The whole LED vs Xenon debate is old now. The last thing we need is a forum that reads like GSM Arena. Nokia clearly hasn't made a Flash that is better than Xenon, but has made great strides in Camera phone technology with it's lens and new generation of dual LED. Some people may say "but what's the point", but I think this bodes well for future camera phones by Nokia.
Anyway, the camera's only a small part of what the N86 can do, and if I wanted to be a photographer I'd buy an SLR 😊
Hi everyone, just posted this on Nokia Conversations. Thought you might appreciate to read it here also.
I'll try and answer as many of your questions as possible. I've combined them here in one reply.
Firstly,
I'd like to reiterate the reasoning behind the comparison:
I could see many people wanted to see how the N86 performed in low light. As an area we have made improvements with this product I wanted to share as much detail as possible in what is clearly an important area for people, therefore allowing you to make a fully informed decision whether this product would fit your needs or not. My intent was no more than that. End of story. If you interpret more than that then that I have to say that is down to you. Without being familiar with our future product plans I would encourage you not to make any other conclusions other than does the N86 8MP fit your needs. If it does, then I'm very happy. If not I'll understand. Maybe we have something in the future or elsewhere in our portfolio which will be more appropriate for you. With over 6.5 billion people on this planet we are all different, it would be boring if we weren't.
I have read with interest the many comments on various sites this has comparison has sparked. I want to thank all of those people for taking the trouble to post comments. I can't answer all of them of course but through this forum I will try and answer as many as I can. What I take out of all of these discussions is how important low light recording is to people. For some I can see that this means they believe xenon and only xenon will do. And that's fine, everyone is entitled to their opinions of course and I am not going to get involved in a debate on which is best as they both have their own pros and cons. Outside of the N86 8MP, I hope you'll understand that of course I can't comment on our plans for the future, but I can say that we see low light recording as very important. Our research and development continues to investigate ways that we can make improvements in this area.
Why did I use the N82 in the comparison? Yes it's a product which was introduced over 18 months ago. However, it's also regarded by many as a benchmark in low light, principally because of it's xenon flash. Furthermore it wouldn�t be ethical of me to use a competitor's product in such a comparison, so I used one of our own. As I was involved in the N82 as much as I was with the N86 8MP it�s a product I also know very well 😊 So from my perspective what better product to use as a reference. Again it's down to you how you interpret the results, I simply wanted to provide a known reference point so you could measure the improvements we have made with the N86 8MP.
Re: Xenon and LED in a single product:
Yes hypothetically it can be done, there's no technical reason why not. But, this would create a situation where you would either need to increase the size of the product (using N86 8MP purely as a reference point) or you would need to reduce the performance of a component or remove it completely. When comparing against other products there are other factors which need to be taken into account. Some examples could include, size of internal memory, battery capacity, whether there are physical keys or not, music playback time, connectivity options such as FM Tx etc. For some these are compromises that maybe you are willing to take, for others they are not.
In the case of N86 8MP, as already mentioned in a previous reply, we wanted to create a well rounded product which offered, great camera, great music and great navigation wrapped by premium materials in a single elegant product, I believe we achieved that goal. However, for 'this' product whilst it includes Nokia's best camera to date with new benefits such as the 28mm wide-angle lens, large variable aperture and AMBR to name a few it wasn't designed to be a 'camera'. I hope that doesn't get quoted out of context. There's a subtle but important difference I'm trying to make here which I hope you can see. We have huge amounts of research which supports the desire to have a well rounded converged device and it's this that we reacted to with this specific product. For some I can see how tantalising the camera we have developed is and you feel let down that we weren't able to squeeze in xenon flash. As explained elsewhere we tried but chose not to compromise the size/design or all round capability. Yes there are other products which do provide xenon flash and some which provide both but you may find some aspects missing in these products which the N86 8MP provides. As said it's down to you whether these are valuable or not. Based on what we set out to achieve with this product those items we kept in this product are as important as xenon to others. If after you've reviewed the material and what the N86 8MP does outside of its camera it's not for you that's fine and I hope we'll develop a more appropriate product for you in the future. That doesn't mean Nokia doesn't listen, far from it. It's just today for you we may not have the perfect product. That doesn't make the N86 8MP a bad product. If it did then there would be many other products out there which would need to be tarnished with the same brush as the number of products with xenon are definitely amongst the minority. I would suggest this is down to the size of this component, the flash and the capacitors and the trade-off that need to be made to include such components.
