Published late last night, UK time, was a nice promotional piece by Juha Alakarhu, Microsoft’s (ex-Nokia) head of imaging, talking up the imaging innovations and abilities in the upcoming Lumia 950 and 950 XL. As you might expect, given my imaging ‘focus’, I found this rather interesting, despite the marketing style, and there are some quotes and comments below.

From Juha’s article:

These innovative Windows 10 devices have our most advanced smartphone imaging hardware and software to help you take beautiful and natural photos every time… We have been working hard on the devices’ image processing software – in areas such as pixel, color and exposure algorithms–to produce the most beautiful photos possible. What this really means is that you can take all types of images—from an impromptu family snapshot, to an extreme close-up of an insect or flower, to your friend’s high-speed skateboard aerials. And the quality is going to be great!

Juha then concentrates on sharing some sample photos, taken in tricky conditions by him and his team:

The photo of the water drops has been taken in low-contrast daylight… 

The combination of technologies in the camera hardware of these phones is very unique and powerful. Just think what the super high sensitivity sensor, 5th generation OIS, and large aperture means in low light imaging.

I took the photos below when I was having dinner with a colleague of mine, in a low light setting. The image on the left was captured by one of our competitor’s phones, which represents a typical smartphone camera quality in this kind of condition. As you can see the image looks pretty smashed. The image on the right was captured by Lumia 950 XL. It looks natural and the noise is beautiful. I think there is something very pure in it. This is what leadership in imaging algorithms means.

I’d point out that Juha’s colleague was posing stlll and I’d challenge him to take as good a photo when she was laughing or otherwise moving slightly [cough Xenon], but yes, excellent dynamic range and image processing.

When we started to design the camera on the Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL, one of our most important objectives was that everybody should be able to take good photos in all conditions. The camera has some very advanced technologies to achieve this.

Of course, more advanced photographers know how to manually adjust the ISO and exposure time for different situations. Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL are making those decisions for you, by analyzing how you hold the camera and what is happening in the scene. With these phones, everybody can shoot like a pro.

Good to hear – that’s the goal for every smartphone camera, of course. I’ve just been playing with Sony’s Z5, which tries to use ‘Superior Auto’ mode to do much the same thing – though in my experience so far, the Z5’s image processing is suspect (article coming soon).

And it gets even more exciting when you use Rich Capture mode. It uses two exposure times for the same image: short for the moving object and long for the static part of the image. Capturing everyday moments, like moving children, is much easier with this feature.

This is interesting. Rich Capture has traditionally done bracketed exposures, of course, working out to HDR in daylight and flash on or off at night, but I’ve never seen it stated that the differences in exposure durations would help freeze moving subjects in an intelligent fashion – it sounds like there’s in-frame analysis to spot what’s moving between exposures and then use information from the shorter exposure for that section of the image. Clever stuff, and I look forward to testing it!

One feature that stands out is the new flash technology. The natural three LED (red, green, blue) flash automatically matches the colors of the ambient light. This means that if you’re taking a photo outside at twilight, the flash will produce a blue light to complement the bluish color of the scene, and if you’re taking a photo of a candlelit dinner, the flash will adjust to expose candlelight.

Due to the natural colors, it also works very well in daytime as a fill-in flash. This is a photo of my sister. It was a bit of a gray day, but I used the flash to add some sparkle. 

I’ve normally discounted LED flash for ‘fill-in’ purposes because it’s simply not bright enough (compared to Xenon) but on a dim day, with three LEDs, and with the larger apertures in the likes of the Lumia 950 then it seems to be sufficient. Interesting.

The photo above is also a ‘living image’, if you download it from the original article and view it under Windows 10 Photos, by the way. A nice little demo.

I really feel that this is the best camera we’ve ever made!

Really? Well, I’m prepared to be convinced, though Juha’s own Nokia 808 and Lumia 1020 are staring at me from the desktop, so there might be a battle royal coming up in December, when light is low, moods are well… moody, and people are celebrating Christmas and New Year!

In the meantime, you can find Juha’s article here.