Review: Nokia Lumia 1020

I had a chance to tinker around with the Nokia Lumia 1020 and was just doing some random tests to see if this can replace a DSLR or a dedicated point and shoot camera for normal day to day shooting. I'm just going to cover the camera and how it performs based on uncontrolled scenarios and I will not discuss anything about the smartphone features and design. Here are my thoughts…

What makes the Lumia 1020 special?

It utilizes the Nokia PureView technology which is primarily driven by a 41mp camera. Please do note that I'm no expert on PureView and that what I'll be sharing is just how I understand the technology. Don’t be awestruck by the number, larger megapixels simply mean a bigger image. What’s more interesting is how Nokia utilizes the larger image. In a rough nut shell, Nokia over samples an image, the super huge 41mp image, and down-scales it to a lower megapixel to come up with an overall better image.

A down-scaled image is an image that’s made smaller, and if you try that out with a large image that you might have lying around you’ll probably end up with a slightly better image with less noticeable noise and improved sharpness.

Nokia not only down-scales the image, they also analyze the colors and qualities of multiple pixels from the larger image and compound that to make a “super pixel” as they downscale the image. This also helps reduce noise artifacts that typically show up as red pixels. Much like getting a survey to determine a better outcome…if 8 of 10 pixels say that the color is blue and 1 of 10 is red, majority wins and the process compresses the multiple pixels into a blue pixel.

Another important advantage of the Lumia 1020 or the PureView technology in general is that Nokia uses a larger image sensor. A larger image sensor allows for more light to be captured be the sensors which allow the camera to make a better judgment of the scene, hence a better image. The image sensor used on the Lumia 1020 is even larger than the sensor the Apple proudly highlighted in the iPhone 5s. And in case you’re wondering why DSLRs take better photos…the much larger image sensor used on DSLRs largely contributes to that.

Camera

So, I’ve used the camera for a few days…less than a week…and here’s a quick list of pros and cons. Keep in mind that I’m trying to see if this camera phone can serve as an alternative to carrying a DSLR for day to day shooting, so this list will be based on comparing the Lumia 1020 experience and a DSLR experience.

Pros	Cons
Portable, but hefty for its class	Unstable shooting ergonomics
Very good high ISO performance	Finicky touch screen controls
Effective vibration reduction/image stabilization	Lag between shots and switching to camera mode
Allows some manual controls	Lack of other control options
Lossless “zoom”	Poor white balance recognition
Will have RAW support

Pros

First off, we can fit the Lumia 1020 in our pockets compared to DSLRs…an argument can be made for some point and shoot cameras but the Lumia 1020 is a cellphone too so we end up bringing less stuff around. But I still think it’s ridiculously large for a phone.

Second advantage is how good the high ISO levels are…I’ve been shooting at auto and it only went as high as ISO 800, but was able to perform really well at slower shutter speeds…which brings be to the image stabilization. The image stabilization is so effective that it allows us to shoot at a slower shutter speed and keeping the ISO as low as possible. I had shots that used a 1/10 shutter speed that were still quite sharp. The fourth nifty thing about the Lumia 1020 is that it allows for some manual controls while using the Nokia Pro Cam mode. In this mode we can manually focus, adjust the ISO, shutter speed, exposure and white balance.

The Lumia 1020 can also give us loss-less “zoom” while shooting at 5mp. This means that we can zoom in without degrading the quality of the image unlike digital zoom. The Lumia 1020 does this by simply cropping the 41mp image to 5mp to simulate zooming in. An inherent limitation to this approach is that we have to shoot at 5mp to zoom in.

Lastly, Nokia made an announcement that they will add RAW image support early next year for the Lumia 1020. RAW images allow us to edit photos with minimal destruction to the image data, so that's a big plus for those that fiddle around images with Photoshop.

Cons

In as much as the portability is a plus, the Lumia 1020 form factor feels unstable especially while using the camera in a landscape orientation. There’s just not enough to hold on too and I had to be careful not to let the phone slip my fingers.

Another thing that bugged me a lot is the touch screen. In a DSLR, I’m used to having dedicated buttons for everything; on the Lumia 1020, there’s one touch screen to control all the settings. This shouldn't be so bad except that I’d have to hold the phone with one hand and operate the touch screen with my other hand while pointing the camera to the subject. This is where the risk of losing the grip on the Lumia 1020 is very high.

