Nokia 6630 review: Focus on camera

Nokia is going to launch its best camera mobile phone, the megapixel 6630 model. It is a Symbian Series 60 smartphone and it's functionality is not much different than Nokia 7610 for example. Now we are bringing you a review dedicated to the integrated camera only.

The camera of the new Nokia 6630 phone is really very good. Its quality can't be compared to the VGA gadgets and is also better than the cameras of the Nokia 7610 and 6670 camera phones, which were the best Nokia camera phones till now. The Sony Ericsson S700i phone is the undoubtful leader.

Massive frame of the digital camera lens system • The covering slide is attached to the lens

The higher resolution is not the only feature, which makes Nokia 6630 different from the previous Nokia phones. The camera is responding fast. If you turn off the image preview, you will be able to shoot with a minimal delay - the lag between two pictures is approximately a second. Nokia offers also a possibility of sequential shooting with shorter intervals.

The lens frame can be detached - Nokia will probably offer addon lenses and filters in the future

 

How does is shoot?

Before describing all features and settings possibilities, let me tell you about the way Nokia 6630 is shooting. Keeping in mind that it's a mobile camera phone, the pictures are really of an above-average quality - sharp and relatively not distorted. However compared to a usual digital camera the phone loses by far.

Pictures in different light conditions and settings (full resolution)

Let's stay with the camera phone. Pictures do not look like they were taken over a beer bottle. In the borders they are not fuzzier than in the middle. In some cases the picture has dark corners: strong vignetting. Colors when shooting in good light conditions are relatively authentic. The phone does not offer a possibility of setting white color balance. Therefore if the automatic color balance doesn't handle the artificial light properly we are out of luck.

The following sample pictures are in full resolution, without edits. Further demonstrative pictures will be smaller.

Sample pictures in full resolution

Nokia 6630 is the producer's first camera phone which saves the EXIF information in the JPEG file headers.

 

Resolution: megapixel… and a bit more

Previous Nokia models 7610 and 6670 offered "only" a megapixel resolution. The new 6630 camera phone is equipped with 1.33 MP sensor. The effective picture resolution is a bit lower - 1.23 MP, the highest picture format is 1280 x 960 pixels. There is only one lower resolution available: 640 x 480 pixels. Picture quality can be selected in three levels. However, there is not a big visible difference between the highest and the lowest picture quality. Only if you enlarge a picture on a PC, you'll be able to notice the stronger JPEG compression.

Menu environment during shooting • context menu • settings

The size of picture files depends on the selected quality level. While the average size of high quality images is 500 kB, lower quality pictures can be half the size, which means that users can spare a lot of memory space by selecting the suitable quality.

Resolution 1 280 x 960 pixels, from the highest quality to the lowest

Resolution 640 x 480 pixels, from the highest to the lowest quality

Exposure compensation: theoretical introduction

Nokia has never been generous with the setting possibilities of its camera phones. We were criticizing that quite often. What we missed the most is the possibility of manual exposure compensation. For those who aren't photographers, here's a short introduction.

Camera phones, similarly as common digital cameras have their exposure parameters automatically preset. Digital cameras evaluate what time, aperture and ISO sensitivity should be set in order the final image to represent the original scene properly. On the contrary, automats always think that the scene is average bright and when pictures are taken in complicated conditions, they fail. For example:

• Standing in front of a dark object, e.g. in a wood, on a green meadow etc. The camera is convinced that it's shooting an average bright scene and therefore the result comes as an overexposed picture.
• Standing in front of a bright scene, e.g. on the snow, digital camera still thinks in average values, so the final picture is too dark.

The manual exposure compensation can solve this problem. When the photographer is in dark environment, he can reduce the exposure and the camera will not overexpose the scene (it will set shorter exposure time, larger aperture). If the taken scene is bright above the average, the photographer increases the exposure and the camera exposes correctly again (sets longer time, smaller aperture).

The exposure compensation is probably one of the most important tools, which influence the final result. When it's missing, like with all previous Nokia camera phones, you can use the slow adaptation of the camera phone to light conditions instead. You simply train on a place where the camera measures light correctly, then quickly move to the chosen place and push the release.

 

We have exposure compensation available, but…

With the new 6630 model it's possible to set picture brightness and contrast. However, there is only one exposure compensation available and it is quite unusual to divide it in two. You can imagine setting the brightness as adding white fog or dark smoke before shooting and the contrast as moving bright shades away from dark shades.

Testing the Nokia 6630 graphic capabilities finally proved that it's not exposure compensation at all. That's because you can apply brightness and contrast on a picture that have been already taken and it doesn't affect the time and ISO sensitivity during shooting (aperture is not changing with camera phones). That's a problem, because this way you can't do anything with e.g. the overexposed sky. You can't create 1 and 0 by magic on a place where is no information at all, only white space. You'll get white or grey space and in the worst case banding will appear. Using the exposure compensation the photographer could set the camera to release more light to the sensor and get this way nicely drawn clouds.

Various phases of setting brightness

Various phases of setting contrast

Basically, if pictures will be transferred to a PC, it doesn't matter what brightness and contrast values will be set. The same effect will be achieved using any photo editor and moreover on a bigger screen. Therefore, we can say that Nokia disappointed us a bit. Its new brightness and contrast setting functions are usable, but we expected more.

