Camera, Photos and Video Quality
Nokia 5 Review – Camera
With Nokia 5, you get a 13 megapixel primary camera which is autofocus. The image sensor inside has pixels of size 1.12µm. Lens on top has f/2.0 aperture while a dual-tone dual-LED flash supports the whole unit. The image sensor has phase detect autofocus system as well.
While go through the photos quality later below, lets talk a little about the native camera app and its features in Nokia 5. The app is just same as in Nokia 3, it’s also same in Nokia 6 as well we’ll cover later in its review.
Unlike previous camera user interfaces Nokia has brought to its Symbian and Windows Phone devices which were extremely user friendly, the one on these new Nokia Android phones, the camera app is very simple on viewfinder with a couple of toggles and still/video/panorama etc. switches. On the other hand, all options are cluttered into one single settings menu which, to me at least, is very awkward in white background – black would be awesome.
Camera App Operations
The camera starts with the viewfinder and three elements on the bottom – shutter release in the middle, video switch on the left and a gallery shortcut on the right. There are a couple of toggles on top row – right side. Rear/Front camera switch, shot timer, HDR (on/off/auto), and Flash (on/off/auto).
In still photos mode, you get to choose from normal photo, panorama shots and beautify mode. While in video mode, you can set the speed of recording with 1x, 2x and 3x. The slow speed recording (not calling it as slo-mo) is also supported – 1/2x when maximum resolution is set to 720p, and 1/3x at 480p. Standard 1080p videos do not support slow speed.
Settings Menu
Menu has the options to turn on/off the compass, grid lines (rule of thirds), capture settings (auto/manual), shutter control (burst shots), watermark (can choose from a preset of text, weather, city, etc.). You can choose whether to use volume key as shutter release. Finally you can set resolution for photos and videos for both front and rear cameras separately.
Manual Control Gimmick
If didn’t notice about the capture settings above with “manual” option – then you should have. It’s the manual control function you can enable on Nokia 5. It’s not like a full “Manual control” like we have seen in old Nokia devices or more recently in Huawei devices.
Nokia 5 only offers to set metering (auto/evaluative/center-weighted), focus (auto/infinity/macro), white balance (auto/daylight/cloudy/shade/fluorescent/incandescent) and exposure compensation (full stop increments -2/+2ev).
No ISO handling, No exposure control? It’s not Manual
While most of the things in manual settings above we usually see in most devices but the focus options are from the old Nokia phones which usually offered “infinity” mode to keep everything in focus while the “macro” mode lets you get as closest to the object as possible by the camera.
The Focal Length
Examining the photos EXIF data from Nokia 5, we discovered that the camera delivers 21mm equivalent focal length but in real, the photos do not seem to be covering that wide field. Look at the following same scene captured by Nokia 5 (left) and Huawei Y7 Prime (right) side-by-side.
Notice to compare the coverage of field of view from both phones – they are pretty much equal whereas Y7 Prime’s EXIF data tells it to be 26mm equivalent, which is more common among smartphone cameras. So we take it as Nokia 5 might be reporting erroneous information in EXIF data.
Photo Quality
Nokia 5 actually somewhat impressed us with its image quality considering its class. You can expect nice quality images from 13MP camera. Even though some noise is present in daylight shots which is not visible until you look at a 100% crop of the image, it’s making up a good and detailed image. Color reproduction is well managed which is critically good but some consumer minds who expect vividness from their smartphone camera will be disappointed.
Dynamic range is also better at most places but it’s lost when you take an indoor shot with a window in the frame throwing huge amount of daylight. On the other hand, the shots inside a normal-lit room may introduce heavy noise and vanish all the detail we could have in bright conditions. Have a look at some outdoor shots below followed by some indoor shots.
Outdoor Shots
Indoor Shots
HDR Shots
HDR actually worked nicely in Nokia 5. In those situations where it couldn’t handle dynamic range very well, HDR could do the job pretty nicely. It does manage to recover from highlight clipping and brighten up dark shadows. In that process, you could sacrifice the real blue color of the skies.
Observe the following shots taken twice – once with HDR-OFF and then with HDR-ON. Shown in the same order.
Shots with Flash-ON
Now that’s what, I won’t recommend to use with Nokia 5. It’s completely useless in wider environment – usually in rooms. White balance is completely lost, even a meter distant subject couldn’t get any detail. However if you could want to shoot some closeup subject with the flash, it does the job with completely black background. That’s due to nicely handling flash strength to throw on closer subject to prevent over exposure leading to completely underexposed background.
Close-up Shots
Nokia 5 can focus a subject at least 3-inch distance. Even though the manual control provides a “Macro” option in focus which fixes the focus on a certain distance and you have to move your camera back and forth and take shot when you are sure the subject is in focus. Better stay with “Auto” focus and use tap-to-focus as you normally do.
Front Facing Camera
Nokia 5 offers an 8 megapixel camera on the front which is also an autofocus unit. It also have f/2.0 lens aperture and contains an image sensor with 1.12µm pixel size as primary camera’s. It’s a wide angle camera with 84-degree field of view.
This camera produces sharp images out of its front camera, well managed noise and detail is pretty good. Autofocus is impressive to take selfies.
Panorama
Nokia 5 captures approximately flawless panoramas in its class.
Video Recording
Nokia 5 can record videos at up to 1080p resolution with 30 frames per second. Sure you won’t get 4K or faster frame rate from any device technically due to Snapdragon 430 or even 435 limitation. The question is if it can record pleasing videos at the limit it supports? Well, yes and no at the same time. Videos from Nokia 5 have nice color reproduction, dynamic range is good at limited exposure differences. Image detail on the other hand is not that great as we saw in still photos, it’s softer than sharper .
