Low light

XDA_RealLifeReview · Feb 24, 2019

At the club, at the bar, or just in your mom's basement, nighttime is when you come out to play. Rate this thread to express how the Nokia 9 PureView's camera performs when no or low light is present. A higher rating indicates that the camera sensor "sees" lots of light in dim conditions, and that the resulting photos have minimal noise. A higher rating also indicates that when the flash fires, the resulting photo is evenly-lit without any bright spots.

Then, drop a comment if you have anything to add!

phunkyp · Mar 9, 2019

This is the area that I most confused about. They say that it lets 10x more light in than other phones, but the low light is not better than my Pixel 2 without Night Sight, let alone when I turn Night Sight on. It gets good results if you can do a longer exposure but in very low light to no light, this phone is not performing well for me.

alinefx · Mar 10, 2019

Yup it couldn't beat an iPhone XS Max with just point and click. Might actually return this one. Darker grainier image is the Nokia. Lumia 1020 beats this one. Sorry.

kaiseryeahhh · Mar 10, 2019

alinefx said:
Yup it couldn't beat an iPhone XS Max with just point and click. Might actually return this one. Darker grainier image is the Nokia. Lumia 1020 beats this one. Sorry.

And does it have night mode?

AndroidMilos · Mar 10, 2019

I agree. Basically lo light is rubbish.

AntonyW999 · Mar 10, 2019

alinefx said:
Yup it couldn't beat an iPhone XS Max with just point and click. Might actually return this one. Darker grainier image is the Nokia. Lumia 1020 beats this one. Sorry.

If that's the best it can do in low light, I'm cancelling my pre-order.

Harfainx · Mar 10, 2019

Looking at photos, honestly it looks like the extra cameras are only used in raw shots. I think it's a really bad decision for that, but that's how it appears to me.

See the screenshots attached. Darker image is 'point and shoot'. Brighter image is raw of the same shot.

Edit for Google Drive link. DNG and original JPG are in there. Screenshots of both as well, in case you don't want it check the DNG file.
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=1-3ocYSlKpKW1gqi_ybGJOw1hEGo2jf0C

kaiseryeahhh · Mar 10, 2019

Harfainx said:
Looking at photos, honestly it looks like the extra cameras are only used in raw shots. I think it's a really bad decision for that, but that's how it appears to me.

See the screenshots attached. Darker image is 'point and shoot'. Brighter image is raw of the same shot.

I don't think that's the case, the 5 cameras are always used.

Harfainx · Mar 10, 2019

kaiseryeahhh said:
I don't think that's the case, the 5 cameras are always used.

I think they're supposed to always be used, but based on low light performance, I strongly doubt that they are.

alinefx · Mar 10, 2019

I was only interested in this phone for the camera. To see a 2 Lens iOS device beat this one is atrocious. A lumia 1020 till this day gives you thrills for the photos it takes.

Look at this picture of a cat taken in a lit room, the one with a warmer tone (first pic) is the one with the XS and is closer to how the room looks in real life. Both pics taken with flash.

This is going back. What a waste. Will wait for the Xperia 1.

Nokia, step up your game.

kevle · Mar 11, 2019

alinefx said:
I was only interested in this phone for the camera. To see a 2 Lens iOS device beat this one is atrocious. A lumia 1020 till this day gives you thrills for the photos it takes.

Look at this picture of a cat taken in a lit room, the one with a warmer tone (first pic) is the one with the XS and is closer to how the room looks in real life. Both pics taken with flash.

This is going back. What a waste. Will wait for the Xperia 1.

Nokia, step up your game.

as some review have said, N9 is not really flattering for PnS without retouching, have you tried lightroom to get to the same color mood? Then try to compare, because the details in the cat's fur is good, but it needs to be retouched

bk227865 · Mar 11, 2019

alinefx said:
I was only interested in this phone for the camera. To see a 2 Lens iOS device beat this one is atrocious. A lumia 1020 till this day gives you thrills for the photos it takes.

Look at this picture of a cat taken in a lit room, the one with a warmer tone (first pic) is the one with the XS and is closer to how the room looks in real life. Both pics taken with flash.

This is going back. What a waste. Will wait for the Xperia 1.

Nokia, step up your game.

First , your shooting with flash. Since it are 2 different phones your shooting with 2 different flashes, so your actually comparing the flash here. Shooting with different lighting (flash) makes it difficult to compare the images.
From what i can see in the cat pictures : the Nokia's flash is much brighter : look at the reflection on the rear wall, and the cat is brighter illuminated, on the XS photo the backlights are to bright and close to the cat for my taste , they give me a "get that light out of my face" feeling .
In this case it destroys the mood a bit , in other cases it wil be usefull if the subject is a bit farther away.
Also if you have auto whitebalance set to on then it should compensate for the yellow lights in the room and return a picture more adjusted to white light , so +1 for the nokia if that was the case.

alinefx · Mar 11, 2019

Here's a sample comparison without flash.

I understand that with lightroom, and time spent, that one can probably get truly great photos out of this camera. But on the other hand, unlike the 1020, the pics out of the box are just meh. So in this case, its a good thing they made this a limited run, because most people will not go for this phone anyway. Also, they should have made it at least a 6.5 inch phone. The display is too small to truly appreciate the photos this thing can eventually take. The lag time for processing is excessive as one cannot edit a photo with a depth map unless one waits atleast 5-10 seconds.

