28 June 2007

Carl Zeiss, does it make a difference?!??

It is a continual debate, does Carl Zeiss really capture an image better than a standard non Carl Zeiss lens.

Some believe it is part of Nokia's Marketing campaign, some think maybe it is good and Nokia’s sensor and image processor is falling short.

Whatever the reason, I decided to put my faithful N93 equipped with Carl Zeiss lens against the Nokia 7390 which sports exactly the same Megapixels and auto focus capability.

Here is the images, On the N93 shot I just applied blur and sharpen from the built in editor to remove artifacts. Other than that, both images have no colour adjustments.

The subject...

Some unfinished desert with artificial lighting above.

Nokia 7390	Nokia N93
*click to enlarge

*click to enlarge

We can see not only is the N93 delivers a higher contrast image; it also has slightly more dynamic range. What is really evident is overall sharpness and detail. It seems both images are very sharp, but N93 with CZ auto focus optics is revealing a lot more detail than the 7390 with non CZ optics but auto focus.

Interestingly Nokia’s noise reduction in the 7390 is a tad strong, but it looks like it has to as some noise is still visible in the image after the noise reduction process.

Apart from the noise reduction on the 7390, it does a surprisingly good image. the most obvious difference is indeed contrast, colours and details.

It is indeed possible here that these differences could indeed be due to the "Carl Zeiss" branding on the N93.

SF Review: Carl Zeiss, does it make a difference?
Originally posted: 28.06.2007
Last Updated: 28.06.2007
Author: Bigley Ling (AKA Mazor)
Copyright: Symbian Freak 2007; all rights reserve