05 March 2008

LG Lu990 Viewty vs. Nokia N93
Consistent with experts’ observations

Hello, got my hands on the LG Lu990 Viewty which sports Xenon flash!! Lets see how it performs against the humble Nokia N93. Remember the Nokia N93 is 3.2MP and the LU990 is 5MP.

The optics on the LG Lu990 is German fancy branded lens which is really too long in my opinion and hard to pronouce. It sports autofocus, and fixed focal length, ie no zoom.

The Nokia N93 sports the famous Carl Zeiss 3x optical zoom lens. All comparisons have been done indoor, and lower light conditions, which would need some sort of light, ie, xenon flash or LED illuminator.

Firstly lets look at subjects about 2 feet away from the phone camera optic.
Nokia N93	LG Lu990 Viewty
N93 shot with LED illuminator, all editing in phone if required	LU990 shot, with its xenon flash
*click to enlarge or right click and save target us

Now for a further subject, looking at about 5 feet away
Nokia N93	LG Lu990 Viewty
N93 shot with LED illuminator, all editing in phone if required	LU990 shot, with its xenon flash
*click to enlarge or right click and save target us

Lets go for a semi well it up wide angle room shot
Nokia N93	LG Lu990 Viewty
N93 shot with LED illuminator, all editing in phone if required	LU990 shot, with its xenon flash
*click to enlarge or right click and save target us

A flash type test would not complete without an extremely low light situation subjects 1 foot away.
Nokia N93	LG Lu990 Viewty
N93 shot with LED illuminator, all editing in phone if required	LU990 shot, with its xenon flash
*click to enlarge or right click and save target us

Now why not test taking a shiny subject that reflects. again about 1 foot away
Nokia N93	LG Lu990 Viewty
N93 shot with LED illuminator, all editing in phone if required	LU990 shot, with its xenon flash
*click to enlarge or right click and save target us

Lastly, a bit of macro with flash and illuminator
Nokia N93	LG Lu990 Viewty
N93 shot with LED , all editing in phone if required	LU990 shot, with its xenon flash
*click to enlarge or right click and save target us

We can see the Lu990 with xenon flash, can be useful for extremely dark situations, where we need to freeze the subject. N93 shots may look better, but the camera operator has to be very steady and also moving subjects cannot be captured without motion blurring.

Colour reproduction of the LU990 is harsh and unrealistic, and it seems the power of the xenon flash unit is not all that great. It seems the Xenon flash is either on or off, there is no variable flash setting, nor is there any way that the shutter compensates for the flash operating. This can be seen most obvious on the macro shot. Although the program setting was set to macro, the flash still fires at full power at the subject, and in doing so completely washes out any details present.

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Noise wise the LU990 does respectively well, but suffers from the same brute force noise reduction algorithm that the N95 has implemented. Just about every image, here seems to be water coloured looking.

The N93 shots reveal considerably more noise, but the images, look real, and have depth to them. THe over noise reducing algorithm in the LU990 can be a reason for the poor colour rendition.

The resolution of the LU990 was good, but not 5MP good. The N93 clearly kept up and achieved respectable results for a 3,2MP phone camera. We cannot blame the LU990 for its poor resolution due to its optic, as it sports some German optic, although not as famous as Carl Zeiss obviously in this case

One thing of interest is the piano shot. even in low light here, the N93 manages to focus dead onto the piano. The LU990 has an orange focus illuninator similar to those found on dedicated point and shoot digicams. Obviously this too is underpowered, as it was unable to light up the piano satisfactorily for goof focus to be attained.

Your Thoughts....

Mazor

SF Review: Carl Zeiss, does it make a difference?
Originally posted: 05.03.2008
Last Updated: 05.03.2008
Author: Bigley Ling (AKA Mazor)
Copyright: Symbian Freak 2008; all rights reserved