I’m a bit late with this one, but a few weeks ago Curacao celebrated its 2008 edition of Carnival, one of our main National celebrations. Basically the month of January and a part of February is dedicated to various Carnival parties called: “Jump-ins” and “Jump-ups” where the main difference is that one is held indoors while the other is done marching along the streets of Curacao. During this season of festivities specially created song festival are held to crown the best singer with his or her song as the “Tumba King or Queen” that will accompany the main parade. This is followed by the Children’s Carnival and the Teener  Parade. The carnival festivities will reach its height with the Grand Carnival parade. People take this so serious that they build sometimes elaborate and nicely decorated sitting areas alongside the route called “stands” so that they can sit, dance, eat and drink in the comfort of their stands and enjoy the Carnival, while others are happy with just a few chairs and umbrella.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

That day the sky was perfectly blue, moderate ocean breeze and with a temperature around 30 degrees Celsius with no chance of rain: the perfect setting to display the vibrant costume colors of the 2008 Carnival season. The atmosphere was filled with excitement as did the smell of hot BBQ and typical Caribbean food and spices.

I have to be honest that usually I didn’t bother to take my Nseries along as I felt that my Canon digital camera had the edge when it comes to image quality and speed. Well, this was before the N82 came along and seeing the countless tests I did here at The Nokia Guide when it comes to speed and image quality I felt pretty comfortable taking the N82 as my only camera. This would also be the perfect timing to test out the N82’s built-in GPS in conjunction with the Nokia Location Tagger. Having used my digital camera for years to capture one of our National festivities, how would the N82 compare?

First of all, the N82 is more compact than most point-and-shoot digital cameras and with an oblong shape it feels more comfortable in the hand. However I do feel that that the shiny metal finish under bright sunny conditions is not the best choice and the N82’s 2.5” screen is a bit on the small side when compared to 2.8 to 3.5” screens that have become the norm in point-and-shooters. One feature I really missed was having Optical zooming instead of the pretty much useless Digital Zoom on the N82. Something around 3-4x Optical Zoom would have been perfect. Why? Well, you could always walk up to your scen, but in some cases like the Carnival Parade where people are dancing along the route it might be a bit difficult to get close to your scene and having Optical zooming with Optical Image Stabilization could really help here. In the N82’s defense, could the Canon make calls, surf the Internet or quickly check up on important emails? And can Canon geotag and wirelessly upload my pics to Flickr? Noteworthy however was that the N82’s speed was excellent being able to quickly focus and capture fast moving and dancing people, a difficult accomplishment for most camera phones and digital cameras alike. In speed the N82 rivals the Canon and leaves even the Flagship N95 8GB behind. The pictures themselves looked amazing with vibrant colors that could rival most digital cameras, however in the case of Dynamic range (especially these bright sunny scenes) the Canon would have done a better job. Considering the fact that the N82 is more than just a camera and the fact that it did come close is pretty astounding. In conclusion I would say that that main feature lacking is Optical zooming with Optical Image Stabilization, although I expect image quality improvements in the future. For a current generation the N82 is good enough and probably the “phone” with the best camera on the market.

When it comes to the Location Tagger there isn’t much to stay as the programs is simple and just works! A pretty clear icon warns if you have a good GPS lock or not and Geotags images in the process. Below is an example of the Geotagged images taken with the N82. Pretty impressive stuff, but Nokia get me that Optical Zooming with OIS.

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