Just a comment passing by…

The previous iPhones, all of them, had really over saturated colors that most users like because they looked “pretty”. Than Apple shifted it’s stance on color reproduction with the iPhone 4s I guess, and tried for more natural colors hence better color reproduction. And now Nokia got drunk one night and turned it all up. Both saturation, and the color balance towards a warmer tone. And really, no one needs any photographic knowledge to look at color reproduction right? I mean, if what you can see in the picture is closer to what you can see in reality, there you go, good color reproduction! And for real color reproduction even a glance at the 808’s pictures is enough. They are so different from the 1020s pictures in regards to the color. But yeah, still of course I’d love to own the 1020 and I’m sure amazing photographs can be taken with it.

DPI refers to the physical dot density of an image when it is reproduced as a real physical entity, for example printed onto paper, or displayed on a monitor. A digitally stored image has no inherent physical dimensions, measured in inches or centimeters. Some digital file formats record a DPI value, or more commonly a PPI (pixels per inch) value, which is to be used when printing the image. This number lets the printer or software know the intended size of the image, or in the case of scanned images, the size of the original scanned object.

First off, thank you for changing the tone of the discussion. I really appreciate it. I don’t mind being told I’m wrong, and correcting a mistake. I want the article to be factually correct. However, I’m as human as the next guy. It’s hard not to get a little offended if someone comes at you. I appreciate having a civil discussion with someone, even if we don’t agree. So, if range isn’t the proper term, and I guess it isn’t, then I will change it to balance.

To be honest, I didn’t feel like the pano shot had enough range, but I’m sure that’s because of the warm cast that it has, which is balance. Right? If not, feel free to correct my terminology.

As for the iPhone, I’ve heard many people who are more knowledgeable about photography than me accuse Apple of amping up the color saturation to appeal to average users. It isn’t spot on in the pano shot, either, but I feel like its closer. But it doesn’t do as well with color reproduction as the 1020 in other shots. The Lumia did a better job with the grass shots. The truth is somewhere between the two, but the iPhone was far too dull. The 1020 was still warm, but closer to reality.

Well, you’re in luck then! I did come off as attacking I guess, and I apologise for that. I am just happy my points are getting across.

And no, again you make the same invalid point. I myself absolutely HATE the 1020’s color reproduction. You know why? 1. It’s wrong. Warmer than natural, and over saturated. But that’s the smaller reason. I go even madder so because 2. Nokia has ALWAYS paid almost a madman like attention to color reproduction and has strived to get them as natural as possible. N95. N82. N86. N8. And the king, the 808. And suddenly we get “popping” colors. The color isn’t THAT bad even, it’s pretty okay, but still I hate it because it isn’t supposed to be like that, and especially not from Nokia. Meh.

But that is what. I agreed! What I had mentioned was that color RANGE and color REPRODUCTION are two very different things, the only similarity between those two properties is that they concern color! The range is great. The reproduction isn’t.

Don’t be disingenuous. You didn’t make your initial comment to intelligently disuss shortcomings of this article. Ron did that earlier, and we had a productive discussion. You went on the attack, and expected this response. Well, you got exactly what you were aiming for. Congratulations. But don’t come back and try to act like you were being diplomatic with your critiques.

As for the content of the article, your correction on using terminology too loosely are duly noted. However, the pictures were taken outside of my office building. I know good and damn well what the colors of the grass and sky there look like. Whether you choose to accept it or not, The iPhone 5’s camera was closer to real life than the Nokia Panorama lens. The clouds also appear more detailed to me. That’s just my opinion. You are entitled to yours, but your terminology lesson didn’t change my mind. For clarification, however, the issue I had with color balance were limited to the panorama lens and video only. The outdoor photos taken with Pro Cam were all spot on.

If you would like to dial the condescension down a few notches, I would be a lot more receptive to discussing this with you. But I won’t be holding my breath waiting for that to happen.

What one could do, for a popular but non-tech and non-scientific comparison (nothing wrong, just that its not rigorous), is to put both on generic auto mode, mount both on the same fixture, and shoot the same scene at the same time. Easy enough. Dont invoke manual mode, HDR, whatever.
Just point and shoot, point and shoot, like most casual users would.
Then compare.

That would eliminate many of the comments about ‘bias’, ‘you don’t know what you are talking about’, ‘a Hassleblad could not do it better’ and that sort of thing.

Sooner or later, the software will be developed to take the base image and do interesting things with it. In the meantime, if one is do a fair assessment, and one wants ones work to be viewed as credible, one should not only be scrupulous in doing it right; one has to make sure one comes across as credible,
Having said that, not everyone is a trained lab jockey with instruments galore. Nor are all readers pro photographers.

