28 July 2009

Nokia N86 Camera Review:
Nokia N86 vs SE C905 vs Sony DSC-T10

N86 Camera Software

I know you’ve been waiting till now hoping to finally see some camera action, but wait, your patience will be rewarded soon enough, we must get off all of the different bits and pieces you interact with before we get to the actual photography performance.

In this part I will get some steam off my chest regarding some points of the N86’s camera software, I’m not complaining for the sake of complaining, but I believe Nokia should try to fix these trivial issues in order not to ruin an otherwise perfectly good camera phone.

- Camera Sound: the N86 stupidly refuses to turn off the shutter sound no matter what I do, I know it’s there to prevent me from taking illegal shots in places which have a camera ban, but that’s not always the case, sometimes while in the office I don’t want everyone sitting around me to know that I’m taking a photo of something!
In my C905 it’s just enough to change the profile to “Silent” and then the phone does not emit a single sound, even if you run a Java application with sound!

- Scene Reset: when I was doing the photo shooting I had to alternate 3 cameras for every shot, and every time I took a macro shot with the N86, closed the camera cover then returned again to take another macro shot I discovered that the scene mode has been reset to “Automatic”, and I had to change it to “Close Up” and turn off the flash again. Why can’t it just remember what was my last setting like the C905 does?

- Timer + Auto Focus: this one I totally don’t understand, but for some reason, some genius decided that when you use the timer mode and press the shutter button, the phone will start clicking away till the time is almost up, then (and only then) it will attempt to auto-focus then capture the image.

Did you get the catch? Imagine this scenario, you’re taking a picture of some friends, you set the timer, press the shutter and hurry up to stand beside your friends, the timer ticks down, it attempts to auto-focus and probably fails, ruining the photo for you and your friends.

I have had lots of photos for this article fail because of this issue, however for the sake of fair comparison I tried several times until I got the right focus and used that shot. I could’ve used the out-of-focus pictures and blamed it all on the “Timer Auto Focus” issue.
Logic says you should auto-focus first, then if the focus is not correct you try again until you’re satisfied with the result then the timer shall start, genius, huh?

Once again, I’m saying this because I’m angry that such easy-to-fix issues are ruining my N86 camera experience, I know you won’t face these situations everyday, but I want the N86 to be perfect! You know when they say that the top student shall get more punishment because he is the best?

I really hope their next good camera phone will take care.

Camera Samples

Finally we get to the part everyone’s been waiting for, photos!

So let’s start by clearing some facts first, the N86 has a wide angled lens, this means that from the same position, the N86 will get (cram) more objects into the same image compared to the other cameras. This of course means that the same object will have less detail (look smaller) in the N86 than the other cameras.

This wide angle lens has both it’s advantages and disadvantages, people can debate about this a lot, but from my humble point of view, I see that it’s good when taking landscape shots, but it really frustrates me when trying to take close-ups or macro shots without getting everything around the object in the photo.

One other noticeable thing is the image file sizes, both the C905 and the N86 have 8 megapixel camera sensors while my Sony T10 has only 7 megapixels (i.e. one million pixels less).

Funnily enough these are the file sizes I got over a range of 50 photos for each camera:

Sony T10:
Average file size: 2.79 MB
Minimum – Maximum file sizes: 1.99 - 3.27 MB

SE C905:
Average file size: 2.15 MB
Minimum – Maximum file sizes: 1.83 - 2.58 MB

Nokia N86:
Average file size: 1.27 MB
Minimum – Maximum file sizes: 310 KB - 2.64 MB

Can you imagine this? A 310 KB 8 megapixel photo?

The average file size for the N86 is 1.27 MB which is lower than the minimum C905 file size, and even the large 2.64 MB file sizes for the N86 were in the garden photos where there are lots of shades and objects that you can’t compress the photo more than this.

As you can see from these file sizes Nokia is doing a LOT of compression on it’s photos, I don’t know the real reason behind this, I’m not sure, but the result is some really heavy noise in all of the N86 pictures, that said and with the wide angle lens the N86 isn’t going to win any details or noise competitions.

Here are some 100% crops to show you the difference, the first one is cropped from the top left corner of a beach photo showing the sky, second one is from the same photo but for people sitting on the beach and the third one is from a semi-sunny garage, look at details of the word “RECOMMENDS”.

Please calibrate your monitor before viewing the photos since it will hugely affect your perception of the photos. Check your monitor calibration here.

*click to enlarge

And here are the original pictures.

SE C905	Nokia N86	Sony T10
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SE C905	Nokia N86	Sony T10
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A side note: the N86 has an ISO mode setting with: Low, Medium and High, no further comment, continue reading please.

