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Microsoft Shuffles Executives as Nokia Debuts New Windows Phone with 41MP Camera

Grimace said:
With a sensor that small, 41MP will produce extremely noisy photos. They have the logic wrong on this, unless we're talking about daylight shots.
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The 41MP will be completely useless, for the time being no phone camera can make picture that even come close to a DSLR.
 
filmantopia said:
Yeah, why would anyone interested in Apple be curious about the ecosystem Apple competes in? It's just best to let Apple fans be oblivious as to what everyone else is doing to keep us content, right?
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Don't pop that bubble they live in, it's a scary world out there when competition implements something progressive. :rolleyes:
 
longofest said:
Looks like you don't actually take 41MP pictures, but 5MP pictures. It uses the extra pixels to allow you digitally zoom without any loss.

From CNET:
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That's excellent. A 41mp picture is useless at a sensor that size, but the ability to digitally zoom without quality loss is a genius application. I was ready to hate on the engineering, but they one-upped apple on this one. Take note.
 
bluespark said:
What bias? Bigger pixels mean more light; more pixels mean smaller pixels, sensor size being equal (which it necessarily is here). Adding that many pixels to a small-sensor camera is easy, but it's nonsensical if quality is your goal.
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Makes sense, but people here might be exaggerating the quality difference. What if it ends up not looking amazing but still pretty good? It's probably not going to be the same or worse as some have claimed.
 
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Microsoft = Nothing else is working, let's re-org! Should have been, Ballmer is out of touch and should be replaced!

Nokia = Come'on guys... one more try at this! Nice, but I don't think it will save them or differentiate their phones enough to make a difference.
 
Most of us know that Megapixels is not the only factor in how well a digital camera takes pix.

But...I've never really enjoyed any of the iPhone's (I've had the 3GS and the 4S) picture quality. It's fair compared to even my 12+ year old Sony 4MP camera. The iPhone takes ok pix as far as capturing the moment...but look terrible once you actually put them on a computer screen running 1280x1024 or higher and/or even think about zooming in a notch. My Sony? Looks stunning. I'm still stunned at how nice they look and it's not even a DSLR. I believe it cost $500 back in 2000.

I'd love to see an iPhone with truly stellar camera performance. Realistically the iPhone's top feature is the camera/video camera. Take a small hit on the profit margin, Apple, and really deliver a great camera phone that rivals many/most Point And Shoots manufactured in the last 12 months.
 
Liquorpuki said:
it oversamples. for a 5 MP image, 7 MP are used to produce 1 MP. you get better image quality and noise filtering because of the oversampling
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So it would still look bad cropping in. I don't really see how, for example, a 35MP camera with high noise scaled to 5MP would be better at digitally zooming than a 5MP camera with minimal noise.
 
JGRE said:
The 41MP will be completely useless, for the time being no phone camera can make picture that even come close to a DSLR.
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But here is the thing, Nokia is not trying to compete against DSLRs but other camera phones like S4 and iPhone 5.
 
Josheh said:
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Someone commented earlier about these camera/phones not being able to replace a DSLR. I don't know. In some ways yes, but in some ways no. I think though that you could do things like remote flash triggering and full manual control. I don't see why not. Not having the need to compact it down to a picket sized device though, that does give it certain advantages to quality. It makes it easier to hit those quality marks.

You know years ago when we had just picked up our shiny new iPod click wheel someone brought up the crazy notion that some day soon we would have video on it. I remember that because I thought It was a crazy notion and they would never do that, "it's a music device and its too small". Now I believe some day the tech will be there and DSLRs will be for those of us who hold onto an "oldschool" approach to photography.
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garylapointe said:
So each picture is going to be 5 times the size but without a significantly better lens it's not going to look 5 times better, right?

Gary
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Definitely not 5X better, but I'm assuming it would look noticeably better. There's no way it could be worse unless the camera was worse in some other way.

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jmille44 said:
Based on this thread I conclude that the PRO camera market is going to be gone because of this phone. No more Prime lens purchases, no more development of Micro 4/3 cameras or lens's.

Nikon and Canon are going to move their pro shooters into camera phones soon.

Heck why not say that this phone is going to put the professional video cameras out of business as well?

This phone is going to take over Hollywood movie production and editing will all be done on this phone.
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THIS phone? I don't think you understand that a 41MP camera can be worse than another (high-end) camera taking at 14MP. Try a Nexus camera vs a lower-megapixel Nikon D80, especially when you don't have perfect lighting. I can see cameras in the future becoming tiny and just as powerful as current DSLRs, but not yet.
 