Does this mean Nokia doesn't understand the benefits of xenon? No. Does this mean Nokia will never introduce a product with xenon flash? No.
Using a xenon flash plus SINGLE LED solution maybe ok for stills but based on our experience single LED solutions generally do not provide sufficient output for video. So beware of 'tick box' solutions here. Certainly comparing the dual LED from the N86 8MP to a single LED solution would mean a significant reduction in light output and if I was asked to comment on a single LED's suitability for video on whether it would be worthwhile, I would probably say not. At least today. I really think you need to have the kind of LED strength in the N86 8MP to be able to get any worthwhile benefit. Would I like to create a product with the best of both world's, absolutely. But I will still want to create a well rounded product, that's the promise of Nokia Nseries. What does that mean in practice? You'll have to wait and see 😉, sorry!
I also would encourage you to be mindful that not all xenon solutions are equal. The size of the flash tube and capacitors make a huge difference. I've seen some very good xenon implementations and others where they have been weaker than LED equipped products. I'm not going to name any products here of course...
Re the possibility of double image with xenon:
This doesn't happen with LED as the light source is on continuously during the exposure. With xenon you effectively get two exposures, one created when the xenon fires and the second created by the ambient light. With LED it's just an always on mix of LED and ambient and it doesn't change during the exposure. Yes you are more likely to get image blur with LED than xenon, but as said and I emphasise the word 'potentially', you can get a double/blurred image with xenon. But this depends on the ambient lighting level and subject/camera movement. But granted and never tried to suggest anything other that xenon does have benefits in this situation. Yes the inclusion of AMBR can reduce/eliminate this problem with LED. Expect to see AMBR in other products in the future BTW.
I hope you find that useful additional information.
atb
Damian
And, the lack of digital/optical image stabilization. Since LED ramps up to full intensity much slower then Xenon, it's necessary to have the shutter open longer in order to take advantage of the light burst. Therefore, the likelihood of an LED lite scene being blurred is much greater than that of a Xenon lite scene; unless, of course, one uses a slow shutter speed with a Xenon flash. Most people would never do this unless it was for effect.
As for a single LED not being adequate for low light video work: One high intensity LED used as a video light is better than no light source at all. Wouldn't you say?
Unregistered wrote:And, the lack of digital/optical image stabilization. Since LED ramps up to full intensity much slower then Xenon, it's necessary to have the shutter open longer in order to take advantage of the light burst. Therefore, the likelihood of an LED lite scene being blurred is much greater than that of a Xenon lite scene; unless, of course, one uses a slow shutter speed with a Xenon flash. Most people would never do this unless it was for effect.As for a single LED not being adequate for low light video work: One high intensity LED used as a video light is better than no light source at all. Wouldn't you say?
Most digital stablisation systems can't be used with xenon flash as they rely on multiple image capture to create one image adn the xenon flash in these products can only fire once for each exposure. They could work with LED.
I'm not aware of the LED flash ramp up causing any problems with shutter speeds up to at least 1/60th second.
Typically we use 1/30th second or slower with either LED and xenon to get the ambient lighting balance as well. Faster shutter speeds limit the contribution from the ambient lighting and therefore create an even less natural result. We try and keep to 1/30th as much as the conditions allow.
Re one LED being better than nothing: I guess you could say that. However, in my experience the single LED solutions (I've seen at least) create such a small range in practice they're barely better than nothing. Not sure that's what you want us to target, is it?
br
Damian
Brian_CaB wrote:Been dabbling with S60 but do not know enough to answer this question:Is there a method for connecting a camera controller interface through USB so timing could be established that would activate both a xenon flash and the camera?
USB protocol is non-deterministic. Even if there was an API (which there is not) you will have hard time figuring out the timing especially since xenon flash duration is something in the range 1/1000 of a second.
The xenon flash duration is also the reason why manufacturers go with LED. Most imagers from (Micron, Omnivision or Toshiba) are not optimized to work with a light source this fast. In addition most CMOS imagers are rolling shutter type which adds to the complexity. And as far as I know even Nokia uses of-the-shelf sensors. I think the N95 for instance uses a Micron sensor.
Good point! Since they are loosing market proves, that the costumer have always reason.