By Paul Worthington – October 9, 20112 – PMA Newsline
DxO Labs is branching out from its focus on rating and improving high-end camera image quality to include mobile devices — and its first test shows today’s best phone beats a five-year-old compact camera.
Yes, that the latest and greatest — Nokia’s 808 PureView — compared to a standard Canon pocket model. We are a bit surprised that these tests show the phone doesn’t at least match today’s basic pocket models, given its price and ballyhooed imaging technology… DxO notes that the Nokia 808 PureView sensor “is not out-performing the new generation of DSCs, and that there is a long way to go to attain DSLR image quality.”
The more basic question is how does a $200 iPhone or Galaxy compare to a $200-400 standalone camera’s image quality? DxO used its new DxOMark Mobile protocols to compare two 12-megapixel devices under a tungsten illuminant at 20 lux: Sony’s Xperia S smartphone and Canon’s Powershot S100 camera. The effect of small pixels on noise is apparent, DxO says: visual noise is around 4 times higher for the phone. Other phones “aggressively prevent noise” by softening images.
The Samsung Galaxy SIII captured full HD video “with better quality than those of the Canon Powershot S100,” DxO reports.
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