The Journey of the Revolutionary DSLR-like-quality Nokia 808 PureView – Damian Dinning –

There is another great tale at Nokia Conversations about how the Nokia 808 came about from being an innovative idea to being a revolutionary product ready for market, but this time, from the eyes of Nokia’s imaging guru, Damian Dinning.

http://conversations.nokia.com/2012/03/07/the-story-behind-the-nokia-808-pureview/

Read on to hear about the challenges faced in providing the best of imaging performance in a phone. The principles of PureView was and is a genius idea with so many benefits for a pocket form factor.

All this time, from the early days of Nseries, their focus has always been superior image quality. I still remember the first camera phones and folks said this was all a gimmick, phones could never replace stand alone digital cameras. With the likes of the N8 and now the 808, it is not only replacing them in terms of convenience (e.g. N82) but also in all around image quality.

I put DSLR-like quality in the title because just like as we heard from James Burland (who noted of DSLR like qualities in 808 images) Damian Dinning apparently from early tests of the 808 against a Canon DSLR thought the images he had received had been labelled incorrectly. When I heard this story, I thought it was just a compact camera, not a DSLR. I wonder when this occurred as we can have a greater idea what Canon DSLR that was like.

One from the Tampere team with images attached captured with the first prototype camera and another captured with a Canon digital SLR as a reference. I opened both images and viewed immediately at 100%. Initially, I thought the images were labelled wrongly.

Innovative ideas are all fine and good but they need execution to go from ether to something you can use and touch.

Apparently Stephen Elop has been most instrumental in helping bring innovation to market faster. Remember in his various appearances last year, he noted how amazing the N8 was but that was just a fraction of Nokia’s optics capability at the labs – he was going to make sure innovation from labs appear to market, and at a faster time. At the same time, this product wasn’t rushed – it was a 5 year journey and the fruits of one we can all look forward to because we can get our hands on one of these in just a few short months. DSLR like quality images, stunning video and stellar audio always with you because it’s all in a device that fits in your pocket.

Cheers HaugMedia for the tip!

Category: Nokia, Symbian