N86 Camera vs. N900 Camera - Page 4 - maemo.org

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	christexaport	2009-11-06 , 15:38
	Posts: 1,589 \| Thanked: 720 times \| Joined on Aug 2009 @ Arlington (DFW), Texas	#31

Originally Posted by cb474

Can you elaborate on this claim? How does the OS on the N900 even out the battle as far as the cameras go? Or did you just mean more generally that the N900 has a superior OS, aside from the camera? Thanks.

I only meant the OS negated the advantage the N86 has over the N900 imaging wise, for MY tastes. Others may disagree based on their own priorities.

Originally Posted by cb474

So the autofocus on the N900 is nice, as well as it's higher resolution in video, but it's not clear (at least to me, yet) that overall the N900 is better for video than the N86.

I like the N86 for video over the N900, but only because of the zooming clarity. The resolution is better on the N900, but the framerate is higher on the N86, which is more important to fluidity.

Originally Posted by Laughing Man

Haha, I do have an 8 megapixel Canon point and shoot, though it straddles the line between P&S and starting to creep towards the DSLR feature wise (when I first bought it 3-4 years ago). I don't mind the megapixel downgrade (since megapixels aren't all that to me anymore) not to mention how often do I really benefit from taking pictures at 3000x3000 pixels? Though the lack of optical zoom is what will have me still carrying my P&S.

Nikon and Canon make fantastic cameras. I doubt Nokia can match them because of their combination of similar optics with better sensor and processing hardware. I bet the algorithms are better as well. Sony's Carl Zeiss cameras are good, too. But the Nokia devices come close with similar megapixel ratings, only lagging in lower light situations, as mentioned before.

Originally Posted by Alex Atkin UK

as long as its comparable to what the Xperia X1 could do, I will be happy. I considered that to have a decent camera for the a device not aimed at the photography market.

That camera was pretty lame for the price, and nothing for the Nokia Nseries cameras of the same pixel rating. You should be more than satisfied, especially after the camera processing gets improved with firmware upgrades. Nokia is known for greatly improving camera image quality over the life of the device.

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attila77	2009-11-06 , 19:10
Posts: 3,319 \| Thanked: 5,610 times \| Joined on Aug 2008 @ Finland	#32

Originally Posted by christexaport

I like the N86 for video over the N900, but only because of the zooming clarity. The resolution is better on the N900, but the framerate is higher on the N86, which is more important to fluidity.

Note that 25 fps is actually the native PAL framerate, which may be interesting if that video material is going to be shown on a TV.

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RTbar	2009-11-06 , 20:28
Posts: 51 \| Thanked: 11 times \| Joined on Dec 2007	#33

Originally Posted by attila77

Note that 25 fps is actually the native PAL framerate, which may be interesting if that video material is going to be shown on a TV.

does that mean that video out wont display properly on american sets?

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attila77	2009-11-06 , 21:05
Posts: 3,319 \| Thanked: 5,610 times \| Joined on Aug 2008 @ Finland	#34

No. Video out supports NTSC and should work fine. We are talking about the camera record option. If you want to convert it to 480i or sorts, you will need to accomodate for the framerate difference, just as you would for a 24fps cinematic source.

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RTbar	2009-11-06 , 21:26
Posts: 51 \| Thanked: 11 times \| Joined on Dec 2007	#35

Originally Posted by attila77

No. Video out supports NTSC and should work fine. We are talking about the camera record option. If you want to convert it to 480i or sorts, you will need to accomodate for the framerate difference, just as you would for a 24fps cinematic source.

but what if you wanted to hook up the n900 to a tv, and play videos you recorded off of the phone through the maemo interface, they will play fine right?

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	christexaport	2009-11-07 , 01:04
	Posts: 1,589 \| Thanked: 720 times \| Joined on Aug 2009 @ Arlington (DFW), Texas	#36

That isn't affected, since the N900 has a TV out option which converts it into NTSC or PAL frame rate, depending which setting is supported on your set. What he's saying is it won't improve the video fluidity on a typical TV set or large display because 25 fps is native on that platform, and any video source better will only get scaled down or up to 25 fps.

