Nokia N95 - The Camera Review

Great review Steve. You have used a variety of different environments, bold colours and a motion-based image which really help to give us an idea of how it performs.

A pity about the flash as I think a lot of poeple would have utilised this on nights out or low-light situations both indoors and out. I too feel that the image processing is overdone, though it is good to hear that you can create your own profile and adjust these settings.

It's good to see a lot of flexibility and options too, more than a lot of general consumer cameras by the likes of Fuji, Sony and Canon.

I'm a semi-pro photographer in my spare time and also do a few assignments for publications at work so it will be interesting to get in to the nitty gritty of the settings and compare them to my DSLR. I wouldn't expect it to come anywhere close as it is a very unfair match but I would like to see its characteristics and personality as such and see how effective the various settings are and for what application.

I hoped that the capture time would have been improved by official launch though hopefully a firmware update is not too far away if people voice their concerns.

The images look quite nice to me and really as a phone you can't really ask for too much. It's good enough for taking along on short trips and taking a few snaps, but not good enough if you want digital camera quality. The question is will cam phones ever get to the point of being able to compete with stand along digital cameras and be able to keep in such svelt package?

You and Rafe are doing a fantastic job with these reviews. Any plans to look at e-mail and attachment capabilities, e.g. how N95 handles speadsheets and word processing docs?

It's impressive how you can write gigabytes about things that can be described in one paragraph 😊 My sincere congratulations 😉 Third or fourth review of the same phone, fourth picture gallery.... you're the king 😊

Unregistered wrote:You and Rafe are doing a fantastic job with these reviews. Any plans to look at e-mail and attachment capabilities, e.g. how N95 handles speadsheets and word processing docs?

We're not planning to specifically, but I think it will be mention in passing. In short it has office viewers and pdf + zip. You can upgrade to edit. The attachment support works fine.

Unereddfss wrote:It's impressive how you can write gigabytes about things that can be described in one paragraph 😊 My sincere congratulations 😉 Third or fourth review of the same phone, fourth picture gallery.... you're the king 😊

Hehe. Its a fair point in some ways, that said we're trying to focus on different aspect of the N95 each time. I don't imagine everyone will use everything in their normal usage. If you're looking for a one stop look try the first impressions article or wait for the summary review.

Does it really take 4 seconds to save a picture to SD?

I ask because I used a T-Mobile N95 for a few minutes on Sunday and it seemed to focus and take the pic pretty fast - certainly faster than my N73 does.

I wonder if it was set on a lower resolution than 5Mpx. I imagine that would have made it a bit faster at saving the image as the file would be smaller.

"A pity about the flash as I think a lot of poeple would have utilised this on nights out or low-light situations both indoors and out."

I don't think there's any cameraphones with adequate flashes out there.

The problem might well be battery life, a proper flash would tend to drain the battery a bit too quickly. Battery life is a general problem for cutting edge smartphones: gram for gram, the capacity of li-ion batteries has hardly increased at all over the past few years while the demands on batteries have grown hugely.

hi. I wonder how fast the sequence mode is. Do you know how many pictures it takes per second? (in the fastest mode) And does the speed vary with the resolution it's taken in?

Thanks! 😉

Andy.

After reading the Nokia N95's camera review, personally, I'm satisfied about the camera quality due to the convergence of many devices (GPS, camera, phone, web browser, etc). I have to admit that in order to perfecting the picture quality is not as easy as it seems.

This is a problem from the hardware of N95 itself. Because N95's size, Nokia uses a tiny CMOS 5 mpixels sensor which is overwhelming to me. Why? Judging from my experience as a semi-pro photographer, I own a Canon DSLR 350D, which utilizes an 8 mpixels CMOS sensor (22.2 mm x 14.8 mm) which is enormously larger than the CMOS sensor in the N95. The picture quality on my DSLR is almost perfect, not comparable to N95.

I understand the limit here is utilizing a small sensor yet captures highly sensitive light particles. In order to do that, a CCD sensor is required. CCD is very small, if used in a phone it will have the capability of producing "identical" picture quality to a standalone digital camera, such as the Sony used in the review. I hope that future N-series phones will utilize CCD instead of CMOS because CCD produces images with less noise and better optical input at smaller size sensor compared to CMOS.

