| Author |
N8 vs Satio - Camera Shootout |
false_morel
Joined: Feb 24, 2010
Posts: 375
PM |
On 2011-01-11 11:44:42, AbuBasim wrote:
The phone is no longer produced. It came it around the same time as LG's only CCD-based camphone, the KG920. Both use the same camera module, produced by Sony which incidentally supplied Canon with exactly the same sensor for their 5MP P-S cameras around the same time. One of the cameras was the Digital IXUS 55.
The phone is only available from Thailand. I bought mine from eBay.
I see.. Well, nice find and thanks for sharing those info..
I can't see myself buying a feature phone meant for Thai market however.. 
But do you have any ideas about their current line-up? Did they release any successors for that 902?
I agree about the picture quality. For daylight shots my N8 gives much better results. But for night shots, nothing beats the 902.
Actually, even with those 4 sec and 6 sec SS the photos don't even come close to the N8's performance.. Mainly due to the old low-tech used in comparison to the N8..
As said, for a four to five years old cameraphone, it is delivers some decent peformance.. But in this half a decade time, specially regarding the cameraphones, tech took a huge jump. So it's not fair at all to compare the 902to the N8 anyway..
But a little secret about the low SS.. In low light, it's not that the slower the SSs get the better the results come out!
Most of those 4 sec 902 shots are overexposed!
Shutter speed is automatically chosen when selecting Night mode from the scene selection.
This is the point Vit and I were debating and even ended up fighting about!
Is it better to have a phone capable of handling low light at higher ISO and hand-held SSs and giving no option for slower SSs or a phone only capable of handling low light at slow SSs with no options for faster ones for hand-held photos..
It's clear that an option of giving some manual configuration of setting all the variables at flexible ranges would be more than welcomed, but with those two available approaches implemented by the N8 and the Satio, with which one to go?
I prefer the possibility to take useful spontaneous night shots hand-held rather than limited by the use of a tripod as obviously at most of the cases I wont have one at hand!
And for many users also, in case they have that tripod ready, they would be rather setting some pro camera on it rather than a cameraphone which is usually meant as a replacement for spontaneous and casual photos.. The N8 is a high-quality replacement solution, but still a replacement.
An extra note: The Satio isn't capable of implementing the N8 approach as it can't handle such ISO speeds at low SS!
The N8 is obviously capable of the Satio's approach but Nokia thought they would do without.. Would have been much smarter to include it as an extra option though!! | |
|
AbuBasim
Joined: Nov 04, 2005
Posts: > 500
PM |
On 2011-01-12 03:27:29, false_morel wrote:
Is it better to have a phone capable of handling low light at higher ISO and hand-held SSs and giving no option for slower SSs or a phone only capable of handling low light at slow SSs with no options for faster ones for hand-held photos..
This evening I'll shoot a comparison shot with the N8 and the 902.
|
false_morel
Joined: Feb 24, 2010
Posts: 375
PM |
On 2011-01-12 07:14:36, AbuBasim wrote:
On 2011-01-12 03:27:29, false_morel wrote:
Is it better to have a phone capable of handling low light at higher ISO and hand-held SSs and giving no option for slower SSs or a phone only capable of handling low light at slow SSs with no options for faster ones for hand-held photos..
This evening I'll shoot a comparison shot with the N8 and the 902.
Looking forward for it.  |
Vit
Joined: Nov 13, 2007
Posts: 279
From: Brazil
PM |
On 2011-01-12 03:15:31, jake20 wrote:
Hi Vit,
Its not by much but your numbers are incorrect.. at ISO-100 is 1/15s (normally 1/5s, but when you select a manual ISO 100 setting, then it changes its bottom limit to 1/15s) not 1/18
Again.. I agree with you, there should be a slower shutter speed option, but the positives far outweigh this limitation for me.
I have just accepted the fact that the N8 is not suited for slow shutter creative night time photography.
But for everything else, its the best.
So, will you be keeping your N8?
Hi, Jake!
Thanks for the correction. Anyway, this fact is very strange. Why does it have to speed up the shutter speed if we select ISO-100? May that be a bug or something?
That´s why I see this manual ISO-100 as a pretty useless option. Not like the Pixon-12, which lets you choose as low as one half of a second when you cranck the EV compensation up, for both ISO-100 and ISO-50.
