Pixel Madness with the new Nokia Smartphone

[VF101]

Yesterday Nokia presented their new Lumia 1020 smartphone. This phone features a 41 megapixels camera! Yes, 41 megapixels. In a smartphone.

Within the phone the images are resized to 5 megapixels. That reduces noise as well as the file size. But access to the original picture is possible via USB connection.

The sensor size is 2/3 inches and I have to admit, the pictures look rather pleasing. Here are some full resolution images:
http://conversations.nokia.com/2013/07/11/nokia-lumia-1020-picture-gallery-zoom-in/

 

[Sid836]

The images are not resized to 5 megapixels! The 41 megapixels are combined to produce a clear 5 megapixel photo. Quite different, and not innovative. Just a nice marketing trick from nokia to attract people to it.

 

[stompyq]

Wow a 41 megapixel smart phone camera? Bet it makes a giant picture that looks like mush instead of a small picture that looks like mush

 

[icebear]

Pretty amazing, 7712x4352 pxs from a phone.
I guess that speeds up the madness significantly. And it will make the next generation of wifi network necessary with just $199 a month with 2 year contract from a provider near you. And you might get the camera for free , eh... the phone of course😀.

 

[Keith]

I read somewhere that Nikon are thinking of entering the smart phone market! 😱

 

[Elektrojänis]

The images are not resized to 5 megapixels! The 41 megapixels are combined to produce a clear 5 megapixel photo.

Would you care to elaborate a bit about the difference?

Resizing usually means some sort of interpolation and I'd say that could be called combining too. It usually reduces noise too.

 

[Sid836]

Would you care to elaborate a bit about the difference?

Resizing usually means some sort of interpolation and I'd say that could be called combining too. It usually reduces noise too.

Resizing is done at post production while "combination" here means downsampling at the time of output generation. Two quite different things. This is why by no means it is a 41 Mpixel camera.

Resizing does not reduce noise!

O.k. The trick here used by Nokia, is using a dense, but otherwise worthless sensor to produce a reasonable (but yet not astonishing) quality low resolution photo. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[VF101]

Nikos, that's what I thought at first, too, but it's wrong. The 5MP are just used inside the camera for uploads to Facebook and the likes. The 41MP are real and you can download these full resolution pictures from the phone. Just follow the link I posted above. There are images with the resolution of 7712x4352 pixels. Maximum aperture seems to be 2.2.

 

[ruby.monkey]

The other benefit is the availability of good-quality digital zoom (the original reason for such high-resolution sensors in Nokia phonecams) by cropping to the desired field of view, rather than having to incur the added expense and complexity of providing an optical zoom mechanism.

't'is nice to see someone thinking outside the box. 🙂

 

[jsrockit]

But can it turn on my air conditioner while I'm at work?

 

[ruby.monkey]

Depends. Does your air conditioner have a kink for smartphones?

 

[Lawrence Sheperd]

Depends. Does your air conditioner have a kink for smartphones?

Oww, my sides hurt! 😀

 

[Sid836]

Nikos, that's what I thought at first, too, but it's wrong. The 5MP are just used inside the camera for uploads to Facebook and the likes. The 41MP are real and you can download these full resolution pictures from the phone. Just follow the link I posted above. There are images with the resolution of 7712x4352 pixels. Maximum aperture seems to be 2.2.

Just saw it! Indeed it keeps a 41MP copy too!

 

[jsrockit]

Depends. Does your air conditioner have a kink for smartphones?

Ba dump bum ... crash!

 

[rluka]

They should've hide the 41 Megapixel number behind a the 5 megapixel "PureView" magic word 😛

The phone seems to let user "zoom in" on the picture after taking, so probably why the 35 megapixel picture is saved.

BTW, is this a multi-aspect sensor ? Some specs mentioned 35 megapixel effective from the 41 megapixel sensor.

 

[Lauffray]

Well this might be curious or fun for people like us on this forum, but as far as smartphones are concerned, they're really off market with their expectations, not sure what they what reception they imagined designing this

 

[Brian Legge]

Expect this will be marketed as a really good zoom lens. 😉

 

[jonal928]

Good news for Nokia, but nothing that will make me dumps my 'old' 808 Purview.

Pic here 🙂

 

[Turtle]

Hmmm. There are few smartphones that can use 2-3 mp well.

There are compact cameras out there with many more MP than my 12 MP
X100, but the results at A3/A2 are not in the same ballpark.

 

[f16sunshine]

Massive clunky files on a smartphone… just what everyone needs. A Win8 phone no less.
Feels like putting jetpack onto a tricycle to me.
5-8mp is the sweetspot for smartphones. Anything more seems like measurbating again.
There maybe be a handful of PJ's who will use this sort of resolution in order to zoom in closer (in other words crop).
It's just a numbers game.