By utilizing CCD, there is little to no need to have an "over-processing" algorithms to sharpen, reduce noise, etc like N95 has. I think the main disadvantage is the post exposure algorithms that keeps the N95 from producing a natural images (with noises on the image, but can be reduced by reducing the image quality to 3 mpixels).

Hi Kevin7,

While a CCD sensor may perform better at the same size as a CMOS, the fundamental thing here is that a CCD uses a lot more power - a severe issue with mobile phones. Nokia and other manufacturers by in bulk for economies of scale and I dare say the CMOS sensor is factored in to many of their designs for the next year or so to come.

Therefore, while they may change to CCD and people are asking for it, it may take a while before you see them integrated into phones - and at such high resolution.

Personaly, I think they should have produced a 3mp sensor the size of this 5mp but then, as krisse said, a lot of poeple out there think higher mp is better. This is not really the case as can be seen by the decrease in speed in the consumer market for releasing larger resolution cameras.

"By utilizing CCD, there is little to no need to have an "over-processing" algorithms to sharpen, reduce noise, etc like N95 has. I think the main disadvantage is the post exposure algorithms that keeps the N95 from producing a natural images (with noises on the image, but can be reduced by reducing the image quality to 3 mpixels)."

Perhaps CCD will produce better, more natural images but that it just a guess at this stage as Nokia has not got the experience with CCD that it has with CMOS. It is also worth noting that the N95 is not producing less noise at 3mp than 5mp, it has simply resized the 5mp image and noise is therefore less visible.

Also, while I don't mean any offence, a 350D is an entry level DSLR, not a semi-pro model. While it is roughly comparable with a 10D which was a semi-pro camera a few years back, semi-pro Canon models would be the 20D, 30D and perhaps the 5D to true professionals who would use it as a back up. I have a 5D and a 20D and consider myself a semi-pro. Technically you are only considered as pro in the industry if it is your primary income and you earn more from photography than anything else. Naturally, the quality of your images are a combined factor.

It does seem that what's really holding back mobile technology isn't the technology itself but the power it consumes. Batteries need to get better...

I think for a tiny camera that does so much the images are quite good and I understand the problems with noise and edge enhancement post processing application.

Perhaps N95 can also be fogiven for taking 4/5 seconds between shots (although I think this could be due to some those post processing) but I can't understand this red tinted effect. It is terrible, how can they miss that !? If they tried to do a warm color effect they got it totally wrong, we are not talking about different colur composition warm, cold, netural etc. we are talking about extra red across the spectrum.

My only hope is that it might be improved with the color setting or perhaps another firmware, until then it is just embaressing... !

Fantastic review. I throughly enjoyed reading it. Indeed the N95, does need some sort of work with respect to noise reduction and sharpening. It is hard when there is so much noise and artifacts to deal with. What Nokia needs to do is indeed to improve the signal to noise on the existing sensor somehow.

Also with respect to slow shooting, to review times, this can be fixed easily by using some of the spare RAM in the N95 as temporary buffer space for photos, so that instead of waiting for writing to the MicroSD card, it can take next picture at mediately

Mazor

I'd say the camera is pretty good for occaisional point and shoot use, but nothing more strenuous. In saying that its still by far and away the best camera on any phone I've ever owned 😊

Hello to every n95 enthusiast,

I'd like to ask you a question, wether Nokia n95 has albums in gallery. Namely, in my old n80 i have more than 400 photos and if I want ot see the 206th I have to browse all previous or later photos to get to the one I want. That's why I hope Nokia n95 has maps or albums in galleries so one can sort photos and browse... Thank you in advance.

TS

Hi tanad, you can indeed create albums and organise your media.

The main thing for me is speed, I got the n73 when it came out and that was horribly slow, beautiful phone for every thing else but so slow had to go. I just want to know if the phone is generally slow? opening contact lists, messages ect. even just scrolling through the different icon on the main screen.

n95 rocks! wat are the colours available now?

The N95 is definetely faster. The N73 wasn't too bad for me, thought the unbranded versions tended to be better than the operator ones.

