My GPS Camera Phone

Yesterday morning, we had frost covering everything. It was cold. Really cold. What a great time to visit Paynes Prairie.

Since I live in Florida, I’m not accustomed to cold weather, even though we get some chilly winter nights now and again. In spite of that, I love the freezes. A hard freeze brings with it ice crystals and a white sheet that covers everything – definitely a sight that is rarely seen around here. When this happens, it opens up a whole new realm of photographic subjects, which are a welcome change from the all-year earth tones that Florida experiences.

The overlook was absorbing the growing heat of the rising sun’s rays, quickly melting the frozen dew. I knew this golden photo opportunity was rapidly evaporating, so I hurried the kids out of the house and got them to school.

In the school parking lot, my youngest wanted to finish her snack and then go to class. As we sat in the car, I watched water droplets fall from the tall palm trees next to the road, indicating the fast onset of the brutal Florida sun.

Drip…drip…drip.

With the kids unloaded, I gunned it down US 441 hoping to get a good look at a frozen prairie. As the tree-lined road spilled out into the open prairie, I noticed that it wasn’t too late. Everything had a dusting of white frost. The overlook boardwalk was covered in ice as well, with some parts actually being dangerously slick when walked upon. Better yet, the sun had already melted the ice where it could shine, but anything in the shadows remained frozen, leaving a perfectly angular pattern. Look close at the deck and you can see the lighter frozen parts contrasting with the darker thawed parts.

I left for work after chatting it up with a man on his way to work for a local courier, knowing that there might be more of this waiting for me tomorrow – dead brown foliage blanketed in bright white.

More photos of this adventure to Paynes Prairie can be seen at the Nokia Chronicles site. Photo taken with a Nokia 6650 (courtesy WOM World) and edited with Photoshop CS2 (level adjustments and minor sharpening to highlight the ice crystals).

Well, it had to happen sooner or later. The Nokia 5610 XpressMusic is being shipped back to WOM World. (Many thanks to them for the trial use of the 5610.) Thankfully, I still have some photos left to post from the 5610, which gives me ample time to beg for another trial phone. I’ve been spoiled with the 3.2 mega-pixels. Nokia 5800 anyone?

Man, I got so caught up in the iPhone/Blackberry hype yesterday that I forgot it was (Wordless) Wednesday. I’ll post next week, barring any mobile industry gossip worth sharing.

If anyone knows what the name of this butterfly is, please let me know in the comments. I found it outside in the yard on a cold morning, waiting for the day to warm up a little. The cold worked to my advantage because the butterfly, who was unable to fly, was a “willing” participant in the photo session.

Continuing from the touchscreen talk of late, Nokia has introduced their latest “iPhone killer” as described by a generous reader. The name had escaped me, but this reader – someone at Tube5800.com – sent me an e-mail providing the model number and then some (check their website for lots of info). The 5800 is a slick touchscreen, but only time will tell how it will fare in the highly competitive mobile market.

For more details on the Nokia 5800, check out the write-ups on WOM World or this other review from Gizmodo.

The Nokia 5610 is here and I am a happy camper. I don’t want to talk smack about my phone, but it pales in comparison when put against the Nokia 5610. I’ve had a busy week, but things slowed down enough to allow me some quality time with the new phone. So far, so good.

What I like the most about this camera phone is the capability of the camera. Weighing in at 3.2 mega-pixels, the 5610 packs a decent punch, capturing shots with reasonable quality and good exposure. It’s loaded with features (for a camera phone), including auto-focus, night mode, image sequence and a self-timer. My favorite feature, though, is its ability to shoot macro photos. See the results for yourself.

I was skeptical when I read about it and even still while previewing the photos on the phone. I was floored when they hit the computer. Seeing such detail come out of a camera phone leaves me speechless and wanting to shoot more. Personally, I like getting close to subjects and I feel disappointed when the hardware doesn’t let me do it. The Nokia 5610 doesn’t disappoint in this respect and I can’t wait to try some more photographic experimenting.

The big down side I see so far is the lack of attention to the image quality. While you could shoot images fit to size for a desktop background, you wouldn’t want to. The images at 100% reveal a chink in the armor: granulation and compression artifacts all over the place like rust eats away at a piece of steel (see below). The plus side is that the lack of quality at full-size can be compensated for by reducing the image size (as seen above), but that negates the point of having a 3.2 mega-pixel camera in the first place. With that said, I concede the fact that this is a camera phone we’re talking about, not a Nikon D300.

I’m looking forward to a lot of shooting before this thing makes it’s long journey back to England. Thanks to everyone at WOM World once again for this opportunity.

It’s time for camera phone reviews again and this time it’s the yet-to-be-released Nokia 5610 XpressMusic. Thanks to the crew over at WOM World, I’ll be receiving a shiny new 5610 this week. As I did with the 5310 XpressMusic, I’ll put myself out there as the guinea pig and suffer through hours of painstaking photography and endure hours of listening to mp3s. As an added bonus, I’ll actually do an un-boxing for you this time around, because it’s always fun to open presents with your friends.

Sporting a 3.2 mega-pixel camera, this phone is poised to take My GPS Camera Phone to a new level. Features include:

• 8 x smooth zoom
• LED flash
• Macroshot, landscape mode, sequential shots
• Dedicated 2-step capture key (not sure what this is)

I’m really looking forward to seeing what this camera phone can do with macros. The sequential shot feature also sounds fun, but I’m not getting my hopes up just yet.

In addition to a sweet camera, this GSM slider also sports an mp3 player, FM radio, high-resolution display, 8GB MicroSD expansion slot (packaged with a 2GB card) and many other features you would expect from a mid-level phone.

