Sunday, October 26, 2008

Sony Ericsson K810i (II)

[Part I]

Camera functions

According to the specifications published by Sony Ericsson, the K810i’s camera has the following features:

Auto focus, BestPicTM, 3.2 megapixel, 16x digital zoom, image stabilizer, photo fix, picture blogging, red-eye reduction, video record, video stabilizer, xenon flash.

Well, not quite. My unit does not have image stabilizer. Have I been cheated

I haven’t got enough time to play with the camera yet, but here are a few pictures...

This picture is decent, but not great...

I find the color to be a bit dull, though we can increase saturation in photo editing software.


Here is a picture of Korean food (bibimbap). The K810i’s xenon flash fired, giving a well-exposed image. Not bad, but I find the noise level too high...

By the way, if you do not know what digital noise is, the next image, cropped from the top right corner of the bibimbap picture, can give you some clues...


Sony Ericsson K810i has auto focus, but I haven’t found its images to be sharp. Perhaps the tiny lens of the camera phone is the limiting factor. Furthermore, you can see that the corners of the following image is dark - this is called vignetting - indicating the limitation of the xenon flash...


As an owner of Canon DSLR, I haven’t found the image quality of Sony Ericsson K810i to be satisfying. It may have one of the best cameras among mobile phones, but it is no replacement for dedicated camera. Nonetheless, the great thing about it is that the phone is always with me. The first picture shown above was actually taken without prior planning, when I left the Canon at home.

I remember a saying, “Your best camera is the one that is with you.” In future, I am sure I will take a lot more pictures with Sony Ericsson K810i, despite its flaws.


Update:
Kyh is right. Image stabilizer is available in Twilight Landscape mode. However, I expect it to be available for other modes too.

14 comments:

  1. no idea wat is digital noise :p

    p/s: is 55km, i already convert from miles :)

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  2. Camera phones are for convenience and leisure, never for real photography enthusiasts.

    As for the image stabilizer, it's only activated in twilight landscape.

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  3. kikey
    You only need to know noise is usually undesirable.

    kyh
    The manual says that we can choose to activate the image stabilizer. Hmm... let me check further...

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  4. Why not wait for C905? :P

    I'm sure the camera would be better than K810i...

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  5. day-dreamer
    C905? No money le...
    And I am not sure if its camera is any better. Megapixel is not the only thing that matters.

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  6. i think we can't expect so much from a phone cam? and also, phone pics usually will be noisier and also WB problem under certain light settings.

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  7. are u refering to the shutter noise ?

    btw the other day u did ask in my blog, what camera i used to shot the Gundum, so wat is the comment actually ? curious....

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  8. xin
    You are right, but Nokia certainly wants us to think otherwise, hehehe...

    迷迭香
    No, digital noise is not audible. It is to be seen. It usually degrades the quality of the image.

    Regarding the shot of Gundam, I was just curious that it had 'short DOF'. Now that is another thing you won't know...

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  9. Never mind, next time you will have phone capability in a Canon DSLR, wakakaka...

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  10. neo
    That is going to be very heavy, and I can't bring it everywhere :-(

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  11. aiyo, cannot compare your camera phone with a real camera lah! If want good quality pics, must use a real camera, but if just want to have some photos for blogging, then can use handphone camera : )

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  12. foongpc
    But there are many people who think camera phones can replace dedicated cameras...

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  13. Well, so far I don't think there is one camera handphone that can replace a proper camera, unless it's a really lousy camera : )

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