08 August 2006
Camera part II
The first thing you would notice about N93 is the huge, really huge camera module and the second thing is the the fact that it is fixed and it isn’t twistable as on the N90. In practice this means that we aren’t able to take some really good form strange and cool angles and perspectives, with twisting camera part on N90 it is piece of cake but with N93 it becomes simply impossible and this the first segment where the N90 beats the N93. However,, from another point of view it will be hard to implement a rotateable camera module together with laptop form the factor and if I have to choose among rotating camera part and “laptop” form factor I’d rather choose fully functional laptop form factor.
Phone design with a huge and separate camera part allows engineers much easier work on making extraordinary camera possibilities; they aren’t limited with the thin phone body and even thinner space behind the LCD so they can use better, larger and better positioned optics parts with enough space to implement optical zoom. Such a concept allows N93 to be the first phone with 3x optical zoom in the markets and as far as I know only Sharp’s 903 model offers optical zoom but it is 2x zoom only.
Apart from the huge camera part N93 introduces new and very usable dedicated camera keys, all of them are very well made and implemented with nice chrome polish.
The Shutter key is pretty huge and easy to use, it is marked with red point and surrounded by zoom ring/jog. It does not only look like on a real camera it also provides the same functionality, soft press (halfway down) will activate auto focus and after that a green locked focus indicator appears on the display. Another harder press will start capturing process.
The zooming key is very useful and easy to use, positioned around the shutter button just like on my Canon. By rotating the key you can zoom in or out on an object in continuous 3x optical and
up to 20x digital zoom. Soft allows to set it up to use it in continuous which allows smooth increments between digital and extended digital zoom, or paused mode that features pause at the digital and extended digital step point. After all you can set it to the off.
Considering that is nothing more than commercial trick because all you can do with it is to destroy your photos. I personal prefer paused mode to avoid accidental using of the digital zoom. However,, if you really need more than 3x optical zooming then rather take a regular photo and enlarge it afterwards with Photoshop or similar raster graphic program on PC, and you will get a noticeably better result, believe me.
Below the trigger key lies navigation joy bad. After 10 days I still did not manage to use it the right way, it is just too small for the large male thumbs and pretty difficult to use. The N90s joystick is much better solution. Its main usage is to control and navigate trough the camera soft together with the two soft keys on the top of the inner display. Of course same as all other dedicated key it has additional function in closed mode. The interesting thing is that if you exit the camera in camera form factor, the phone will switch into full useable landscape mode which can be controlled with the side joypad and mentioned keys near the display; you can browse through gallery, play clips or even play the games.
The camera mode and flash keys are located a bit lower the navigation joypad as well, too close in my opinion. The camera key provides switching among camera or video mode and flash key allows putting flash in automatic, forced or off mode but it is weird that there is no red eye reduction mode by the way!? In video mode it allows to choose do you want to use optical zoom or not, mainly it is because optic moving mechanism produce noticeable noise and it could screw-up your video when the sound part is important.
What to say about flash, actually it is hard to call it flash, it is still led flash and it seems that we have to wait a little bit more for the first Nokia phone with powerful strobe flash. As I said, flash is implemented through relatively small and pretty weak led diode and it is almost completely useless, actually the only really usage of this flash is the torch light which it could provide by pressing flash key in the closed mode which is pretty useful feature from time to time.
The camera application is activated by putting the phone into camera form, same as on N90 you have to fold up to 90 degrees and turn the fold down so that the main display faces you. After running you will notice that the camera soft is improved in the comparison to the N90 but mainly it is only cosmetically improvements. Viewfinder is extended across the whole screen with semitransparent soft menu options and flaying icons that disappears during focusing and capturing process. Of course before and after taking the photos the phone offers a different set of icons.
The most interesting thing about the soft is the the fact that Nokia N73 runs better soft for example it allows you to change the ISO and gives you many other different choices, The most interesting thing about the soft is the the fact that Nokia N73 runs better soft for example it allows you to change the ISO and gives you many other different choices, better focusing and better compressing algorithm. It is hard to believe that phone with such a powerful imaging hardware hasn’t got a corresponding powerful soft, shame on you Nokia.
The other annoying thing is that preview of the image after shooting looks terrible and if you want to see how it really looks like you have to go into gallery what is not very handy. Another annoyance is the fact that once when you finish work with the camera and flip phone into standard clamshell or even laptop mode the camera soft stays active and it switch to the inner VGA camera. Even worse than that is when you completely close the phone the camera soft still stays active and waiting to shock you once you open the phone by providing your face on the screen because the VGA-cam is still active. And if you are looking like me it could be pretty terrible experience which could cause serious damage if you have weak heart :)
Last but not least, actually this should be the first because so far I found it as the quite tedious issue: the fact that there is no way to use main camera module in dedicated portrait mode, I’ve tried almost everything and I’m pretty sure it is impossible, even in the video mode if you turn the display into portrait mode video will stop and you will be switched to the crappy VGA camera, I just hope that it will be fixed in further firmware version.