Compare: demonstration of the exposure settings with Sony Ericsson S700. In the upper row using extreme values from -2.0EV to +2.0EV. In the row beneath the exposure is adjusted more sensitively

Tip: You don't have to open the context menu to access the brightness and contrast settings. Just press "3" for brightness and then use the left and right arrows. The contrast settings appear after pressing "6".

Brightness and contrast settings in the menu • you can access them easily: by pressing "3" or "6" key

 

Zoom and other tricks

Nokia has improved zooming with the 6630 smartphone. Images made using this feature look perfect on a mobile phone display. Photographers will however warn you to put your hands off the zoom because it's digital and it's not suitable for taking pictures, which will be displayed on a PC screen. I don't know the 35mm equivalent focal length of the Nokia 6630 camera and I don't dare to guess. The lens is narrower than Nokia 7610 (it can't take such a wide shot). Previous Nokia models featured 2x zoom, now it's 6x and it's absolutely smooth. I couldn't count the number of steps; shifting among positions is very soft.

Several phases of the digital zoom (full resolution)

Nokia 6630 offers night mode. When activated, the exposure extends up to quarter of a second. Even then pictures are distorted.

Sequential shooting allows you to take six shots in 4-5 seconds. All of them are displayed beside one another and you can easily delete the failed ones. Unlike Sony Ericsson S700, which is using small format for sequential shooting, Nokia 6630 takes pictures in full resolution.

You can set the self-timer at 10, 20 or 30 seconds. The phone is progressively ticking, speeds up the frequency for the last three seconds and then exposes.

Video

Nokia can also record video. Depending on the memory card capacity it can be up to one hour long but the highest resolution is only 176 x 144 pixels. I would appreciate higher resolution video format instead of long records.

Video recording environment

The video settings are almost identical to the camera settings. Again it's possible to set brightness and contrast, turn on the night mode and use the zoom. There is no self-timer and logically the sequential shooting is missing. The new Mute function in the context menu is recording with the microphone switched off.

 

What to shoot and what not?

Camera phones are not meant for taking scenery pictures. You'll get best results with objects which are quite near. However Nokia 6630 is not a friend with macro-pictures and everything will be fuzzy if you get more than half a meter close to the subject.

You can't do macro-pictures with the camera phone

A well-known problem of almost all camera phones is the overexposed sky. Due to the missing manual exposure compensation it is almost impossible to avoid it - adjusting brightness and contrast doesn't help. It seems like the only possible solution is to use "fake" exposure measurement. That means to focus on one place then move fast to another place and take a picture. Nokia 6630 however is a very fast mobile phone and will adjust the exposure according to the actual conditions before you could possibly press the release.

It's not useless to shoot the same scene several times, you might get different results and later you will be able to choose the best one. That could be seen on the following series of pictures.

The same scene at the same time and the different results

The automatic exposure measurement brings problems: on the first picture the sky is bright, so a tree is dark. On the second picture the sky is overexposed, the third picture is too bright overall

How does Nokia 6630 manage text? By shooting from shorter distance the lens system can't focus on text. When you make a picture of a text from a longer distance, the text is not readable. The phone is good enough with bigger texts or various boards and signs.

Nokia can't cope with small texts • It can handle large posters or maps in the park (full resolution)

By shooting in worse light conditions you should remember the visible distortion. It's well seen on the pictures I made. In darker environment the phone needs a bit longer time to light up a picture. You'd better forget the night mode - it's really not helpful.

Pictures in worse conditions are quite good

Nokia 6630 is a fast camera phone, but it has a tiny time lag of the release. On the following picture you can see a car going; I pressed the release at the time when the front part of the car drove on the crosswalk.

Time lag

Unless the scene is very well lit, the shutter speed won't be fast enough to freeze the action. Faster moving objects will look blurred like on this sample:

Storage - where and how?

Pictures are saved in the phone's Gallery. You can view them using a standard tool or the new Pictures manager. The manager allows showing pictures in a horizontal view or in an almost full display size. The link between the pictures is spectacularly animated and because the program is reading the pictures in advance, there are no excessive lags.

New view on the pictures • Standard view • Horizontal view over a full display

You could transfer pictures from the phone to a PC. You could send them directly via Bluetooth, download them using the Nokia Phone Browser or a cable. In the Browser case the phone memory is shown in the PC as a usual hard drive. If you wish to send a picture to long distances, it's possible to send it from the phone via email or MMS. The MMS capacity increased from 100 kB in previous Nokia phones to 300 kB in the 6630 model. The phone makes the pictures in full resolution smaller.

 

Megapixels are here

Nokia 6630 is an excellent camera phone. Pictures which you get with it are better than those taken with other camera phones. Only Sony Ericsson S700 stands a step ahead of Nokia 6630 phone. Sony Ericsson's adds a lot of settings possibilities and the pictures are of a better quality. On the other hand Nokia is a first-class for normal shooting without artistic ambitions. With Sony Ericsson you have to learn how to make a photo with the best results possible. You can read our extensive Sony Ericsson S700 review.

Megapixel cameras are definitely here and if the Nokia 6630 is an expensive phone for you, in the end of the first quarter 2005 a new, much cheaper, 3230 model will be launched. Nokia claimed that in 2005 they will introduce more than twenty mobile phones with megapixel digital cameras.

At the end, take a look at several pictures which I have improved a bit with level adjustment, resize and focus. I think they are quite good.