Categories: Guides, Mobile Phones Extra   Tags: ,

The Nokia N8 camera is packed with clever camera technology. From its ultra-quick mechanism to the smart software inside. Read on, and see how many of these N8 camera secrets you already knew.


Pre-order the Nokia N8 on Vodafone

Mechanical shutter inside
The Nokia N8 has a mechanical shutter, like a full blown digital camera. That means it’s faster to snap a shot when you press the camera key. In fact, it’s faster than humans are able to perceive. The Nokia N8′s shutter lag is just 150ms. The average human reaction time is 250ms, so unlike other camera phones, you won’t notice it.

Lag-free viewfinder
As well as having a blisteringly quick shutter, the N8‘s viewfinder updates quickly to display smooth movement and really show what’s going on. There’s virtually no lag between what the camera sees and what’s shown on screen, so when you hit the shutter button, you get exactly what you see.

Fast auto focus
Nokia has improved the speed of the N8 autofocus dramatically, compared to rival camera phones. It’ll lock onto targets in around 350ms. Obviously that depends on how far away a subject is, and what the lighting’s like, but typically you’ll get a sharp shot in less than half a second.

The flashiest of flashes
The Nokia N8 packs a Xenon flash. That’s just like the one  you’ll find on a dedicated digital camera. Unlike LED flash, it’s ultra-bright and very fast, firing for between 1/3,333 and 1/200,000 of a second to freeze any subject you point it at. Forget motion-blur and smeary snaps, the Nokia N8 stops them dead.

Long range lighting
As well as being fast, Xenon flash has a much larger range than LED light bulbs. The Nokia N8 can illuminate a subjectaround 3.5m away outdoors, or indoors up to 5m away. Try a similarly-specced camera phone with an LED flash, and your subjects will be dark, featureless blobs, while the N8 cranks out quality pictures every time.

Large sensor means low noise
The Nokia N8 has lots of fancy optics, autofocus and flash wrapped around its camera sensor, but the sensor itself is also mighty special. It’s the largest ever crammed inside a mobile phone – and actually larger in size to most compact digital cameras at 1/1.83” and using 1.75 micron pixels. That might sound geeky, but it all means there’s less distortion and digital noise as it works its magic. In turn that means less grain and sharper photos.

Read all our Nokia N8 photography guides, and pre-order the Nokia N8.

  • http://www.allaboutiphone.net/ stevelitchfield

    Just for completeness, note that quite a few other Nokia smartphones have mechanical shutters – this isn't new for the N8…. 8-)

    And the N82 had a brighter Xenon flash. Just sayin'… !

    • vu1can

      Agree, but the sensor size makes my day with N8. I have seen shots that show fine DOF (depth of field) isolation that is THE thing to use when in need to articulate artistically anything in photorgraphy. When I read the sensor size for the 1st time I had to read it twice. The N8 sensor is almost as big as in Canon G11 or Nikon P7000 (their best pocket cameras for “prosumers”), and since the N8 is a thin device it seemed unbelievable to me that were able to pack that big sensor inside (the sensor itself is thin part, but the lens size varies depending of sensor size to have big enough imaging circle…).

Hot chat, right here!


Our most commented stories right now...