As for selling my N8, I am considering keeping it if the next two updates, PR1.1 and PR 2.0 (people say that the latter is due to February), have managed to solve this issues.
The N8 camera is better than the Satio´s, but not at all situations. That was not what I was expecting.
Somehow its camera feels kind of 'underpowered'.
Perhaps I expected too much. But if we think over, it was not my fault. Everybody´s expectations were highed up by Damian Dinning, I guess.
To resume my feelings:
We´ve all bought a Corvette ZR-1.
The thing is that our cars have all the same fault. They all run on just 4 of its 8 cylinders. They still have ~300 hp to play with, and will still beat almost every single compact car out there.
Ok, but the sad part of this story is that we will have to deal with the feeling that it could simply do a lot better than that.
In the meantime, I´ve found a bug on the Satio (a good one, though!):
If you select Twilight Landscape, we all know that it automatically selects the infinity focus mode.
But there´s a way to use that mode with auto focus. Simply select the touch focus mode and you´ll regain the ability to autofocus.
I´ll be taking pictures using this bug and post some compare shots against the N8 in the following days. This should be an interesting shoot out.
[ This Message was edited by: Vit on 2011-01-12 16:02 ] Every Picture Tells a Story |
AbuBasim
Joined: Nov 04, 2005
Posts: > 500
PM |
On 2011-01-12 08:42:23, false_morel wrote:
Looking forward for it.
Original
Original
And for quick comparison, full size crops:
|
false_morel
Joined: Feb 24, 2010
Posts: 375
PM |
Ok, point made.
I said in the previous post the 902 wont come close to the N8 yet it beat it in that shot. I should have viewed more 902 photos before judging it when I said it wont come close to the N8 with those overexposed night shots..
Noting that the 902 had the clear and big advantage in noise and an advantage in detail, but as to color rendering I'm not quite sure!
Anyway, while comparing a 5 years to freshly high-end cameraphone shouldn't be fair also comparing 4" SS at ISO 50 to 1/5" SS at ISO 695 isn't fair as well.
Here one comes back to the original debate and to my argument that I'm repeating for the 20th time by now:
AB, maybe you shot that photo from your bedroom window where the tripod was already at home ready to use.
Had you been outside, nearby in the town with friends, or just attending some event in your region, or somewhere else in vacation, how would you have handled the 902 to shoot a similar extreme low-light scene?
You'd simply kept the cameraphone in your pocket before you'd know it isn't even worth to take the hassle and try to pull something out of it! No option at all to hold the 902 and just shoot such scenes with useful or acceptable results! Be it using the night mode or the auto mode..
Even with the Satio at 1" SS, one has either to be a Yoga master or take some clownish body position with both hands and elbows held fixed (tried this many times) and would still be lucky to get away with some steady photo. Otherwise, shooting at auto mode would also produce some useless way underexposed photos.
Everyone agrees that slow SS are the right way to go and shoot low light night shots. There is no room for any discussion here. This is just trivial.
But that's if you're really in it and carrying a tripod all the time.
And even professional DSLR owners get tired of setting the tripod each time they need to shoot at night. Most of their photos are handheld. Only those scenes that are really worth it, a tripod is then used.
So, any sane photographer, given only two choices:
- Camera capable of shooting only at slow SSs and low ISOs to produce acceptable photos
- Camera capable of shooting only at relatively fast SS and high ISO and still producing acceptable photos
Anyone would go with the second option.
Night shots in N8 photos thread are more than a proof!!
And it's a nobrainer, that everyone would welcome Nokia implementing an extra manual mode where a wide range of ISOs and SSs could be chosen along with other variables as well. Too bad the aperture is fixed.
And I didn't intend to blindly defend Nokia when I stated that they don't need to implement such a mode.
Simply more than 99% of N8 owners won't use that mode. So it wouldn't have affected the N8 sales had it been implemented.
Call me what you want, but blame the public not Nokia.
Nokia spend money and efforts for something that brings nothing in return. No one does.
PS: Speaking of aperture, does the 902 has a variable aperture?! I sensed it could have it from the Exifs though all the photos I looked were shot at F/2.8...
