This is the culmination of the recent spate of cameraphones
which have sought to replace dedicated compact cameras. The HTC One brought us
a big sensor with larger-than-normal pixels (they’re the biggest on the market)
for more accurate light measurement. The Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom built a
whopping 10x optical zoom on to the back of the phone: great for shooting
pictures but a little bit galumphing to hold to your head. The Sony Xperia Z1
packed an oversized 20.7-megapixel sensor into a surprisingly svelte frame. And
now the Nokia Lumia 1020 puts the biggest sensor yet into a phone.
At 41 megapixels, the 1020’s sensor is remarkable. We’ll get
to its photographic chops in a minute but the first surprise is that the phone
is so thin. Though there are slimmer blowers on the market, the 1020 is
entirely manageable in the hand, unlike the Nokia 808 Pureview which preceded
it by a year or two which was a hefty beast. The 1020 has a noticeable bulge on
the back where the lens and flash sit. Both are big and dominate the phone’s
styling, especially on the matte yellow finish version as the lens element is
black.
The phone is also available in white and black, but it’s the
lemon yellow version which catches the eye. Because it’s matte, it doesn’t feel
like it’ll slip out of your hands too easily, either. The 1020 is very much in
the same design language as the other Lumia phones, and it looks good. The
snazziest in the range is the 925, but this ain’t bad. Even so, it’s big and
not the lightest handset around.
Nokia Lumia 1020: Camera
But it’s the camera you want to hear about, right? After all,
this is a phone that is specifically designed to appeal to those with a strong
photographic interest. Without that, you’ll probably pick the 925 with its
skinnier profile and still-more-than-competent 8.7-megapixel camera.
Like the Sony Xperia Z1, the idea of the high-resolution
sensor is that it makes up for the lack of an optical zoom. Digital zoom just
crops the centre of a frame so you lose resolution as you zoom in. But with
this many pixels available, the Lumia 1020 allows you to do this and still
maintain decent resolution. Lossless zoom, they call it, and though we don’t
think that’s a great name, the results are strong.
There are several ways to use the camera. The default option
is the Nokia Pro Cam app which launches with a long press on the hardware
shutter button. This is a capable app which sorts everything for you in its
auto mode or lets you take over a lot of control manually, including white
balance, flash and more.
Then there are the filters in the Nokia Smart Cam. This
includes several features that take multiple shots in quick succession. With
these in the can, you have several special effects available, including
Cinemagraph which lets part of the still shot show all the multiple images, so
a busy street can be frozen but for one person sauntering happily along in the
corner, or a fountain can splash merrily in an otherwise still shot of a city
square. You can use Smart Cam to remove someone who’s photo bombed you by
combining the multiple images to brush them out of your final pic.
All very good, but the more shots you take, the more it’s
apparent that the Lumia 1020 isn’t perfect. You won’t find a cameraphone with
better resolution images, but the phone is let down by shutter lag which
blights some images. For a posed portrait this may not matter, but sporty
pictures for instance may miss the moment.
And the time it takes between shots isn’t great, either. To
be fair, there’s a lot of data to be written from the sensor to the phone’s
memory, but you may find you’re waiting too long between shots. The camera
shoots two images at the same time, one at 5-megapixel and one at full
resolution. The 5-megapixel one is easier to share. So no wonder it takes time.
Video recording is very strong, though, and looks
tremendous. For many, the shutter lag and wait between shots just won’t matter,
and the results will be enough to justify these downsides to many more. But it
means the camera though remarkable, lacks some versatility.
