18 December 2006

3.2 MPX battle, N93 vs. K800i
part II

Now to be fare, poor N93 here has been having the short end of the stick, being the noisy partner, bad sensitivity, and in a lot of cases losing resolution due to noise. Some have said the optical zoom in N93 is very poor and would rather crop in ie. digital zoom the image. Heres a test for both.

Here is a test for both.

Digital vs. Optical zoom
SE K800i shot, auto, no flash, digital zoom	Nokia N93 shot, auto, no flash, optical zoom
*click to enlarge

The k800i does relatively well here, and possibly would be acceptable for alot of situation where no prints are made. Sony has taken the approach here of smoothing everything out. Still, they have not managed to eliminate the jagged edges on any sharp edge. N93 does and extra noisy job here due to its f5.9 tele lense, but attains a very good result. It is definitely showing a lot more detail in the onion stem than the digitally zoomed k800i.

The only thing different is the colour temperatures. K800i has opted for a warmer colour, whereas N93 has gone for a cooler approach. Personally, the k800i looks better from a first impression because of this warmer colour image, but looking closely at the N93 shot we can see a lot more detail on the onion stem hence a lot more resolution. The noise was so bad I decided to process this image here for a better comparison

N93 shot post processed gaussian and neat image

*click to enlarge

Much better. And thus we can see optical zoom, can be useful, and does beat digital zoom or even post cropping.

Night shots, no flash allowed to give natural effect
SE K800i shot, auto focus, night modes, no flash	Nokia N93 shot, auto focus, night portrait, flash off
*click to enlarge

Quite interesting results here. We can see k800i do ISO640 here Wow. Shutter speed was 1/6. N93 does not tell us any form of ISO, but at 1/6 shutter as well we can see N93 must be pumping at a lot higher ISO than k800i to get the brighter image. Looks like in night mode, k800i finally decided to release its noise reduction slightly to resolve more detail, but the image is still very dark. It took N93 about 3 shots to acquire any form of decent focus here as there is no assist LED in the camera software, whereas the k800i uses its orange LED illuminator in such circumstances and gets perfect focus first time. The N93 shot seems to show more detail here with its non existent noise reduction.

SE k800i shot, night mode, autofocus, +EV

*click to enlarge

To try to get more detail and brightness on the k800i, I tried boosting +EV maximum. This is the reuslt ISO seemed to drop slightly to ISO500, and shutter 1/2. Using a steady hand, the result is more pleasing, but at the expense of even more visible noise, and of course the dreaded purple fringing can be seen on the cap.

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Conclusion
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There is no doubt, after evaluating the k800i, it does meet the requirement of being a CyberShot! It has all the characteristic features of a CyberShot camera. It does have the well known "Sony" character found in their point and shoot digicams. Punchy sharp colours with alot of sharpening. As for shutter lag, the K800i I found has the least lag and focuses twice as fast as N73, and N93.

N93 Photography Tips: Easy ways to take better photos

Compared to the N93 for straight out of camera photos, k800i trumps it just about in every way. For post processed N93 pictures, they both came on par. What Sony Ericsson need though in their next firmware is the ability to control ISO sensitivity, which in commonly found in all it's big brother CyberShot.
Indeed, the ability to force the flash on for fill flash photos would be welcome. The user interface is exceptional, and mimicks a scaled down CyberShot. I personally liked the noise reduction on this digicam, being somewhat not conservative at times, but in doing so keeping the fine details.

The water colour effect is not so apparent with k800is noise reduction until lighting gets excessively poor, and I would prefer this to the overdone N73. Surprisingly the colours from both the N93 and k800i are very similar, and very photograph like. What was disappointing though was the presence of purple fringing in just about every shot taken with the k800i. Usually purple fringing occurs where bright sources meet a darker shadow subject. In this case, just about everywhere, even in night shots, purple fringing was evident.

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In fact sometimes the xenon flash aided to make purple fringing more apparent. This is extra poor coming from Sony Ericsson, and cannot be fixed easily using firmware as it is due to poor lense design. On saying that though the Xenon flash is very welcome here, as it proven to provide the best results where subjects were close and for lighting up very dark rooms. The absence of mechanical shutter in this case was a benefit for the k800i as it provided firstly, less delay that you get from a mechanical shutter, and also the ability to attain a very good flash sync. Others have reviewed the disadvantage of electronic shutters in terms for fast moving subjects, but the advantages does outweigh the one disadvantage.

Put against the N73, the k800i are very similar in terms of lense focal length and both sport f2.8 lenses. The purple fringing in the k800i is not anywhere as apparent on the N73, so must give it up to Carl Zeiss once again for providing Nokia with such good optics. Although I did notice inversed barrel distortion on the N73 where k800i had none. For indoor shooting, the k800i seems to be the all time winner, having the true xenon flash, and much better noise reduction against N73, which had way too much noise reduction, and N93, which has absolutely none! N73 shots seem to have a purple tint on all images, k800i and N93 keep images looking real.

So in saying all of this, here is my summary of all the cameras for purpose of use. Results were not surprising really.

k800i
Indoor shooter

Fantastic for candid shooting, fast response, fast accurate autofocus, good outdoor and indoor performance, macro is fun to use and autofocuses, Not for serious outdoor shooting as lense lets it down terribly. Video is usable only for PXT

N73
Outdoor shooter

OK candid shooter for those who want Digital looking prints with crazy colours, and watercolour effects, accurate autofocus, better outdoor performance than indoor. Will make brilliant memorable landscape shots, macro works well too. video for fun events to show friends

N93
Average Jo all round shooter

Only for artistic shots, where you have time to take you time to get some sort of autofocus and go home after to post process. Results from post processing is astonishing, and will rival larger presume digicams. Macro is excellent even though fixed to 10cm, optical zoom is convenient to have. Form factor is nice too with rotating viewfinder display. Surprisingly good video, stereo recording, and excellent frame rates.

And that concludes my reviews. For now.. ..

SF Review: 3.2 MPX battle, N93 vs. K800i
Originally posted: 18.12.2006
Last Updated: 18.12.2006
Author: Bigley Ling (AKA Mazor)
Copyright: Symbian Freak 2006; all rights reserved

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