Mattjeff said:
You know years ago when we had just picked up our shiny new iPod click wheel someone brought up the crazy notion that some day soon we would have video on it. I remember that because I thought It was a crazy notion and they would never do that, "it's a music device and its too small". Now I believe some day the tech will be there and DSLRs will be for those of us who hold onto an "oldschool" approach to photography.
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No you can't change physics. Maybe it's time to give that Canon 6D back if you think that this will ever replace a DSLR. Maybe if your 6D has a kit zoom locked at 35mm and stuck at f/16 it would replace that but otherwise no.
 
benjalamelami said:
. I think you need to study a little further. More pixels, more noise as more pixels are crammed in less space. Read signal to noise ratio.
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You missed the point. Smaller pixels do have a lower SNR but that doesn't matter because images are rendered from a given area of the sensor rather than a given number of pixels. That means more pixels will be used to render the same area from a higher density sensor than a lower density, and the total light collected and the total aggregate SNR is based on the total area of the sensor used rather than the number of pixels.
 
Has anyone actually read how the phone uses those 41MP? Obviously not. They used oversampling in the 808 Pureview but as it ran Symbian about 4 people bought it. You guys really should read up on stuff before mouthing off about it. Tsk Tsk. :rolleyes:

Go over to Nokia's site and look at the samples - they're very impressive.
 
donutbagel said:
So it would still look bad cropping in. I don't really see how, for example, a 35MP camera with high noise scaled to 5MP would be better at digitally zooming than a 5MP camera with minimal noise.
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The digital zoom is something different. Digitally zooming on the 1020, you go from using 35 MP with 7x oversampling to using just the 5 MP in the middle of the array. The digital zoom ends up being lossless and the only thing you lose is the oversampling. On every other phone, digital zoom means zooming into the same exact image and aliasing the hell out of it
 
Mattjeff said:
Josheh said:
...
Someone commented earlier about these camera/phones not being able to replace a DSLR. I don't know. In some ways yes, but in some ways no. I think though that you could do things like remote flash triggering and full manual control. I don't see why not. Not having the need to compact it down to a picket sized device though, that does give it certain advantages to quality. It makes it easier to hit those quality marks.

You know years ago when we had just picked up our shiny new iPod click wheel someone brought up the crazy notion that some day soon we would have video on it. I remember that because I thought It was a crazy notion and they would never do that, "it's a music device and its too small". Now I believe some day the tech will be there and DSLRs will be for those of us who hold onto an "oldschool" approach to photography.
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That was me making that statement and yes in 10 years you may be right. Last month I bought a new compact camera (Panasonic Lumix TMC TZ 40) and it has the highest MP available for a compact at 18.1MP. The most expensive Nikon and Canon DSLRs don't go further than 36MP currently and now Nokia intends to put a 41MP into a phone-camera. This is not going to work as all camera simply work with the light they can capture. The chip in a camera phone is just to small to pick up enough light for real good shooting (high ISO or moving objects). Just try to take a picture with your iPhone in the dark on a moving object: total fail. Increasing MP will only make this worse (other things kept equal)
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Josheh said:
I think there are two main issues with cramming a 41mp sensor into a camera/phone like this. It’s a similar set of issues that are hit up against with DSLRs. The size of every individual pixel becomes too small as the density increases. The lenses can’t resolve detail that fine. That’s on a DSLR that has a much larger lens/sensor. Now we’re cramming this down even further? Sticking such a highly dense sensor behind a mass-produced/cheap lens? I’m surprised more people haven’t commented on this.
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A higher density sensor will never resolve less detail than a lower density sensor even for marginal lenses. And in nearly all cases the opposite is true. For evidence you can look at online tests comparing Canon's 24-70 II lens vs the Nikon and Tamron equivalents. The Canon lens resolves significantly more detail than the other two lenses, yet when the lessor lens is mounted on a 36MP Nikon D800 it resolves more detail than the much better Canon lens mounted on a 22MP sensor.
 
Might be useful to read a bit more than just the headline.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7140/nokia-announces-lumia-1020-

With 1.12 micrometer pixels, the pixels are not much smaller than e.g. in the iphone. The sensor is probably quite large. The flash is also quite impressive btw.

Looks interesting. Need reviews first though. What I don't fully understand is if there is an actual optical zoom, or if they just use the huge sensor to do it.
 
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