---------------------------------------------------
And a last note ending this debate once and for all, for I really got tired repeating the same words all over again:
If Nokia wont deliver a full manual mode including a set of wide range of SSs and ISOs, expect a workaround for this in about four to six months! I can't elaborate more on this right now! |
AbuBasim
Joined: Nov 04, 2005
Posts: > 500
PM |
On 2011-01-13 08:10:51, false_morel wrote:
PS: Speaking of aperture, does the 902 has a variable aperture?! I sensed it could have it from the Exifs though all the photos I looked were shot at F/2.8...
Two apertures: f/2.8 and f/5.6.
If Nokia wont deliver a full manual mode including a set of wide range of SSs and ISOs, expect a workaround for this in about four to six months! I can't elaborate more on this right now!
I'd love to see a port of FrankenCamera to the N8. I've tried it on the N900 and it's amazing to shoot RAW with a camera phone, with manual controls over the exposure.
[ This Message was edited by: AbuBasim on 2011-01-13 10:06 ] |
Vit
Joined: Nov 13, 2007
Posts: 279
From: Brazil
PM |
So, any sane photographer, given only two choices:
- Camera capable of shooting only at slow SSs and low ISOs to produce acceptable photos
- Camera capable of shooting only at relatively fast SS and high ISO and still producing acceptable photos
First, some corrections:
- Camera capable of shooting only at slow SSs and low ISOs to produce excelent photos;
- Camera capable of shooting only at relatively fast SS and high ISO to produce barely acceptable photos
Anyone would go with the second option.
Night shots in N8 photos thread are more than a proof!!
LOL...
Of course it´s a "proof". That´s the only option the N8 offers right now.
Man, you should definitely avoid sentences like these:
- Anyone would select this;
- 99,99% would not use it;
It´s getting utterly irritating having to read sentences like these over and over. Is it some kind of brainwash?
And an aperture of f5.6 is not mandatory for SS slower than 1/15s. I will never get your point, mate.
I agree with AbuBasim. I would take the C902 shot anytime.
Even if I do like to shot handheld, it would be reassuring to know that I could also take a different (quality wise) approach whenever I wanted to.
Two options are just better than one option.
How hard is it for you to admit that? You will never manage to prove that sentence wrong.
[ This Message was edited by: Vit on 2011-01-13 14:10 ] Every Picture Tells a Story |
AbuBasim
Joined: Nov 04, 2005
Posts: > 500
PM |
@Vit,
Not C902 i-mobile 902!
|
false_morel
Joined: Feb 24, 2010
Posts: 375
PM |
On 2011-01-13 14:59:37, Vit wrote:
First, some corrections:
- Camera capable of shooting only at slow SSs and low ISOs to produce excelent photos;
- Camera capable of shooting only at relatively fast SS and high ISO to produce barely acceptable photos
Even with the way you described it, I'd still go with the N8. And guess what? Yes, almost everyone as well.
And I can't figure it out how are you seing the Satio's pics at 1" SS of any excellent quality. At 1" SS an average compact camera should perform better than the Satio.
Anyway, even if had the Satio delivered better low SS photos, while only capable of performing at this mode, I'd take the N8's approach enabling me capturing night shots whenever and wherever I need to! And for a relatively high ISO and a restricted SS at 1/5" with fixed aperture at F/2.8 those photos are very much acceptable. Actually no other cameraphone could come close to the N8 at these setting, and even current average compacts. Only high-end compacts would beat the N8 at these settings.
Of course, if I wanted to capture a higher quality nightshot at low SS I wont be able to do it with the N8; but given that other cameraphones enabling me to do so but also limiting me to only shooting at these setting whereas I obviously wont be able to shoot most of the times since I can't carry a tripod wherever I go, it's a much bigger letdown!
Of course it´s a "proof". That´s the only option the N8 offers right now.
Two options are just better than one option.
How hard is it for you to admit that? You will never manage to prove that sentence wrong.
!!!
And an aperture of f5.6 is not mandatory for SS slower than 1/15s. I will never get your point, mate.
I used english in all my posts so far!! And I'm damn sure I never even hinted for such a thing!
Yeah.. Anyway, you don't have to elaborate any further.. This is my last post in this thread.
Enjoy your Satio.
| |
|
Access the forum with a mobile phone via esato.mobi
|
Posted: 2011-01-12 03:27
