The ability to take pictures has become one of the main features behind modern mobile devices; consequently people are quick to look at the megapixel count to determine if it has a “good” camera. Nowadays the amount of pixel seems more like a marketing trick than anything else and it seems to be working: in the uninformed consumers’ eye 5 megapixel cameras are far superior then the previous generation’s 3 megapixels ones. But fact is that the megapixels counts merely tells you the resolution or number of distinct pixels in each dimension, but doesn’t say much about the actual image quality. It is true that the more pixels used to represent an image, the closer the result can resemble the original scene (as a scene seen with our eyes has an infinite amount of pixels), but other things can play a role in image quality such as sensor size, lens quality, color accuracy, dynamic range, noise, artifacts and geometrical accuracy. I’m not saying that Nokia should drop the Megapixel race, but the mobile industry should learn from digital camera makers as they seem to heading in the same direction and making the same mistakes: High megapixels on tiny sensors, just to satisfy the marketing team. As a result they end up with large files (which take up more processing power) therefore end up with a slower ccontinuous shooting mode and slower camera overall (Unless they increase processing power with each megapixel raise, something that doesn’t always happen.) And due to the small sensor and high megapixel count the pixels are much smaller, as a result you end up with an image quality difference between let’s say a prosumer camera and DSLR on one end and mobile phones on the other, especially in terms of noise and dynamic range. So what should be done to make the imaging side of future Nseries a lot better?
1) Increase the Sensor size: Increasing the sensor size would not only mean bigger pixels, but also better noise and dynamic range performance. As a result there wouldn’t be the need to use such aggressive noise reduction and edge enhancement, so no unnatural looking picture like the N73 which was known for its aggressive noise reduction and edge enhancement. These two are also notorious when it comes to image loss.
2) Increase camera start-up, image processing/saving time: Most great pictures are taken spontaneously, that’s why it crucial to have cameras that only start-up quickly but can also save them just as quick. While the N95 is an imaging powerhouse, its usefulness is severely hampered by the slow startup time and the slow saving time. Having a fast saving time means that the camera would quickly be ready for the next shot. Maybe it’s time to use a dedicated processor to only handle digital imaging, something like Canon’s Digic chip.
3)More scenes (and fully manual mode): Most people I know just want to quickly take shots and have the camera do all the guessing work, having more scenes for specific situation would be pretty handy. But as mobile devices get more serious about digital imaging and as the gap between digital cameras and mobile phones gets narrower these mobile devices would appeal a lot more to the professional if they would have full manual controls over Aperture and Shutter speed.
4)Better High ISO performance with real ISO values: Higher ISO(higher sensitivity) levels are needed in low-light conditions or action photography (where fast Shutter speeds are needed), but as a result of using the higher ISO, there’s more grain in the image. Nokia should work on improving high ISO performance. Current Nseries like the N95 don’t tell you the real ISO level. It uses a very vague naming scheme: high ISO, low ISO etc. I would like to see the real ISO levels used like for example ISO 100 or 80.
5) Silent optical zooming: I was spoiled with optical zooming on the N93 and now I really miss that on the N95. The optical zooming contributed to the large size of the N93, but I believe that the technology has matured enough that optical zooming can use less space. Just take a look at Sony’s T-series line of digital camera’s which uses internal optical zooming in a fairly thin package. Many digital video and digital cameras use an Ultra-Sonic Motor (USM) to achieve silent optical zooming, why not apply this into a mobile device?
6) Xenon Flash for better flash performance.
7) Optical stabilization: Stabilization has been used in the Nseries, but it is of the digital kind. This contributed to quality loss. I think it’s time for optical stabilization.
Lens protection: No matter how much the battery life can be improved, there needs to be a way to protect the lens! Having an unprotected lens like in the case of the N95-3, N95 8GB or N76 is just asking for trouble. If you need to make the device bigger to improve battery life just do that, but please have a proper way to protect the lens from scratches and dirty fingers.
What features do you think can improve the imaging side of the Nseries? Share your thoughts.
Nseries camera improvement suggestions
The Nokia Guide’s Devin Balentina has some suggestions of how to improve cameras in mobile devices without just upping the number of megapixels. Amongst the proposals, Devin wants quicker start up times, better high ISO performance and a xenon flash….
I totally agree that megapixels get far too much coverage to the point of ruining cameras’ other features.
Unfortunately, from a marketing point of view it’s difficult to say to consumers “x is a better camera than y” unless you seize on some particular fact or figure. Quality is such a subjective thing and it’s very difficult to get across anything complicated in a 30 second TV advert.
I know this sounds tragic, but I’ve seen people say “oh it has 5mp, I have to buy that phone”. It doesn’t matter how much you might tell them that a 3mp or 2mp camera might offer better quality, the fact there’s 5mp in a phone overwhelms these subtleties.
Megapixels do the same thing for cameras that clock speed has done for computers, people blindly think more=better, and the marketing people perpetuate this because it makes their lives easier too.
It’s not just electronics that does this, cars too are often marketed by raw stats rather than how they actually drive, food is often marketed by the percentage of fat rather than the type of fat (which makes a big difference) etc.
Just to put things in perspective… (pun intended)
I’m happy with camera phone performance. I can discover more detail in a picture taken with my N95 than I can with my naked eye. Not surprising if you consider this wikipedia excerpt:
“However, the human eye itself has only a small spot of sharp vision in the middle of the retina, the fovea centralis, the rest of the field of view being progressively lower resolution as it gets further from the fovea. The angle of the sharp vision being just a few degrees in the middle of the view, the sharp area thus barely achieves even a single megapixel resolution. The experience of wide sharp human vision is in fact based on turning the eyes towards the current point of interest in the field of view, the brain thus perceiving an observation of a wide sharp field of view.”
(PS: The title has a then/than spelling error.)
i definitely agree with a larger image sensor and lower megapixels. This would mean better light sensitivity and dynamic range, and other points youv’e got there.
For manual mode, I think it is impossible for aperture control. Aperture control would require another mechanism in the imaging module, an electronic aperture module. This would increase the size of the module and it’s complexity. Perhaps asking for manual exposure modes in camera phones is abit too far in today’s standards. (unless Nokia challenges my thought on this)
I believe USM powered optical zoom and Xenon Flash is possible, it’s just up to Nokia and the device’s battery life. What if the battery could only take 110 shots with Flash on?
I think, what’s more important now for the future Nseries line is better image quality (less sharpening for less blue tints in dark shadowns/areas), more natural colours, and perhaps colour changing palettes such as Canon’s PictureStyles used in it’s EOS SLR line. Devices should also be the same, they should not be discriminated. I’ve got a Nokia N93 and a N73. The N93 is good in video, and bad in photo, while the N73 is the opposite.
Not good if Nokia plans to sell Imaging all-in-one devices. Carl Zeiss Optics gone to waste on the N93 (other than the useful optical zoom)
Whoops.
One more function to add:
Spot metering and perhaps multi zone autofocus!
Plz use optical zoom in n73