Nokia Lumia 720 – low light photo samples


lumia-720-camera-lens

We had reviewed the Nokia Lumia 720 earlier and had lauded the camera capabilities. We were so impressed by the low light performance that we decided to give it a go again and see how it fares in very challenging conditions. Below is a summary of the photos taken and some additional information on how it fared. Read on.

The Nokia Lumia 720 has a 1/3.6″ 6.7 Megapixel sensor with a f1.9 aperture. The aperture on this camera is second largest in a smartphone, only next to the f1.8 of the Lenovo K900. The custom sensor is a 16:9 crop by default and provides a nice field of view.

Without further ado, lets take a look at the photos then. All the photos are in full resolution, so feel free to click into a new tab for the full picture.

Windows Phone_20130517_028

This was probably one of the luckiest shot from the 720, it handled the scene really well, apart from the blurry moving objects pointing to the apparent increase in shutter speed. The details were captured well except for some shake in the edges of the photo. A commendable job, and a true to life image.

Windows Phone_20130522_001

Another highly detailed shot pulled off in little to no light. With overblown highlights being the obvious disadvantage here, but look at the detail on the concrete structure. There was barely any light, and the Lumia 720 gathered the light pretty well!

Windows Phone_20130517_034

Another low light shot of a building, pretty amazing result but I had to tweak the camera to get this. As expected, with a large aperture, it is quite easy for the camera to overblow the highlights as we have seen in the above two pictures, but in this picture, the neon lighting should be perfect and the other highlights slightly toned down to give the picture a more true-to-life look. So, I decreased the exposure to -1/3 and the result was fantastic, with all details captured very well.

Do note that all the images I took were casually taken with no additional support for stabilization. Another one –

Windows Phone_20130517_032

A small clock tower and a colourful scene. Illuminated by a street lamp alone, this was duller in real life. I had to take a few tries to reduce the shake as the area was indeed very dull, but the scene once captured was very colourful, and yes, obviously it had overblown highlights from shiny point light sources. The above four images are the best low light ones from my collection but I have a lot more to show. Below gallery has a lot of indoor and low light images, including macro and wide angle ones, do check them out, especially the two really challenging dark ones –

Concluding, the Lumia 720 is a terrific camera for the price and handles low light conditions really well. Let us know what you feel in the comments section below and ask away if you have any questions about the Lumia 720 camera.


Author: Bharadwaj Chandramouli

Bharadwaj is a content creator who has been obsessed with technology since the early days of smartphones. He loves talking about tech, is a fan of good design and photography. You can follow him on Twitter @gadgetbuff_ to know what he's upto!