Nokia 
I really wanted to see how good the N96‘s Camera was at daytime pictures. So early morning at 7 am, since my dog had already woken me up for her daily walk, I took a walk around my backyard and snapped a few pictures of the greenery around. The results were interesting.
I didnt have my N82 with me so this isnt a comparison of sorts, that’ll come later. Just a few sample images to show you how the N96 handles pictures.
Just so you know, the following images were taken at 8am, with lots of early morning sunlight. So light definitely wasnt an issue. To view the higher resoluion versions of the images, click on them to head to my N96 Nature shots Share on Ovi album, and click on the image again there. I tried to stay as still as possible while taking these shots, but some turned out a little blurry, in situations where my N82 would have produced a clear image. Shutter lag perhaps ?
Let us begin ! First up, the macro shots :
Now this was basically hit or miss for the N96. The camera was set to “Close up” mode, with flash turned off. Sometimes you’d get perfectly focused shots like this :
Notice you can see the thorns below the flower, along with the veins of the leave. Very well detailed. The object I wanted it to focus on (ie: The flower and the leaves around it) was in focus leaving out the surrounding objects that werent important. Excellent.
But other times, you’d get an incredibly out of focus image. The camera refused to focus on the flower in the following picture, no matter how many times I tried. This is in situations where my N82 would have no problems focusing :
The same with the flower in the image below :
And I tried atleast 5 or 6 times before just giving up and letting the camera snap whatever it could get.
In the following image, the N96 completely refused to acknowledge the thin stem of the plant, and kept focusing only on the plant itself.
To its credit, the N96‘s camera does focus a lot faster than my N82 or my previous N95-1. I couldnt believe it finished focusing so fast, the first time I used it. Here are a couple other macro shots taken with the N96. In focus, Out of Focus and all :
Close Distance shots :
These are images taken at normal distance to the object. That is, about a meter or two away. The Camera was set on “Automatic” mode with flash turned off. The N96 actually had no problem with focusing (except in one or two cases) in these types of pictures :
Far-away Shots :
In these pictures, the object I wanted to focus on was a couple feet away. The Camera was set on “Automatic” mode with flash turned off. Again, the N96 had no problems focusing in this case.
You might notice that the color of the sky is a little bit strange in the images above.The N96 failed to capture the correct tone of the blue early morning sky, but I didnt really expect it to. Nokia tends to make their cameras have a more “true to life” color saturation, which tends to make most shots look a little washed out.
So what do you think ? Personally I love that the camera focuses alot faster than my N82 and my previous N95-1. However, the results dont “Wow” me. I’d say the daytime picture capabilities of the N96 are on par, if not a little worse, than the N95-1 and N95-8GB models. Somehow, I have the feeling that my N82 would have taken much better pictures under similar conditions. Maybe its a better image processing algorithm compared to the N96. I’ll save that verdict for my upcoming N82 vs N96 camera comparison.
-Teh Cj
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