Now this is interesting. Ratza in our forums has determined that the Nokia E70's camera (the same as that in the likes of the N70 and a dozen other S60 smartphones?) is optimised to focus at 1 metre, rather than infinity, as was previously presumed. He's even knocked up a Python script to prove the point.... More in the forum thread!
Read on in the full article.
I never thought that my post will become something interesting 😃
Just to clarify things, the Python script was made just to save the image in
100% quality JPEG, without any compression. Resulting images are much
sharper and with more details. Even if the noise level is a little bit higher, I'd
rather use another picture editing software - the algorithms for noise removal,
post processing, edge enhancement etc are surely better than the one
created by Nokia.
The part with focus fixed at 1m from lens was found accidentaly about one
year ago, while using my N70. I was always wondering why the portraits
looked so sharp and the landscapes were so blurry. I took a picture in a park
at about 25 cm (~10 inches) above the grass with the optic axis of the lens
parallel to ground. When I downloaded the picture on PC, it was very clear
that on a specific distance the grass was very sharp. Measured that distance
on which the sharpness was best and that's it.
Later on I thought that maybe the blur in the landscapes was a result of a
very powerfull noise reduction and that was the first time when I had the
Python script in mind.
I asked an industry insider about this. Apparently most fixed focus camera are set with a specific focus point (usually between 1m and 10m), such that the depth of field for the lens extends back to infinity.
There's an article in here somewhere. Anyone feel competent enough to write it?
Steve