Wandering With The Nokia Lumia 925, Part 6 - Camera and Night Shots

Night Photography started as early as 1900. Night photographers uses artificial light or a long exposure, exposing the scene for seconds, minutes, and even hours in order to give the film or digital sensor enough time to capture a usable image. It was long considered tedious by must people not until the advent of technology with the likes off highly-sensitive digital image sensors, wide-aperture lenses, and high speed processors that makes night photography increasingly possible using available light. All this features combined, to the Nokia Lumia 925, making it the very first smartphone device fully dedicated to light-challenged conditions.

I admit, I was a bit skeptical with Nokia creating an advertising stint of the phone being the low-light photography king, well, they were right, the phone indeed deserves the title which made me love night photography more.

As I've mentioned in Part 5 of this blog series, I subject the phone to night frenzy over at SM by the Bay Manila. It was an emotionally uplifting moment, and here are the reasons why:

Prism Center Up-Close SM Mall of Asia Manila

Prism Center SM Mall of Asia Manila

Christmas Cheer Prism Center SM Mall of Asia Manila

9th Auto Focus Motorshow

9th Auto Focus Motorshow

9th Auto Focus Motorshow Lexus

9th Auto Focus Motorshow Party Gig

Magic Dance

Cruise By The Bay

Night Cruise

MOA Eye

The Globe

Six

The most challenging part about night photography is how to deal with the lights around and how to convert it to your advantage. My Nokia N8 struggled to adapt to the scene while the Nokia Lumia 925 easily handled it in automatic mode eliminating stray lights and converting it to illuminate the scenes. Some of the images above like the Motorshow poster, were even taken in pitch dark and yet images came out vibrant. Very impressive indeed!

Parting shots: I couldn't really help myself from being mesmerized as history unfolds within my very eyes, night photography finally owned and mastered by a smartphone technology. It might not be as detailed and intricate like the professional camera's but I'm happy that its within the helms of mass applicability. Isn't it not that it will broaden photography's appeal?

Wandering With The Nokia Lumia 925, Part 1
Wandering With The Nokia Lumia 925, Part 2
Wandering With The Nokia Lumia 925, Part 3
Wandering With The Nokia Lumia 925, Part 4 - Camera and Sunset
Wandering With The Nokia Lumia 925, Part 5 - Two Days More And Counting!
Wandering With The Nokia Lumia 925, Part 7 - The Last Stand

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The Nokia Lumia 720 Journal Part 5: Camera and Beyond (Night Shots)

One of the qualities of the Nokia Lumia 720 that sets it apart from other smartphones is the aperture, f/1.9 is the lowest among mobilephones yet. The lower the aperture size, the wider the opening of lens becomes which in return would result to more light absorption by the lens, and together with its 1/3.6" sensor and the rest of the phone's camera feature, it should outperform other smartphones in low light.

Well, I have to say that this particular feature excites me the most having witness the astounding low light performance of the Nokia Lumia 920. Also, night images is a new fab in the camera smartphone space today with competitors coming out with devices having enhanced low light capabilities like the HTC One and the Samsung Galaxy S4,  it should be fun experimenting shots and creating masterpieces out of it, question now is, did the Lumia 720 live up to my expectation and had all its take to compete with the current high end breeds?

What would be best to test the phone's night shoot capability other than taking it to the extreme and blasting its very way to capture the moment in unexpected way. I only wanted to capture low light images in resort near my place with all those shimmering night lights when what I got instead were the images captured below.

And so let’s not delay the inevitable ladies and gentlemen, here are my night photo collection from the Nokia Lumia 720.

 Fireworks...

because of this..

The rest of the resort's night view:

Coco's Island Resort Front Facade

Coco's Island Resort Main Lobby

Coco's Island Resort Pool Area

Coco's Island Resort Pool Area

Coco's Island Resort Back Facade

Wrap Up 

Well, the images were definitely unrivaled among mid-range devices with the way it illuminates and render colors to scenery amidst challenging condition, though performing poorly on image focus, field depths and noise which I didn't quite expected. In comparison to the Nokia Lumia 920's image performance (CLICK HERE), the Lumia 720 is less vibrant, less saturate and had a poor contrast. It somehow didn't have the adjustment prowess of its high end counterpart.

On the question whether it live-up to my expectation , well, it obviously didn't due perhaps to other imaging elements like low sensor and lens, but nonetheless, it will still hold the throne as the best night shot imaging device in the mid-range arena, far enough for the competition to reached in months or year.

More of the Nokia Lumia 720 journal coming up, stay tuned.

The Nokia Lumia 720 Journal Part 1: Beyond Dreams
The Nokia Lumia 720 Journal Part 2: Beyond Illusion
The Nokia Lumia 720 Journal Part 3: Beyond Glimpse
The Nokia Lumia 720 Journal Part 4: Camera and Beyond (Day Shots)
The Nokia Lumia 720 Journal Part 6: Camera and Beyond (Video Test)
The Nokia Lumia 720 Journal Part 7: Beyond Apps
The Nokia Lumia 720 Journal Wrap Up: Beyond Compare, The 7-2-0 Reasons To Consider

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