Teymur reviews the Nokia Lumia 1020

by Volker Weber

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I asked Nokia to send Teymur a Lumia 1020 as a loaner. He has used it for a couple of weeks, and he is not convinced.

I have used the camera now for a few weeks and also on my two week work trip to Brazil and a few others. I have to admit, I really fell in love with the phone, but not neccessarily the camera.

Teymur is an excellent professional photographer. Find his work here. And as I learned this year, he is also a really nice person. Hire him!

Anyway, Teymur has found two issues: speed and rolling shutter. It does take a long time to process a photo on the Lumia 1020, for two reasons. First, 41 MP is a lot of data. Second, it does not have a graphic coprocessor. All its wizardry is done in software. It does not take six seconds on my Lumia 1020 to load the camera, but it does take three. That is indeed a long time. Also, frame-to-frame it takes a lot longer than most other cameras. The 930 and the 1520 are faster, but still do take longer than competing cameraphones.

What surprised me was the rolling shutter situation. Teymur shoots lots of photos on the move. Point the camera out of the window and shoot. As the camera processes its data row by row, you get slanted images. I have not noticed this issue since all of my photos are still photos. I am not moving when shooting a photo. Not at all. I believe the 1020 has both a mechanical and an electronic shutter, and I simply don't know when either one is used. This may lead to an interesting discussion.

I shot two videos to demo what is bothering Teymur, coming from an iPhone. It's not bothering me at all, since I could shoot my photos with something as slow as a Leica. ;-)

Comments

First of all, thank you for your kind words.

then as for the file size... give me another option... I do not always need 42mp. not even in my professional work. I switch between my nikon D4 and d800 accordingly. and as for the graphics processor, yes I understand that this makes a difference, so should the people at nokia/microsoft though and put one in.

not trying to be an ass here, just saying that as a consumer, that is a very important factor for me, that leads to my decision of what phone to use.

quality is one thing, but usability is not something you should compromise on.

Teymur Madjderey, 2014-08-07

As a 1020 owner, I'd agree with the frustration re: the speed of opening the camera app. From a locked handset to being able to take a shot is at least 5 seconds, which feels way too long.

I haven't seen the rolling shutter either, even on shots taken from trains etc. I'll be looking out for it now though!

Stuart McIntyre, 2014-08-07

It's 4 seconds on my Lumia 930. Just timed it. In my opinion still to long, but no reason to ditch the phone. It feels, like the pictures are way better than the ones taken with an iPhone 5s.

Johannes Matzke, 2014-08-07

i increased the speed on my 1020 by disabling the RAW image option.

Samuel Orsenne, 2014-08-07

And that is what makes the Pureview 808 a better Camera for such use.

Why MS didn't/doesn't allow/support co-processors in WP8/WP8.1 is beyond me.

Dag Kvello, 2014-08-07

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