While working with the camera I got very disappointing result, phone auto focus is very bad, same as on N90 focusing algorithm isn’t very smart and it always focuses in the middle of the scene, but in fact the N90 still has better focus. On Nokia N93 is hard to get a good focus, it fails very often, especially in short distance photos, the ugly red indicator appears simply to often and sometime even if it shows green the result is terrible blurry and noise photo. I’m so sad to say that sometime I have to take up to 10 photos of the same object to get the wanted result and good focus and it is a terrible score for a 3.2 mpx camera. The colours are reproduced very well, the processing is good but the noise levels are unacceptable high and even with such a high noise level the amount of captured detail is too low sometime.
I accept constitution that I’m maybe to subjective and therefore I am offering you s few examples so you will able to decide by yourself how good or bad the camera really is. Also I’ll put few comparison photos among N90/N93/cannon power shot and as I plan to buy another device somewhere in the middle of the next week I’ll make mpx battle test if I manage to find enough spare time. Oh yes, these are not the average samples of the cam quality, these are the almost the best photos that I have got so far with my N93.
For more realistic results and more samples you should check out our gallery section, N93 part, you’ll also find some really bad samples, its almost incredible how bad photos N93 is capable to produce.
Night mode:
Outdor:
Zoom:
N93 vs. N90
Hot time and summer in the city
MPX battle, N90 vs. N93 vs. Canon PowerShot A70
Just a few examples for now, more to come soon,
on forum section of course
N93 |
Sharp 903 |
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*click to enlarge |
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Video recorder
It is undeniably true that the N93 is the best video recorder among the mobile phones at the moment, it is capable of recording video in up to VGA (640x480) resolution at 30 fps which is impressive. Beside the very good video phone is equipped with two microphones and it records sound in stereo AAC format at 48kHz. I’ve tried but it is hard to find the phone that has even similar quality video recording and from that point of view N93 video recording possibilities are simply amazing.
Working with the recorder is quite easy, it provides recording in the automatic and night mode which can be supported by the led light that provides a completely insufficient amount of light in almost all situations.
The zoom can also be used while recording but it isn’t as smooth as it should be and it produces pretty noticeable and pretty ugly noise. Mainly it is due to the very sensitive microphones positioned near the camera module to close to the noisy zooming mechanism.
Video recording soft should be improved, there are noticeable jumps and skipping on some videos although it does not happen very often but it happens. In addition, on some videos sound isn’t very well synchronized with the picture.
The recorded video looks extremely and surprisingly good on the phone screen but it is mainly due to the compression to the lower QVGA resolution. It looks nice on the phone screen and even on the TV but on PC, on the real resolution, you will not be so much impressed with the result, especially in lower lighting condition, recorder really requires lot of light for proper work but it is expectable after all.
However,, I have to say it is far away from DVD quality, just like the Nokia claims it is just a DVD like video recorder with accent on LIKE it does not even meet semi professional needs.
I’m not the movie director and I still have to improve my video recording skills with such a small camcorder. Anyway, below you can find some samples that will help you to make a clear opinion about the quality of the built in video recorder.
Samples by Apoc (shorter):
>> more video samples comes tomorrow < <
Outdoor, very good lightin conditions
Automatic mode |
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*click to watch it |
Outdoor, not so good lightin conditions
Automatic mode |
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*click to watch it (4shared server) |
Outdoor, not so good lightin conditions
Automatic mode |
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*click to watch it |
Outdoor, extremly good lightin conditions
Automatic mode |
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*click to watch it |
Low lighting
Automatic mode |
Night mode |
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*click to watch it |
N90 vs. N93 direct comparison
Video is taken side by side, same target same distance
Automatic mode |
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352*288 15fps (mono) |
640*480 30 fps (stereo) |
*click to watch it (4shared server) |
NOTE:
I have some problems with uploading speed, my broadband doesn’t work every well nowadays and tomorrow I'll upload direct video comparison among the N90 and N93, video is recorded side by side so it’s the really nice example of the recorders possibilities. So to be short, just come back tomorrow.
Samples by Djord (longer):
Sample No. 1
.:[ Nokia N93 - Technical Specifications ]:.
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