Nokia 808 PureView Camera – Pictures & Video – Comparison with Nokia N8 & Samsung Galaxy SIII

Indoor, with Flash

100% Cropped parts below. Click to enlarge. 

 (Full resolution shots – PureView, N8, SGS3)

First thing about this picture I want to excuse is the dirt on the rack, but I wanted to check actually how does each of the camera I am holding can see that dirt. Anyway the test was primarily to check the flash power of 808 PureView against other devices while shooting indoor. Well that’s very important in photography when you need to use flash indoors among your family members. Before 808 PureView Nokia N8 has been very good in shooting indoor with its Xenon flash which is really good comparatively to the LED flash units. Samsung Galaxy S III has an LED flash unit. And in 808 PureView’s spec sheet says that its Xenon flash can cover the distance of up to 3.5 meters. So let’s talk about the pictures we shot with these three devices.

I tried to pick the critical part of the pictures as cropped above. I was impressed by seeing the detail of the rack board at the back of the lotion bottle and CD covers. Can you see that detail on other devices? Yes, N8 is also showing its struggle to produce that detail but not as clear as a human eye could catch that easily. I can see only when I am looking for that. Well SGSIII seems really not to see that board on the back and tried to get what was more visible to it. Other detail in the picture from 808 PureView also is way ahead of either of the devices. Look at that bottle and CD covers how much sharp and clear they are.

One more thing you will notice in the picture above – and that, I have always noticed when shooting with flash on Android devices.

 100% Cropped parts below. Click to enlarge. 

If you click on the above cropped image, you will see that it’s a glass standing on the rack above. 808 PureView is really showing a glass while N8 has also produced a glass image but SGSIII, with its LED flash having no control over applying proper exposure to different areas in a picture. The white always(mostly at least) gets over exposed. Well even with Nokia’s many devices with LED flash units, I’ve experienced the same issue. That’s the Xenon power of applying light source rather than throwing a bunch of brightness on to the object(s).

While on the other hand you will notice in the above shot from 808 PureView a slight vignetting (the light fall-off) on top-left and top-right corners. That was produced by the flash spotted the light more in the center due to being too close to the objects. N8 also did the same but at lower level. But that’s not too bad than over exposing all the white background with the flash light as did the SGSIII. In fact vignetting is a good effect in some way to put focus on something. Not in this snap by the way.