Needless to say, the one that's darker is the Nokia.

kevle · Mar 11, 2019

alinefx said:
Here's a sample comparison without flash.

I understand that with lightroom, and time spent, that one can probably get truly great photos out of this camera. But on the other hand, unlike the 1020, the pics out of the box are just meh. So in this case, its a good thing they made this a limited run, because most people will not go for this phone anyway. Also, they should have made it at least a 6.5 inch phone. The display is too small to truly appreciate the photos this thing can eventually take. The lag time for processing is excessive as one cannot edit a photo with a depth map unless one waits atleast 5-10 seconds.

Needless to say, the one that's darker is the Nokia.

to my eye, the iPhone one is more pleasing to the eye at first sight, due to the warm color balance and slightly upped saturation.
but if you look at the N9 one, the details and color of the cat fur is better preserved, as are the sharpness of the background, but maybe that's due to wrong focus.
So, if you want photos that looks good at first sight, go for iphone, but if you prefer details and dont mind doing post processing, keep the N9
Personally i post process everything i post anyway, so i prefer the N9

bk227865 · Mar 11, 2019

alinefx said:
Here's a sample comparison without flash.

I understand that with lightroom, and time spent, that one can probably get truly great photos out of this camera. But on the other hand, unlike the 1020, the pics out of the box are just meh. So in this case, its a good thing they made this a limited run, because most people will not go for this phone anyway. Also, they should have made it at least a 6.5 inch phone. The display is too small to truly appreciate the photos this thing can eventually take. The lag time for processing is excessive as one cannot edit a photo with a depth map unless one waits atleast 5-10 seconds.

Needless to say, the one that's darker is the Nokia.

you might have a point there.
The multiple lenses and the ability to do post related work like blurring ect ... probably indicate that this is not really the best value for your money if your only going to do "point click and send" type of stuff.

Jaripi · Mar 11, 2019

alinefx said:
Here's a sample comparison without flash.

I understand that with lightroom, and time spent, that one can probably get truly great photos out of this camera. But on the other hand, unlike the 1020, the pics out of the box are just meh. So in this case, its a good thing they made this a limited run, because most people will not go for this phone anyway. Also, they should have made it at least a 6.5 inch phone. The display is too small to truly appreciate the photos this thing can eventually take. The lag time for processing is excessive as one cannot edit a photo with a depth map unless one waits atleast 5-10 seconds.

Needless to say, the one that's darker is the Nokia.

Do you try to say that yellow photo is better ? - it is clearly worse one.

mudnightoil · Mar 12, 2019

alinefx said:
Here's a sample comparison without flash.

I understand that with lightroom, and time spent, that one can probably get truly great photos out of this camera. But on the other hand, unlike the 1020, the pics out of the box are just meh. So in this case, its a good thing they made this a limited run, because most people will not go for this phone anyway. Also, they should have made it at least a 6.5 inch phone. The display is too small to truly appreciate the photos this thing can eventually take. The lag time for processing is excessive as one cannot edit a photo with a depth map unless one waits atleast 5-10 seconds.

Needless to say, the one that's darker is the Nokia.

The iphone image is objectively much worse. Much less detail, much more noise, much lower dynamic range. Colour balance can be changed easily in LR (which is on the phone).

However, something definitely does appear to be amiss with low light images. They should be far, far better than they are if they're really stacking images / data from all 5 sensors. The XS Max is far worse than Samsung or Huawei's latest offerings, or the product of GCam in low light.

MoseMan · Mar 13, 2019

mudnightoil said:
The iphone image is objectively much worse. Much less detail, much more noise, much lower dynamic range. Colour balance can be changed easily in LR (which is on the phone).

However, something definitely does appear to be amiss with low light images. They should be far, far better than they are if they're really stacking images / data from all 5 sensors. The XS Max is far worse than Samsung or Huawei's latest offerings, or the product of GCam in low light.

I'm pleased with most of the pictures posted in this discussion because of the amount of information captured and the balanced exposure. I agree that they aren't always as immediately appealing as other phones which step in to tinker with the images. But at the same time I appreciate the potential gains from having your images available in this format.

Having the option of automated processing would be nice for when you don't have time to play around in Lightroom. And they may do this through software. But seeing as they have already stated that their target audience is camera enthusiasts then they might leave it alone.

bk227865 · Mar 13, 2019

XDA_RealLifeReview said:
At the club, at the bar, or just in your mom's basement, nighttime is when you come out to play. Rate this thread to express how the Nokia 9 PureView's camera performs when no or low light is present. A higher rating indicates that the camera sensor "sees" lots of light in dim conditions, and that the resulting photos have minimal noise. A higher rating also indicates that when the flash fires, the resulting photo is evenly-lit without any bright spots.

Then, drop a comment if you have anything to add!

I own a P20 Pro , and while the night mode is a nice gimmick it's nothing more than that.
I much rather have the quality of the images under normal light that this nokia produces. And not the over processed jpg's and the unusable raw files that i get from my P20 Pro. Nightmode or not.

Terhti · Mar 24, 2019

Very good when using Raw.

Low light

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