I’ll post more when the phone arrives sometime this week. Could the un-boxing be in video format? Maybe, just maybe.

The other day I received an e-mail from Colin at WOM World/Nokia. It said this:

I’m writing to invite you to take part in a mobile film challenge in LA on August 20th as part of a new Nokia project. We’re only inviting 4 people, and it should be a pretty exciting day, so I hope you can join us.

Basically, it’s a shot to film some death scenes for entry into the Nokia Productions movie that will be edited by Spike Lee. Yeah, how cool is that? (BTW, anyone can participate.)

To say I was excited at the opportunity is an understatement. As I was reading this e-mail, Drew from The BenSpark hit me up on GTalk, wondering if I got an e-mail from Colin. After asking him if it was legit, he said something like, “Yes and I’m going.” To my dismay, the e-mail was delivered 14 hours from the time I read it. That time gap had me a bit worried, but I replied anyway, thinking that just maybe there’s a 4th spot open.

After a restless night of sleep, I woke and checked my e-mail. Nothing. Colin was in the air on his way from England to Los Angeles and I wasn’t sure if I was going or not. I figured that I’d hear something sooner or later. That sooner or later came at about 11 am.

Another Nokia rep, Siobhan (whose name I misspelled in my e-mail reply – sorry!), contacted me and broke the news that I missed the 4th spot on the team by a few minutes, however, they would fly me out and put me up in a hotel anyway so I could take part in the event! Now that’s customer service right there. Unfortunately, there’s this lame tropical storm named “Fay” floating around my home state, threatening to close airports and make air travel miserable. Said storm caused a rush on tickets, which caused a price increase, thus prohibiting me from flying to LA.

After Siobhan broke the news to me, I was still happy that I was even considered to take part in the events they had planned. It probably worked out for the best, because I could have gotten out of Florida easily, but getting back in would be a problem, given the storm. Spending a few days in an airport isn’t all that appealing.

Instead of being there in-person, I’m going to live vicariously through Drew (though it would have been great to actually meet a fellow blogger). He assured me that many photos would be taken, so I’ll witness the excitement from a distance. Many thanks to the Nokia team for an excellent effort to get me to LA and back, but it wasn’t meant to be this time. Until then, run over to Jumpcut and join the Nokia Productions group. See if your entry makes the cut.

Photo credit: monkeytime (via Flickr), aka Michael Zara.

My time with the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic is winding down and I anticipate an e-mail from the folks at WOM World any day now regarding the return of the phone. Since I’ve had the phone, I’ve put it through a rigorous test to see if it can come anywhere near my photo quality standards. Since pictures speak louder than words, I’ve pulled together a few representative photos from the Nokia 5310 and my Casio G’zOne Type-V as a control so you can see the difference in image quality for yourself.

The four images below are untouched (except for re-sizing) and directly out of the camera using default settings. I’ve attempted to shoot objects that cover four areas: bright, medium and low light, and contrasting colors. All images are shot in 1200×1600 resolution. Let’s start with the first image.

Bright light/color tones:

As previously experienced, the Casio tends to overexpose, possibly mistaking the actual light conditions with a dark object in the image. In this case, the trees at the bottom might be confusing the light meter. The Nokia 5310, however, seems to read the light level accurately and manages to capture the subtle details in the clouds without exposure problems.

The winner: Nokia 5310.

Medium light/color tones:

The office building I work in is painted this horrific color all over. Any time I’ve tried to include it in a camera phone photo, I’ve had problems where the center is a different color than the rest of the wall. This can easily be seen on the left in the sample image from the Casio. The right side depicts the photo from the Nokia 5310, which is incredibly crisp and evenly colored. The red, white and black pop against the earth-tone background and there’s no deterioration or bleeding of color, unlike the Casio image which is washed out and just blah.

The winner: Nokia 5310.

Low light/color tones:

In this case, the two exposures come out pretty close, with no major differences. The driveway lettering in the contrasting off-white appears similarly in both images, however, with a bit of that color issue coming through in the Casio image. In spite of that, I’m going to leave it up to personal preference. For a true “dark” image, see the post on shooting fireworks at night with a camera phone.

The winner: Tie

Contrasting colors:

Although this isn’t the best image, it reinforces the point about the Casio and earth tones. The Casio captured the image somewhat nicely, but still overexposed the concrete, resulting in missing details and washed-out green grass. The Nokia was able to precisely measure the contrast and compensate accordingly, resulting in a nice deep green alongside the grayish concrete, complete with the little details clearly visible in the grass and the concrete.

The winner: Nokia 5310.

Surprisingly, the Nokia 5310 comes out on top. I fully expected a phone that was so dedicated to music to be inferior in the photo department, but I was wrong. You can rock out and still take decent pictures, which raises the appeal of this phone significantly.

One interesting thing about the Nokia 5310 camera settings is that it saves a 1200×1600 image as a 4″ x 5.33″ file at 300dpi, which is the recommended resolution for printing. Most others usually default to a 16.67″ x 22.22″ file at 72dpi. (Thanks, Dan!)

Overall, the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic is a solid choice for a camera phone, providing quality images in variable light conditions. The added benefit of the removable microSD card (up to 4GB) and a simple USB connection makes high resolution photography a breeze, with no worries about available storage or file transfers.

So, get your groove on and shoot some great photos with the Nokia 5310. You won’t be disappointed.

Disclaimer: No compensation was received for this review nor is there any affiliation between T-Mobile/Nokia or Verizon/Casio and this web site. All reviews and statements herein are based on a trial/regular usage and personal experience.