Close Up Photos:

I took these photos just to prove to myself that the camera can still do what the phones can’t. :-D This is not a normal macro mode, normal macro mode is used to capture objects between 10 – 60 cm away , this is actually a close-up mode where you can snap pictures of things up to 0.5 cm far from the lens.

SE C905	Nokia N86	Sony T10
*click to enlarge

Vivid Photos:

Now let me explain this weird title, if you look at the N86 pictures, you’ll notice that the colors are more vibrant and pictures seem to have better contrast, and in fact they do!

When I first took some photos and compared them to each other, I found that my Sony T10 pictures looked dull in comparison to the N86 which seemed more lively, I remembered reading something similar in the camera’s manual, it’s a “Vivid” color mode that you use instead of normal color tones to get the same effect as the N86, so I switched it on, and see for your self:

SE C905	Nokia N86	Sony T10	NSony T10 Vivid
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SE C905	Nokia N86	Sony T10	NSony T10 Vivid
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What I want to say is that you can achieve these lively colors using the vivid mode or simply using a photo editor on your PC, but out of the box the N86 pictures look better and sharper because of the increased contrast. Strangely enough, the N86 sports a similar “Vivid” mode which make things look even more contrasty and artificial, I didn’t like it. I’ll show you a sample in a jiffy.

That said, in all of the coming photos I will only use the “Auto” mode on all cameras unless I specify otherwise, no more vivids.

Normal Photos:

Below are some photos for you to see how pictures look in different cameras, you will notice the vividness in almost all of the N86 pictures, while looking better than the others, the others get more accurate colors closer to the reality.

Which is better? It’s 100% subjective, I for one like the more contrasty vivid photos.

SE C905	Nokia N86	Sony T10
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SE C905	Nokia N86	Sony T10
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SE C905	Nokia N86	Sony T10
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SE C905	Nokia N86	Sony T10
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And here is the N86 vivid mode as I promised:

Nokia N86	Nokia N86 Vivid
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Macro Photos:

Macro works well on all cameras, you can see how the wide angle of the N86 lens prevents you from closing on the subject properly. I like how the C905 blurs the background here.

SE C905	Nokia N86	Sony T10
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SE C905	Nokia N86	Sony T10
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Text/Macro Photos:

None of the phones had problems with capturing text using the macro mode, even when I resorted to using the flash all of them succeeded with different color tones.

SE C905	Nokia N86	Sony T10
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SE C905	Nokia N86	Sony T10
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Low Light Photos:

Now this is where I’m really impressed with the N86, in short, it has the best low light performance I have ever seen in a camera phone, period.
No matter how low the lighting was, the N86 kept taking good looking pictures as if it had it’s own source of lighting, it completely thrashed the C905 here, and in some occasions it took better looking pictures than my camera.

Let’s start with two sets of pictures that were captured at sundown, as you will see the N86 easily beats both of the C905 and the Sony T10 here.

SE C905	Nokia N86	Sony T10
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SE C905	Nokia N86	Sony T10
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When we get indoors with low light sources, the N86 impresses, in this picture the sun was still rising and the drapes were all closed, so there was very little light, the N86 made it look like it was in the middle of the day, just look at the difference between it and the C905. The camera however got the right colors due to it’s larger sensor, you just can’t easily beat that using a phone.

SE C905	Nokia N86	Sony T10
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The set below was captured in normal indoor light, again the N86 got a ten times better looking picture than the C905, but the camera prevailed again due to the larger sensor.

SE C905	Nokia N86	Sony T10
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For this set, I set a teddy bear on the floor and used a far light source, another triumph for the N86 over the C905.

SE C905	Nokia N86	Sony T10
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Finally I will get to some really low light pictures, these pictures were taken in the middle of the night with lamp posts as the only light source, it was really dim. Mind you, although I’m still using the auto mode, the N86 thrashed both the C905 and even my camera!

SE C905	Nokia N86	Sony T10
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I wanted to try the same scene but with the night mode on to see how it made a difference, all of the cameras were set on a table with the timers turned on so they were perfectly stable when they captured the pictures. The N86 wasn’t able to focus because of the stupid timer thing, and I like the C905 photo more than my camera, it’s more clear.

SE C905	Nokia N86	Sony T10
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Flash Pictures:

Here comes the part most people don’t like about the N86, the dual LED flash. I won’t explain now, I will leave the pictures to do the first round of explanation.

These three sets of pictures were taken in complete darkness using the flash, watch first then let’s talk.

SE C905	Nokia N86	Sony T10
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SE C905	Nokia N86	Sony T10
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SE C905	Nokia N86	Sony T10
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As you can see, the N86 performed exceptionally well versus the other xenon flashes, provided that the object is not very far from the camera which is the more usual situation.

