When Nokia announced that the new Lumia 1520 and the current Lumia 1020 would both soon have DNG Raw capabilities, the response was polarized -- half of the smartphone photo community was excited, the other half skeptical. Would these files really give you the latitude that RAW is known for? Or would they just be a massive waste of hard drive space.
Earlier today, Nokia let fly a slew of announcements at their Nokia World event in Abu Dhabi. And, as you might expect from the people that brought you the 41-megapixel PureView smartphone camera, a few of them have to do with pushing mobile photography to the next level.
Earlier this week, Google showed off its Android L mobile operating system. The fifth major iteration of the mobile OS, Google has included a number of new APIs in Android L that are going to make mobile photographers very happy.
Last week, we reported the news that Android developer Josh Brown had discovered some juicy tidbits within the Google camera API: namely, that RAW capabilities and a few other features were in the works. That was just an interpretation of code, but now, it looks like Google has come out to confirm some of what Brown found.
Given the incredibly positive response Nokia got from the photo community when it announced that Lumia phones would soon be able to capture images in DNG RAW, it makes sense that operating systems other than Windows Phone would soon follow suit. Lo and behold, it seems Google is on the cusp of just such an announcement itself.
In addition to announcing the Nokia Camera app and RAW support for the Lumia 1020 and 1520 (read about that here), Nokia made one other camera-centric announcement that had us perking our ears up: the company also introduced a Lytro-like refocusing camera app called Nokia Refocus Lens.
The DSLR megapixel war has slowed down dramatically over the past few years as companies focus on low-light capabilities and other components of the cameras. But it looks like someone forgot to tell the smartphone market.
Yesterday, SanDisk unveiled the newest addition to its Secure Digital memory card lineup: a 128GB microSDXC card that effectively doubles the storage capabilities of the current generation of cards.
And while the practicality of that much storage on a microSD card isn't overly exciting for most photographers, there are certainly some scenarios where this will be beneficial.