The New Pureview Technology Phase 2 Whitepaper ...
... covers the 2nd phase of PureView Development which is incorporated in the WinPhone 8 Lumia 920 launched on September 5 2012 wher it is coupled with PureMotion HD+ Display Technology. The whitepapers intro is excerpted below.
>> PureView Imaging Technology White Paper 2 – the next breakthrough in purity of imaging
i.nokia.com
This white paper describes Nokia’s further development of PureView imaging technology which is the latest technology on mobile to be featured in a soon to be announced new Nokia Lumia smartphone.
On February 27th 2012 we introduced our latest technology news which is the revolutionary Nokia 808 PureView, our first PureView product. Whilst some may associate the PureView moniker with specific features, specifications or functionality introduced along with the 808 PureView, Nokia’s ultimate intent for PureView is to be synonymous with high performance imaging. We deliver our flagship imaging technology through a set of industry leading imaging technologies, rather than a single element, feature or specification. As time goes by, this will be especially important as PureView becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
The first PureView product, the Nokia 808 PureView was born out of the desire to provide a revolutionary zoom experience and incredible quality in a portable form factor. If there was one recurring theme we hear time and time again from the consumer, is the need for significantly improved low light photography. As a result, for some time we’ve wanted to provide cameras with much better low light performance. The 808 PureView uses one solution to improve low light image quality through the innovative and highly acclaimed pixel oversampling technology but we needed to explore additional directions for improving the image quality in dim light.
This second development phase of PureView is therefore focused on exactly that - a significant improvement in low light whilst also making it available to a wide range of people. Differences between the best smartphones today can in some cases be more and more difficult for the vast majority of people to discern with such subtle differences under normal viewing conditions captured in normal lighting. Our aim is to focus more on the development of aspects which create a greater difference for as many people as possible. A few notable examples of this approach are:
Nokia pioneering wide-angle lenses multi-aspect ratio image sensors which provide a wider field of view than any other smartphones. Such differences can be seen in a variety of situations by all users, whilst small differences in details are only visible when looking at images under extreme magnifications. Such behaviour has now been coined ‘pixel peeping’.
Having said that, there are still a number of areas that we feel warrant significant development to allow the capture of a wider range of environments – low light being perhaps the most significant of all. You’ll see us tackle other areas in the future, but this next step is focused on improving the ability to record in lower lighting conditions, as well as improve the ease of video recording.
You may have seen that despite the super high resolution sensor of the Nokia 808 PureView, we’ve been going to great lengths to communicate that despite the staggering number of pixels, it's not about the NUMBER of pixels but HOW YOU USE THEM. This message is just as relevant in the context of this 2nd phase of PureView development.
For a number of years Nokia had been considering the question: Instead of producing images with unnecessarily high output resolutions, what if we assumed 5-8mp is all you really needed?
The 808 PureView was the first alternative thinking prompted by this original question. Assuming 5mp as an output resolution enabled us to create a product where a super high resolution sensor is used to provide lossless zoom, with super high quality images/video through pixel oversampling.
Before we go into details, let's be 100% clear, this is an additional direction in the development of Nokia PureView technology rather than a competing direction. PureView is a promise of versatile capture capability and leading edge innovation. We’re very excited by both directions and firmly believe both take imaging to new and better places, rather than the endless focus on ‘paper specs’ often not directly associated with genuine benefits.
Although the core ingredients are the same, namely high performance optics, sensor and powerful image processing algorithms, this 2nd phase differs slightly to the 808 PureView. This time the sensor is purposefully of a lower resolution – 8.7mp, the optics are focused on providing the best possible low light performance in a beautiful product, whilst the image processing capacity will enable in the future new capabilities - that the combination of optics and sensor enable.
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The original white paper which described the new PureView Pro imaging technology
which combined a large, super high resolution 41Mpix sensor enabling pixel oversampling with high performance Carl Zeiss optics and a Xenon flash as well as the Symbian Belle Nokia 808 PureView product featuring it is here ...
i.nokia.com
Steve Litchfield, AAWP's camera buff, comments on PureView phase 2 in the post that follows this one.
- Eric - |