So say it like it is. Stay off provocative technical terms, and say – look here, I took these shots with these two phones mounted on two ends of a stick and shot off pictures as i walked around. In situation 1, phone A produced a nicer photo because the grass color is more true to life, the sky is the right shade of blue, whatever. In situation 2, phone B has the better photo because you can see more details in the darker areas. And so on.

Using technical terms will always raise some photographer’s hackles because while you might say ‘overexposure’, what you are really referring to is the sensor’s limited dynamic range – neither of which the man on the street cares about.

Just saying.

You cannot simultaneously hold yourselves to “the highest ethical standards” and threaten to ban anyone who questions your ethics. I own the Lumia 1020, and take pictures with it every day, and I’ll say it again, something is not right with the photos in this review. And considering that this is an iOS site, it’s not at all hard to believe that that is by design. Read the comments, plenty of people are saying the same thing. This article does everything it can to make the iPhone look as good as possible in the comparison. This site and the author are free to have an agenda, and I know Apple has some die hard fans out there, but constantly trying to bolster the iPhone throughout what is supposed to be a “fair and impartial” review is not ethical any way you slice it, nor is threatening me for calling it like I see it. If nothing is allowed to be said without proof, you may as well disable comments all together (unless of course that’s just an excuse to be able ban whoever the heck you want whenever you want, then it’s certainly working as intended).
I haven’t used a single expletive, though it’s certainly been tempting after reading an extremely biased article masquerading as impartial, and your own comment. If you ask me (and many other people, judging by other comments), both of those are inappropriate, but you’re the only one whose taken it upon himself to play judge, jury, and executioner. All I’ve done is speak my mind and I’m not going to be bullied or intimidated not to do so. Nor am I going to lose any sleep over it if you ban me, so go right ahead. Send the message loud and clear to all the readers and commenters here that dissent will not be tolerated and that questioning an article or author is a punishable offense. At that rate, you won’t have to ban too many more people, they’ll leave on their own. But go ahead and give yourself a pat on the back anyway for holding yourself to the same high ethical standard as the Nazis. They led people to believe that what they did was ethical simply because they said so and they silenced anyone who said otherwise.

It is. Agreed. But the reaction to my comment damaging and unproductive at best too?

Ah! I was expecting this exact reply. No, I am not saying you are a professional photographer, nor am I saying you should be one. What I WAS saying though, was that your comments in several places were very misinformed. Which doesn’t mean that you aren’t a photographer and that is a bad thing. All it means is, you are wrong in making the comment without have proper knowledge of what you are talking about. It is wrong by itself, as a statement first, and then more importantly, it is wrong because it misleads so many others who read the article with the notion that what you have said must be right because obviously you know what you are talking about, when in fact, you don’t.

I hope this made my intention of commenting in the first place clear.

Thank you for enlightening us with your dazzling knowledge of photography. Let me ask you this. Did I ever claim to be a professional photographer? A renowned expert? No. I am simply interested in it, and find it very appealing. But thank you very, very much for pointing out how much I don’t know. I hope that made you feel better.

By the way, if you would ever like to take a crack at my chosen profession or area of college degrees, I’ll be glad to lampoon you over your lack of knowledge of semantics and specifics.

Detail due to Resolution
Image quality due to Lenses.
Angle of View
Dynamic Range
OIS
Completely controllable settings in Manual Mode

These the the things, casually put, that make it the best camera phone on the market. Hands down. By a HUGE margin.

Well, if that is the case, then I have to come to the only available conclusion that you are a very poor photographer with almost no sense of what exposure is and how it works. How you say that the bright part is over exposed in the low light photo without flash, of course it is over exposed! For an exposure that lights up the corridor, a photo from a Nikon D800, from a Canon 5D Mark III, from Hasselblads even, from ANYTHING, will have that bright area “overexposed”! But call it the auto mode’s weakness on the 1020! And in the Panorama, you say that the color range is better? What is color range?!? Do you even know? Color reproduction is a totally different thing. “RANGE” to you, perhaps is a fancy word that was fun to put in. And more detail in the sky?! What! Just look at the left edge. Look at the the sky where the sun is. Now you don’t mention the bright area over exposed? When in this situation (the whole scene being properly lit), it is a hundred times more possible to get the bright area properly exposed unlike in the indoor shot? You wont mention this as the iPhone’s “weakness” like you mentioned the 1020’s? And macro shots! Do you know what macro means even?!? *spoiler* It DOESN’T mean CLOSE! It has to do with the size of the image being formed. It is generally considered macro of it is 1:1 of the actual subject shot,or larger. Larger than life basically. And do you know anything about the focal length? Was there ANY mention of that? Of how wide the lens is (as always in Nokia cameras) The angle of view? No mentions? Why? Because it favors the 1020? And so on.