To the person above regarding phone speed. All Symbian S60 devices suffer from occasional lag when browsing through the menus, part of this is due to the processor used in these devices and partly due to the fact flash memory is the primary type of memory used for storage. The processors on these devices are optimised for power saving so if you blitz through the menus, there are occasions where the phone takes a few seconds to catch up. However, the 6681 i owned before and the n95 are both fast enough from my perspective. I used to own a Sharp GX30i, that was noticably slower than both these phones. Don't expect it to go like a rocket, be patient with it, and you'll have no problems.dont ever fuckin talk to me again

had the n95 4 a month now and im totally dissapointed not worth even getting it free on a contract. 1.the battery dosnt even last a day with a full charge (whatever u do dont use the camera 4 more than 20 min or u will b looking 4 the nearest power point to charge it)2. when i make a call sumtimes the person im calling cant hear me unless i press loudspeaker then handset buttons.3.the fone crashes at least 10 times a day 4. the pixel quality is great but even with digital zoom,dont go zooming in on things u will b dissapointed.5.the g.p.s is useless 6.the n95 has a micro sd card slot instead of a miny sd slot ,so if ur like me and hav upgraded from the n80 u mite as well just bin the cards. 7. whatever u do DONT ever drop it. it will shatter into a million little pieces unlike the n80 which was bounced off walls a few times and survived (not recomended). and thats about it. not happy with the n95 at all!!! and a word to nokia......... test the fones b4 selling them and plz use different software! the n80 was a crap fone, the n95 even worce!!!

Hi there,

I really want to buy this nokia phone but I was wondering if the phone has a permanent flash that you can use on video for night recording.
Please could someone let me know on the answer,

Thanks
Jessica

Ive had the N95 for 2 weeks now and its pretty bad, switching from the sony erricson K850i, the speed of the phone is abizmal. The battery life is a joke, all the extra stuff on the phone is neat but wots the point if you have no battery. On a night out it runs out half way through!! The Sat nav is difficult to use and the mp3 mode is a slow as any thing ive seen.

The camera detail is very good, but has nowhere near the versitility of the cybershot, the zoom when viewing is rubbish. Its nice on the cyber shot where you can zoom in and take an idividual picture of the zoomed in image. It even takes a long time to skip between images!!

For some reaseon my phone crashes when it down loads, and the phone has chashed 8-9 times in the 2 weeks that ive had it!!

My opinion for any new buyer is to stay away from this phone, until the software and battery life for this phone is upgraded I would sincerely tell you to purchase a sony. 5mega pixels sounds great but 3.2 with better software is 10 times better. And the phone runs better and will last at least till you get home from work!!

We all know it is 5.6mm, but what is the equivalent if judged in terms of the 35mm format? Thanks.

sincerely
meng

Hi, I own a Sony Ericson K850i and I must say I was quite chocked by the poor quality of the photos presented in this article.
Over-processing is an understatement! Zoom and look at the grass on the second photo for instance. It's been reduced to a mush of green looking totally out of focus.
I had envisaged upgrading to that phone, I must say this review has totally cured me. The 3Mpixel camera of the K850i takes way better photos than this.

Only one hope: maybe is it possible to turn that abysmal post processing off.

I certainly would recommend trying before buying.

hey u hav a really good reveiw on the n95s cam over here but i would like to say that testing it along with a sony stand alone camera is not nice. i mean you should realise that the n95 is a camera with ipod like music abilites and a mini game console (when u plug it into the tv)and an internet device. SO it should have some difficulirss in managing it all in one sleek phone.

Regards,

DIlin Anand s603rd.blogspot.com

Thanks for the article.

But what is that Sony phone.... Sony Ericcson what? is it k850i?

I think those Sony pics are much better than Nokia's N95. I'm on the lookout for the best camera phone to buy... any help appreciated.

Mobile phones with cameras are proving to be immensely useful for many purposes, mainly because they have the advantage of always being with you.

Sadly, the companies sell u phones with a 3.MPcam now and put-of the 7 MPfor next year, eventhough they could bring it out now if they wanted to. Accordingly, cameras with high quality optics are still rare and optical zoom lenses on cameras are even rarer.The N95 has a hi-res 5MP cam-but with no optical power while the n93i has the optical lens but powered by just a paltry 3.2MP sensor.

So if you�re one of those people who would like to have a 6X optical zoom on your mobile check this out
s603rd.blogspot.com/2007/10/n95-gets-telescope-add-on.html

hav fun,

Dilin Anand.

hi i own a nokia N95 and i have to say its brill in the exeption of it being slow and the battery life getting drained quickishly but still its quality i love the camera and the loudness of the music