Nokia Lumia 1020 versus Galaxy S4 versus iPhone 5 – Camera Wars

As you all may know by now, when a new smartphone hits the market such as the Nokia Lumia 1020 or the Samsung Galaxy S4, the first thing any eligible reviewer can do, is take the smartphone and a couple of its competitors and see how well their cameras do on a regular test.

Of course, we are now talking about the new Nokia Lumia 1020. With its 41-megapixel sensor and optical stabilization, its camera is one of the best yet. Thus, we can give a little credit to the marketing done to promote it

And what better way to compare this new release than with the Samsung Galaxy S4 and its 13-megapixel camera and with the Apple iPhone 5 and its 8-megapixel camera. Most of the photos you will see below are done indoors, as the weather changes nowadays wouldn’t do it justice if it where to be tested outdoors.

You should also keep in mind, that the pictures you see are shot with cameras that have different resolutions, lenses and different capabilities all together. Which means, that even if you try really hard and succeed to keep the same framing and conditions available for every picture, they still won’t be a perfect match. In addition to this the cameras were set to full auto mode, so as to not complicate things uselessly. Another reason is also because the new iPhone 5 doesn’t really have any other options, unless you use a third-party application.

These pictures that we have taken have a setting commonly used for testing cameras, because of the vast variety of colors they have in them. The Nokia smartphone picked an ISO of 100, while the iPhone and Galaxy S4 picked ISO 50. If you took my advice before, and stared at the pictures up close ( I know you did and that’s ok, I wanted you too) you would have noticed that best picture is that of … the Nokia Lumia 1020. No surprises there. With less noise and better fine detail it definitely gives a good first impression. As far as the exposure and white balance are concerned, there still no change for the better. The 2010’s are overexposed while the other two turned up underexposed. As if none of them seems to appreciate the studio lights that were carefully fixed up. Though not to be entirely harsh, the Galaxy S4 handles the lights more like a point-and-shoot camera should.

Let the starring contest begin. The color test seems to show no significant different results. The iPhone shots are a lot brighter indeed, but you can no longer see the edges of the table, which is not something you’d want. Of course, the Nokia colors look more realistic in comparison, but it’s still underexposed if you’re looking for the best quality picture. The Galaxy S4 seems the same also.

And here you can see a lovely portrait photo of CNET’s own TV senior editor Bridget Carey (you will google this later, I’m sure). The photo in the middle done with a iPhone 5 does have the best exposure, but it makes the top of her a little too bright. Nokia is next in place when it comes to good exposure, as it has better fine details and did get the highlights too exaggerated. The Samsung Galaxy S4 picture was underexposed, but that’s not too bad. All in all, it didn’t do good when it came to sharpness either.

And for all you food lovers here’s something we all know you are looking to take pictures of: your dinner (it’s a bit too much brown, but we had to settle). The low-light shot proved that even though all devices had full auto mode on, they all selected ISO 800 and slow shutter speed: 1/12 seconds for the Nokia smartphone and 1/15 for the iPhone5 and Galaxy S4. No doubt about it, the Nokia is the winner here too, beating the Samsung and Apple phone by a long shot, with better quality through less noise and great fine details. All that said, if you don’t mind trading some more softness and some less sharpness for less noise in your photos, you should give the Galaxy S4 night mode a shot. It works quite well actually. It does take longer to take the photo, so that might be an inconvenient. That happens because the camera takes several shots of the scene, combines them so as to reduce the noise and the blur resulted from the usual shake of your hand. You will also need a still subject for this to work right, but it will be worth it.

The reason behind the high-resolution sensor of the new Nokia smartphone was that of creating a better digital zoom. The best way to observe this is by looking at pictures in small sizes and comparing your results. As the images bet bigger, so do the differences.

That also applies to the shots that you see here. The Lumia 1020 has better fine detail if you chose to view it at full size. Just look at the buildings and the bricks on the sides of the photos. In the photo taken with the Lumia, the bricks appear a lot sharper and better defined, while the other ones seem a bit too soft. But to keep it fair, The Samsung pictures are a lot better than the iPhone 5’s.
More testing is yet to come

Though all this might give you a better idea of what you can expect from these cameras, it is still just a small portion of what a passionate mobile photographer will discover. Lumia’s camera does it justice, but the Galaxy S4 is not too bad itself. As for the iPhone 5, with its release just after its one year anniversary, it’s still pretty good.