Moreover, in a DSLR, we get a tactile response as we press the buttons or toggle the dials…we get none of that with a touchscreen. The controls also take less than a second to come up on screen...causing more delay while taking a photo. Also, while in landscape orientation, I found that I hit the search button quite easily which takes me out of the camera mode and into the search screen…very troublesome because I could have easily missed a shot because of that. To make matters worse, switching back to the camera has some lag with the sliding animation.

The lag is also more apparent when we activate the camera mode and in between shots. A work around that I did to improve the loading time of the camera mode was to go to the camera mode and then lock the phone…the lag is less once I unlock the phone because the camera is already pre-loaded in the background. One missing manual control function that was lacking is aperture control, and other DSLR functions like aperture priority or shutter priority. I am not sure if the lens on the PureView camera module has a fixed aperture…it would seem so. For aperture and shutter priority, there might be hope for a software update to get them in.

White balance is also not very accurate on the Lumia 1020, but in reality, it’s not so bad since it’s a camera phone. It’s just weird when the white balance makes the photo too warm while using the camera flash. I did not experience any white balance issues for daylight scenarios.

Camera Modes

The Lumia 1020 comes with some camera modes and I’ve touched on how the Nokia Pro Cam enables us to manually adjust some camera settings and here are some pics to give you an idea of how the controls look like.

ISO	Shutter speed
Focus	Exposure

The controls basically operate in the same way; a notch is available in the interface that we can drag around the semi-circle to make the adjustments. Like I mentioned, I found operating the controls to be very slow in actual shooting scenarios when comparing the controls to a DSLR. We also have a basic Camera app, and other gimmicky camera modes like Panorama, Nokia Cinemagraph, and Nokia Smart Cam.

The basic Camera app just loses the manual controls on the interface but the controls still available in the setting menu. This mode only shoots at 5mp though unlike the Nokia Pro cam that can save the high resolution 38/36mp image (depending on aspect ratio).  If you’re asking why it’s not a 41mp image, keep in mind that the PureView down-scales the image; in the case of the high resolution image, it probably down-scales it to 38/36mp.

The Panorama mode allows us to take assisted panorama images. The Nokia Cinemagraph allows us to make partially animated images by selecting areas of the image that gets animated. Some of the things you can do with the Nokia Smart Cam is that it allows us to pick the best shot among a series of shots, pick the faces in the group photo that are all smiling, make super-imposed motion shots and add blur to simulate motion or bokeh.

In reality I don't see myself using those gimmicky features…and in truth, I liked using the basic Camera mode over the Nokia Pro Cam, because the basic Camera mode has the most amount of zoom and I’d rather not deal with the manual controls on the Nokia Pro Cam because the controls are challenging to operate accurately. It is also fair to note that I find the lower resolution 5mp image to be tack sharper than the full resolution image. I suppose down-scaling 41mp to 5mp will do that to an image.

Samples

It was mostly overcast when I had my weekend with the Lumia 1020, so no outdoor shots to share here. These are just snapshots of whatever I can get and I did not try hard to make the photos more pleasing because I wanted to show how the camera performs just by pointing and shooting.

Here are some samples that depict the loss-less zoom.

Image scene 38MP output taken with Nokia Pro Cam

Max zoom with Nokia Pro Cam, 5MP output taken at the same time as the
38MP output

Same scene as the 38MP image, max zoom with basic Camera mode,
default 5MP output.

Indoor semi-well lighted scenarios...the image stabilization worked so well that the Lumia 1020 did not need to use high ISOs and lowered the shutter speed instead. Almost all the photos from the phone were shot below 1/60th of a second:

White balance not quite accurate:

Lit with an LED, the color temperature was very cool and the
white balance made it a little warm but wasn't perfect.

Conclusion

All in all, I think the Lumia 1020 serves well as a camera for day to day activities. It will not replace a DSLR for more serious photography but it might actually be able to replace a point and shoot camera. If you’re interested in getting the Lumia 1020, it costs Php35,650 at Nokia stores and it comes with a free Camera Grip accessory that makes the Lumia 1020 easier to hold on too, allows tripod mounting, and extends the battery life.