Camera: Nokia Strikes Again

One of the standout features of the Lumia 1520 is its rear-facing 20-megapixel 'PureView' camera, which is designed to be a more than reasonable, hump-less variant of the Lumia 1020'southward 41-megapixel photographic camera. It's a 1/2.5" sensor, which indicates 1.1 µm pixels, plus an f/ii.4 26mm-constructive lens and optical image stabilization. Information technology's paired with a dual-LED flash, 1080p30 video recording and a i.2-megapixel forepart facing photographic camera.

Compared to the Lumia 1020 and other Lumia devices, the 1520 appears to be targeting lossless zoom rather than low light capabilities. The pixel size is the same as the Lumia 1020 at 1.i µm, but the f/ii.4 lens is a quarter-stop less than the 1020's f/2.2 lens, meaning it will permit in slightly less light for those critical low-light images. The Lumia 925's f/ii.0 lens and 1.4 µm pixels ways it can capture 75% more low-cal than the 1520, once again which will touch images in dark conditions, although optical image stabilization (OIS) should compensate somewhat.

There are several shooting options for the Lumia 1520'due south camera. Like the 1020, it can either capture 5-megapixel images, or both a 5-megapixel and full-res image, with the five MP prototype used for sharing on social media and the similar. You lot can shoot in either 4:3 to produce 19-megapixel images (4992 x 3744) or 16:9 for xv-megapixel images (5376 10 3024); neither uses the full sensor size.

The camera produces admittedly fantastic images, both in color quality and sharpness. When lighting conditions are ideal, the sensor captures light accurately and vibrantly, with some of the all-time dynamic range I've seen in a smartphone camera. White balance is often authentic, although sometimes off when photographing a close-upwardly subject that features a lot of green. Nonetheless when the white residual is spot on, no colour appears particularly ascendant: perfect for capturing lifelike images.

20 megapixels plainly affords quite a lot of space for zooming and resizing, but even 100% crops are very adept quality for this sensor size, with reasonably abrupt edges and only a minor corporeality of post-processing artifacts coming through at low ISOs. Reducing the images to 1080p is more than a 2x reduction, so images are even sharper at this resolution; the same sharpness comes through at the v-megapixel sharable images.

Images taken indoors, where lighting isn't as stiff, aren't quite as expert equally the best outdoor shots I managed on the Lumia 1520, just the phone is nevertheless still a strong contender. The use of high ISOs is more apparent in dimmer conditions, with more than post-processing artifacts, but photos overall remain quite abrupt, particularly when downscaled. It's harder to go solid white balance in these weather condition, but colors remain strong and vibrant, even if y'all end up with a shot that's slightly underexposed.

Taking photos at nighttime over again shows the force of Nokia'due south camera system. Optical epitome stabilization does most of the work, allowing long shutter speeds (every bit long every bit 1/3s) to be used with reasonably high ISOs. Scenes that might appear very nighttime to begin with can come to life through the Lumia 1520's camera, so low lite is no obstruction fifty-fifty considering the setup that's weaker than the Lumia 925. The dual-LED flash is also there for when it's impossible to meet the subject, although you'll probably apply it infrequently.

Of course the quality of photos taken at nighttime time isn't as good as those taken during the day, but the 1520 nevertheless produces impressive shots considering the circumstances.

Mayhap 1 of the all-time aspects of the Lumia 1520's camera setup is the Nokia Camera awarding, which allows fantastic manual command. It's extremely piece of cake to control the focus, white balance, ISO, shutter speed and exposure with the ring-style bill of fare, and with a minor amount of fine tuning y'all tin can achieve even amend images than with auto settings.

Smart Sequence extends on the standard shooting way by taking a burst of images, allowing yous to select a best image, create an activity shot through stitching of images, produce movement focus images and more. RAW DNG images can also exist taken thanks to the Nokia Black update, giving you lossless detail through 20 MB full-size images, which is great for those who demand the highest quality.

Nokia Camera follows the Windows Phone camera philosophy by delegating extra shooting modes to Lenses, which are dedicated camera applications that tin can be downloaded in the Windows Phone Store. Nokia Cinemagraph (animated images) and Nokia Glam Me (selfies with filters) are included out-of-the-box, simply others can be downloaded such as Nokia Refocus and CamScanner.

Video recording quality from the Lumia 1520 is quite reasonable. The camera tin can only capture 1080p video at a maximum of 30 frames per 2d – phones such every bit the Galaxy Note 3 tin can practice 1080p at 60 FPS and even 4K recording – but it does record at twenty Mbps H.264, which gives great quality. Videos are sharp and just as color accurate equally images, plus the optically stabilized sensor makes panning quite smooth.

The Lumia 1520 has high fidelity microphones that tin tape especially loud sounds, which is bully for recording music performances. In windy conditions I struggled to audibly record my voice, equally you lot might observe in the sample video above, but when the conditions are right the quality is quite proficient.