Of course the xenon flash is still superior in some situations like in the pictures below, a rotating fan that was captured still thanks to the xenon and the same garden as above but from far away.

SE C905	Nokia N86	Sony T10
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SE C905	Nokia N86	Sony T10
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The final set of pictures represents a repeated situation I usually find myself at, fill-in flash. In the example below I had a subject that was standing in the shadow with a brightly lit background, so the camera has two choices to adjust the exposure, either to capture the subject correctly and blow the whole background or capture the correct background and keep the subject dark, and that’s what most cameras choose to do.

In these situations I tend to force the flash to fire in order to light up my close subject and of course it won’t affect the background, resulting in the desired shot. As you can see, the N86’s dual LED flash wasn’t up to the task and didn’t light the subject well enough, the camera did fine, and stupidly enough the C905 didn’t have an option to force the flash on, oh bugger.

SE C905	Nokia N86	Sony T10
*click to enlarge

Video Performance:

The N86 sports almost the same video capturing performance as the N95, which is good enough. It’s still the same 30 fps VGA captures. What I found most people wondering about though were two things, video light and digital zoom.

As for the video light, yes, the N86 can use it’s dual LEDs to illuminate the scenes you’re capturing, and it’s amazingly bright granted you stay close to what you’re capturing. You will find below a sample captured in complete darkness.

As for the digital zoom, it’s not the usual digital zoom that means blowing up the picture using interpolation leading to pixilation and bad video quality, the N86 (and the C905) uses what cameras call “Smart Zoom”.

Let me try to explain that to you, imagine a big rectangle 3264 pixels wide by 2448 pixels tall, that’s how big the N86 sensor is, now when you’re capturing VGA video (i.e. 640 x 480 pixels), what the mobile does is use that whole big rectangle and downsize it towards the resolution you’re shooting at, no problems so far. Now let’s imagine you want a 2x zoom, what the mobile does is instead of downsizing the whole big rectangle for you, it takes a smaller rectangle of the sensor (representing the zoom level you need) and then downsize it again to VGA. You can do this until you reach a zoom level where you’re only picking a rectangle from the sensor equal to the one you’re shooting your video at, at this stage no downsizing happens and this is the maximum zoom level you can get, clear?

What this means is that you can zoom enough without really deteriorating the image quality, although some noise tend to appear at high zoom levels (same as if you look at an image at a 100% zoom level).

The below videos are for the N86 and the C905 in the same situation, complete darkness. As you will see the N86 has a much brighter LED flash than the C905’s LED (you know it has both LED and xenon flashes, don’t you?), and despite the C905’s outdated QVGA video resolution (320x240) it has a smoother zoom-in/out than the N86’s abrupt zoom steps.

Finally here’s a quick comparison between the N86’s 30 fps VGA video and the camera’s 30 fps VGA video in bright sun light. I have chosen a difficult subject for both cameras which is the garden with lots of objects, colors, lightings and shadows, this ought to give both cameras a hard time.
I could’ve chosen someone talking or some passing cars but I wanted to challenge them, and I daresay both did ok, although the Nokia’s more aggressive compression is apparent.

Conclusion

Now we get to the part I dread the most, can’t we just finish here and go home and live happily ever after? Must I draw a conclusion? Really!?
Ok, ok, I know, you won’t leave me alone if I didn’t.

Here we go then, as everyone can see from the above evidence, the N86 has the worst noise levels, the least details, the most compressed file sizes, the least amount of shortcut buttons, and the weakest flash of them all.

Yet, it took the best looking pictures, the best colors and the best low light images. And for that alone I would give it a huge round of applause, congratulations Nokia on this success.

However, if you want to really become the best of the bunch you’ll have to look at all of the mishaps mentioned in this article and fix them, waiting for your next best imaging device. ;-)

Now some final words of wisdom, the N86 didn’t beat the C905 in the imaging department, far from it!

Each one of them had some specialties where it shined, for example the C905 is a lot easier to use as a camera, thanks to the shortcut buttons and the easy settings, it loads the camera application faster, images have more details than the N86.

At the end of the day it’s all down to the consumer, the average Joe, they will like the N86’s vivid pictures more, all they are going to do with it is post it over the web or email it to someone, and in this spirit the N86 makes perfect sense.

For more imaging savvy users, you must get your own real camera, be it point-and-shoot, DSLR, whatever, but a good camera phone is a nice addition which can sometimes help you when you haven’t got your real camera.

The answer still holds true (and I wonder for how long), the mobile camera image quality would never match that of a real camera.
I’m happy I have both phones for my daily use, but if I was given the choice between either the C905 and the N86, I’d pick the N86 without a moment’s hesitation (and buy a digital camera ;-)).

Goodbye!