I believe that Nokia released an SDK for the camera on the 1020 so I imagine that within a few months there will be all sorts of new full resolution Lenses for the 1020 like panorama and HDR. Rome wasn’t built in a day after all!
I admit that a full resolution Panorama would be incredible, you’d be able to zoom in after the fact for fantastic detail. File sizes would be pretty monstrous though!

Thanks. I do agree that the manual settings are the key to getting the most out of this camera. I really enjoyed using them, but I like fooling around with cameras. That’s why I ended up doing the 1020 review. But, here’s the issue for Nokia. Selling to camera enthusiasts only doesn’t make money. It doesn’t gain significant marketshare. They need some streamlining to help accomplish that.

Case in point. While I was testing the 1020, I handed it to my wife and showed off the features and some pics. I showed her the mode with all of the manual setting arcs displayed and gave it to her. She looked at it, and then asked me how to get the stuff out of the way so she could take a picture. She wasn’t interested. And my wife isn’t a novice smartphone user, either. She just isn’t one to fiddle around with them like I am. Like it or not, Nokia needs to be selling to people like my wife to become more successful. Automating Pro Cam some more would be a big help.

I understand your point. I could have gone the opposite direction, and both dug into lenses and Pro Cam’s manual settings beyond the little bit that I did here, and then gone through several of the better iOS third party camera apps, as well. However, I didn’t see the point. The 1020 is already better in this current comparison, and I’ve already done a full review and photo collection at WinSource, where I pushed the camera to get better shots.

I actually like the lens concept. There are a lot of really good iOS camera apps out there, but it is a disjointed experience moving from one to the next. I like the organization that MS brought with the lens system. They should really get more credit for the idea.

As for the HDR lenses, I’m still not a fan. Like using the Panorama lens, your photos are a lot more limited having to start out at 5 megapixels instead of 35 or 38. That’s why I want Nokia to add the feature to Pro Cam.

It also has NFC and optional Wireless charging, as well as a bigger screen with higher resolution and a standard non proprietary micro usb port. Oh and a barometer !
Another handy Nokia feature is that you can download language packs and use Microsoft’s translation app without any data service. This complements the ability to use maps offline when you are travelling overseas and don’t want to have to sell your house when you get back to pay for the data charges.
Finally, being totally honest which one do you really think is more likely to survive being dropped without a case ? I have personal experience from dropping my iphone 4 and my Lumia 920 … guess which one broke?

I’m not a great fan of HDR … it never helped me with my iphone 4 shots much, but there are HDR lenses for Windows Phone 8, including HDR Photo Camera which I have on my Lumia 920. I don’t use it much though because I have ProShot which is effectively what the Nokia ProCam app is. It was available long before the 1020 and has allowed me to take some shots I am really pleased with.
Using auto mode for both seems like you are being fair, but lets face it you have so much more control over any Windows Phone Camera with its “lenses” feature than an iphone that it obviously advantages the iphone to a large degree. I can’t see why you would carry a 1020 and not learn how to get the best out of its fantastic hardware.
On a positive note I liked the way you showed the comparative photos. Very helpful.

I think not using image processor may not be related to MS restrictions but to battery life and other issues. HTC has dedicated image processor in 8x, If I am not mistaken.
My guess is that Nokia had to make other trade-offs in terms of battery-life, weight of the phone,etc.

For a 5MP image you can zoom up to 3X, 1080p video
is up to 4X and for 720p video is up to 6X to get lossless zoom.

Thanks, Ron. I appreciate you sharing your insight. I hate to make a mistake, but I would hate to leave one in a review even more, so I appreciate you pointing it out. I will make the fix when I get home.

I am curious what you mean about the zoom? Are you referring to reframing photos? I can tell you know your stuff, so I’m interested to hear what you think is inaccurate. I want this article to be factually correct. If it isn’t, then I definitely want to fix it.

Thanks, again.

How do you say he “this article is biased towards iphone” If it says about the 1020
“Just look at how much detail is visible here. No other smartphone can do this. Honestly, there are plenty of low-end point and shoot camera that couldn’t pull this off, even with optical zoom.”
James Rogers

Thank you! I appreciate you looking at the 2 articles in context.

No problem James but the others Lumias will not help you because they can not do it (920/925/928 will be able do it after the next update).

P.S. You have some small inaccuracies about the zoom but other then that good work.