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cb474	2009-11-07 , 02:09
Posts: 203 \| Thanked: 68 times \| Joined on Oct 2009	#37

Originally Posted by titan

Digital zoom (poor man's zoom) is not a hardware feature (you can't add information that is missing) and you always loose resolution
due to the image cropping.

Yes, I think we all know that digital zoom in no way compares to optical zoom. Obviously a lot of sacrifices are made with a phone camera on all fronts. But were comparing two different phone cameras (N86 to N900), not a phone camera to a stand alone camera. The digital zoom does work differently on the N86, as opposed to the N97 (and I assume the N900). The N86 uses the whole sensor for video capture, even though the video is recorded at 640x480 resolution (far less than the 8MP sensor). This means that when the zoom crops the image to zoom in, it doesn't lose resolution until after 4x zoom. Steve Litchfield at All About Symbian explains:

Originally Posted by Steve Litchfield: All About Symbian

Nokia are simply using the whole sensor to capture light for the video - when zoomed in, they're simply downsampling differently.

If you zoom in much beyond 4x, you hit the same problems as digital zoom on other camera phones, i.e. things start to pixellate in ugly fashion. But 4x seems about right, since the VGA rendered frame is about four times (linearly) smaller than the full 8mp sensor.

(See: http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/featu...iPhone_3GS.php)(Example video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDbzQWJP1RQ&hd=1&hq=1)

He also says as far as he knows the N86 is the only phone on the market to use this technique. This technique is also supposed to improve low light sensitivity in video capture mode. So this is a relevant feature of the N86. It's supposed to make the digital zoom somewhat usable, as opposed to totally crap. Maybe that's not great, compared to a regular camera, but it's a first for a phone camera.

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cb474	2009-11-07 , 02:15
Posts: 203 \| Thanked: 68 times \| Joined on Oct 2009	#38

Originally Posted by christexaport

I like the N86 for video over the N900, but only because of the zooming clarity. The resolution is better on the N900, but the framerate is higher on the N86, which is more important to fluidity.

Of course, as I mentioned above, I think, some people consider the lower framerate more film-like, since film uses 24fps. Digital film makers used to deliberately get PAL versions of digital video cameras to emulate the film motion effect, until people started making high end digital video cameras with 24fps framerate. So curiously enough, a lower framerate is coveted by a lot of people.

Of course, with a cell phone this may be splitting hairs.

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titan	2009-11-07 , 14:52
Posts: 946 \| Thanked: 1,650 times \| Joined on Oct 2009 @ Germany	#39

Originally Posted by cb474

Yes, I think we all know that digital zoom in no way compares to optical zoom. Obviously a lot of sacrifices are made with a phone camera on all fronts. But were comparing two different phone cameras (N86 to N900), not a phone camera to a stand alone camera. The digital zoom does work differently on the N86, as opposed to the N97 (and I assume the N900). The N86 uses the whole sensor for video capture, even though the video is recorded at 640x480 resolution (far less than the 8MP sensor). This means that when the zoom crops the image to zoom in, it doesn't lose resolution until after 4x zoom.

ok, you're referring to video digital zoom, i.e. the output image has always much smaller resolution than the chip.
There are two approaches:

1.) take a fraction of the sensor image (the smaller the higher the zoom) and rescale it to video resolution (apparently, what N86 the does).
this should lead to a the lowest noise level w/o zoom, and maximum noise if you zoom to video resolution.
with even more zoom you get the digital zoom artefacts (interpolation).

2.) like 1., but take a fraction of the inner VGA-sized area of the sensor image

I don't think the N900 or N97 would use 2.)
Otherwise the video would always record the inner VGA region of a still image of the same scene. However, the video seems to be wide angle, if you don't zoom in:
http://www.nokiausers.net/N-Series/N...d-Natural.html
According to the documentation of the camera chip there is also a builtin resize function
and it is likely that the N900 would use it.

Last edited by titan; 2009-11-07 at 14:55.