Its a destructive zoom method that reduced the image quality. What digital zoom does is crop the image at its center and enlarge it to be the same of the original resolution. This of course leads to a great degradation in image quality, depends on the amount of digital zoom used. The is capable of lossless zoom.

Camera: the technology bit

For example, when you shoot an image with the highest resolution, you take advantage of all the effective pixels of the sensor for that image resolution. If you shoot a full resolution image, the camera will use x pixels. When you shoot at aspect ration in full resolution, the camera will use x pixels on the sensor. Now, when you zoom in, the camera will use only use a partial area of the sensor, and a smaller one as you use a higher zoom factor.

Of course the further you zoom in, the less pixels will be used for the oversampling because less area of the sensor is being utilizing for a given image output. So yes, the Lumia actually uses a crop from the sensor area to achieve its lossless zoom. You can get up to 3x lossless zoom 5MP for stills and up to 6x lossless zoom for video recording 4x on p and 6x for p. This method has several advantages:.

When you take a full resolution image, the camera captures two images, one oversampled 5MP image and a second full-resolution image. The great thing about that dual-capture is that even when you took the image with a lossless zoom, you can still zoom back out and reframe your image!

The Nokia Lumia 1020 and the history of photographic zoom

By using a larger sensor and utilizing the oversampling technology, Nokia provided lossless zoom, graet low light performance as well as pose-capture image processing with great versatility. It shows you the lossless zooming feature in videos. The sensor and its complementary oversampling technology makes a big difference when it comes to image quality — however, the camera lens is not less important. A good synergy between the two should yield the optimal performance. When you shoot at aspect ratio, you shoot at 25 mm equivalent focal length, and 27 mm equivalent when you shoot at aspect ratio.

The reason there is a difference between the focal lengths in those two aspect ratio, is because different sensor area is used, representing a different field of view, slightly different though.

The Nokia Lumia rear-facing camera is built with 6 lenses, five of them made of molded high performance plastic and on glass the rear. There are a few things to note here.

First of all, Nokia features Carl Zeiss Tessar optics. This means that the assembly and quality of the optics are second-to-none. This means that you get less distortions, less lens aberrations and less loss of light when it passes through the lens to the sensor. This is the maximum aperture of the lens. This allows the to gathered a large amount of light and improve its low-light performance. Because more light can pass through the lens, there is less nee to bump up the ISO, which can then lead to more image noise.

Third, the Nokia Lumia camera uses an optical image stabilization technology with floating lens technology, OIS for short. This mechanism works inside the camera to compensate for camera movement. When you hold the phone in your hand, your hands shakes a bit which lead to image blur. You can of course shoot at higher shutter speeds, but with higher shutter speeds you get less light. The Rule of thumb for shutter speed is that you should shoot with at least 1 divided by the focal length which you are using to capture the image.

This is where an optical image stabilization helps. The optical image stabilization moves the lens elements to compensate for the camera movement.

This allows the camera to shoot at slower shutter speeds and still get a sharp image. The camera gives you full control over the exposure, including the option to change the shutter speed and ISO. Having an optical image stabilization, allows you to to capture an image with longer exposure and still use a lower ISO for better noise performance. The Lumia is backed with both LED light for illuminating subject when shooting videos and a strong next-gen Xenon Flash.

This new Xenon flash uses a flat capacitor, which makes it smaller and consumes less power. The Nokia Lumia rear-facing camera features some great technologies which makes it a unique offering in this competitive market. If you are an enthusiast photographer and tired of carrying both a phone and a conventional compact digital camera, the Lumia is the phone for you. There are other aspects that you should examine before buying a smartphone, but when it comes to camera performance, nothing on the market right now beats the Lumia However, they required refocusing the image after each change in focal length.

This type of lens is now known as a varifocal lens. These early lenses, however, were mostly used in cinema cameras. Then, in the mid s, the first zoom lenses were manufactured for a stills camera by Heinz Kilfitt in Munich. The same firm were also responsible for the first ever macro lens.

Nokia Lumia 1020: Tech behind the 41 MP PureView Camera Explained

This is one of the reasons why, on all the classic shots of photojournalists throughout the twentieth century, they have two, three or even four cameras hanging around their necks; each one would have had a different focal length lens. And maybe a different speed film too. Compression of space? It is immediately obvious that a wide angle shot and a zoomed in shot have very different visual properties. But the lens is only a part of this situation; the rest is about the angle of view and your distance from the subject. Digital zoom has taken a significant bashing over the years — and mostly for entirely justifiable reasons.

Nokia Lumia - DxOMark

But the capability of the being able to take 38 megapixel photo means that you can digitally zoom in and lose nothing in the quality of the image. We think it will forever change the way we take photos with our smartphones, but what about you? Image credit: Beautifullife.