Nokia recently announced its new Lumia 928: a 8.7-megapixel PureView, Carl Zeiss, OIS-toting replacement for the already impressive Lumia 920 that will do its best to blow away the rest of the market in terms of image and video quality.
But in case words aren’t enough, Nokia has also released the above video comparing the low-light video capability of the new Lumia with that of the Samsung Galaxy S3 and the iPhone 5. Read more…
The folks at Panasonic just developed an exciting new sensor technology that could significantly improve low light performance in all types of cameras very soon. Calling it a sensor technology is a bit misleading, however, because no improvements have been made to the actual sensor at all; instead, Panasonic has decided to change what sits in front of the sensor: the traditional color filter. Read more…
Faced with another birthday party at Chuck E Cheese, a place my daughter loves but low ISOs do not, I decided to get creative. I shot a collection of photos with a set of three Yongnuo YN-560 and YN-560 II flashes with a diffuser cap/”omni bounce” inside of small lampshades placed along the table. Read more…
Frustrated with how your camera’s CMOS sensor performs in dimly-lit situations? Canon has just announced a new CMOS sensor that’ll put a smile on your face. It’s a new 35mm full-frame sensor that’s designed specifically for capturing video in “exceptionally low-light environments.” Canon claims the sensor can capture high quality video with high-sensitivity while keeping noise very low.
Here’s how sensitive the new sensor is: it will reportedly be able to see meteor shows, rooms lit with incense sticks, and scenes lit only by moonlight. Read more…
Panasonic is claiming a major breakthrough in the world of camera sensors, saying that it has doubled the color sensitivity with a new technology called ‘Micro Color Splitters.’ Read more…
The company formerly known as RIM changed its name to Blackberry yesterday, and launched a new flagship smartphone called the Z10. While the the phone is getting decent marks among reviewers, one weakness is sticking out as a sore thumb: the camera’s low-light performance. Gizmodo writes,
The Z10 didn’t even hold the dimmest, most-pathetic light to the other cameras in our test. Look at that photo above on the left. It is an abject and miserable failure. Because this is a particularly difficult shooting setting, all of the photos have problems with noise, distortion, and detail, but we’ve haven’t seen something so crummy as the Z10 in a long time. The Z10 even has a “night” setting that was completely useless. This is some four-years-ago crap.
It’d be interesting to find out who Blackberry chose as the supplier of its camera sensor.
Astrophotography enthusiast Don Marcotte wanted to find out whether the Canon 6D or Canon 5D Mark III was more suitable for his area of photography, so he pitted the two cameras against one another in a few noise tests at his local camera store. He simply shot long exposures without any light (the cap was on) in order to see how much noise would show up in the frame. Read more…
Earlier this month, Nokia found itself in a public relations nightmare after it came to light that photos and videos in a video promoting the Lumia 920 smartphone had been faked. The company quickly began to do damage control by inviting the press to test out the PureView camera against competing smartphone cameras. The Verge’s test was quite promising, and now Engadget is confirming those results after doing tests of their own:
The 920 took the cake, without question, but the iPhone didn’t fare too poorly itself, snatching up nearly as much light as the Nokia device. The 808 PureView also performed quite well, but the HTC One X and Samsung Galaxy S III yielded unusable results.
It’s one thing to snag proper exposure, though — capturing sharp details with little noise and superior color balance is an entirely different beast, and the Lumia managed to do just that [...] The 920 did present some issues with exaggerated shake and other rapid movements, but it offered up excellent results overall, even in scenes that were too dark for us to make out any details with our own eyes
After The Verge broke the story this week about Nokia’s dishonest promo video for its PureView camera technology, Nokia went into damage control mode. As its stock took a tumble, the company hired an internal ethics investigation into the matter, and took steps to turn the media’s attention back to its revolutionary PureView features rather than the dishonesty seen in the video promoting them.
Nokia has endured a torrent of bad press over the past couple days over its faked promo video, but the truth is, the company is investing heavily in improving photography in its mobile phones, and its PureView technology is definitely something we should be keeping our eyes on.
In order to back up its claim that PureView low light performance is “unbeatable”, Nokia set up a “photo challenge” booth at its launch party and invited passers-by to pit their cameraphones against the Lumia 920. The challenge involved shooting a photograph of a still life setup stuffed inside a dark cubby hole in a brick wall. Check out the video above for a glimpse of how the phone’s camera stacked up against the iPhone’s and the Samsung Galaxy’s. Read more…
