up those limited pixels which would kill any quality you may have been hoping for.
Zoomed in. Light readjusts as more of it fills the screen.
Look at the zoomed in poster. I couldn’t see this with my bare eyes.
This just one of the many areas it helps to have that big sensor and those 12 Megapixels.
And here’s Topolino70 again making what would be a mundane and boring street video into a pleasant and tranquil watching experience.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8V9u9iPvAw]
About the Author (Author Profile)
Hey, thanks for reading my post. My name is Jay and I'm a medical student at the University of Manchester. When I can, I blog here at mynokiablog.com and tweet now and again @jaymontano. We also have a twitter and facebook accounts @mynokiablog and  Facebook.com/mynokiablog. Check out the tips, guides and rules for commenting >>click<< Contact us at tips(@)mynokiablog.com or email me directly on jay[at]mynokiablog.comSubscribe
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