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Photography

Take great pictures on the go and share your moments with your friends online, wherever you are, with Nokia’s Share on Ovi service. Then add a new dimension to your photography with geotagging which tags your pictures with capture location details.

The 5 megapixel resolution camera with Carl Zeiss lens is excellent for taking photographs of still life. Try taking a photo of any creature with a short attention span, and this is not easily achieved. This is due the lag from the point you press the ‘shoot’ button, till the time the camera actually captures the image. The lag is so noticeable that your object of photographic desire would have enough time to go into hiding. On a positive note, it is always fun just ‘trying’ to get a candid shot with this camera.

From: Chiep Ping
A picture says a thousand words. Take a look at my avatar, it was a picture of my newly born niece and it was taken behind a mirror. Rotating the picture is also easy. Just slide the phone up or down to rotate it.

From: Chun Hui
A 5-megapixel auto-focus camera may not seem like much today, but the Carl-Zeiss Tessar lens undeniably takes crisp pictures – a hallmark carry over from the Nokia N85 8GB. Coupled with the dual-LED flash, the Nokia N96 transforms the amateur to someone looking more like a pro. The addition of the tagging function is a great help to the mobile photo-enthusiast, as it helps to jog ones recall of happy memories.

From: Darren Kong
The camera produces spectacular photo finishes and its video quality is stunning. The camera’s Dual LED flash can also be used when video recording. With 16GB built-in memory and an expansion microSD slot, storing photos and videos are easy.

From: Dzulazmi
5MP, but that’s it. Typical Nokia camera menu settings, nothing exciting about it. The shutter sound was loud. The camera button was a disappointment because it was too sunken in. Missed some candid moments because I was trying to press the button with my finger and yet received no response until I resorted to using fingernails.

From: Frank Foo
One of the endearing qualities of the Nokia N96 that made me reluctant to part with it was its superb 5.0 megapixel Carl-Zeiss lenses. Coupled with LED flash and an intuitive menu, the Nokia N96 captures great photos, especially in low-light conditions. With the new geotagging feature, the Nokia N96 would be my camera of choice when out on a party with my friends for instant uploading to my blog.

From: Jeffery Yeo
The 5MP camera on the Nokia N96, even though it has a Carl-Zeiss lens, takes fairly decent photos only. I found the photos to be crisp and sharp when viewed on the Nokia N96 screen, but once you upload it into the PC, the enlarged version looks quite “noisy”. I found this to be true even in good lighting conditions. The incorporation of a macro function together with the camera is a nice idea, but I think an “anti-shake” function will be an even better idea. Also, I personally find the idea of a dedicated button just for photo-taking (there may be others, but I did not manage to find it) to be quite a hassle, especially if one is taking a photo in the portrait format. On the whole, the photography function, to me, was not so good.

From: John Low
Nokia N96 takes great pictures: sharp, good colour-saturation and details. Add on the wealth of features that includes multiple auto scene-modes, timer, exposure, colour-tone, and even light-sensitivity & video stabilisation controls; who needs another entry-level digital camera? The Nokia N96 ups the notch further by incorporating dual flash lights that throws out powerful flashes, ensuring your pictures & videos are always bright & clear; other camera-phone wannabes step aside please. Oh, you can also upload the photos directly to online services like Ovi, Flickr, and Vox, straight from the Nokia N96; no transfers to PC required. Nice touch there Nokia

From: Sean Lau
The camera function is slow to load as the camera screen did not appear for several seconds. I was wondering if I had pressed the button correctly! It is a little difficult to press but otherwise picture quality is good and auto-focus was quick and quite accurate. The 5-megapixel camera is more than sufficient to develop large prints and is great to have without having to bring along an additional camera.

From: Vincent Chan
Being a photography enthusiast, I was in love with the photography and the ability to immediately upload the pictures to my blog via Widsets. Along with Geotagging, I have no more need to categorize my photos according to locations. Day shooting is great but night shooting seems can be improved in the next firmware version.

From: Yu Xiang
Being an avid (yet lazy) mobile photographer, I was disappointed at the Auto setting for the Nokia N96’s 5MP still camera function. The pictures I took (with and without flash) had blurred outlines to all. I had to familiarize myself with the list of available settings in order to take normal 5MP digital pictures. The LED flash was a neat change from the usual Xeon flash I normally used. Geotagging is a must-do on my list when I take outdoor digital photos on-the-go because it is fun. Video recording, on the other hand, was a more straight forward experience.

From: Ng Yee Tat
With a 5 megapixel camera, you know that the Nokia N96 was never going to be a slouch in terms of photography. However, it was more than just the resolution that made the Nokia N96 a truly viable camera replacement. The ability to take clear shots on the fly, with double flashlights (for those naughty night shots!) easily surpassed any integrated phone camera I have ever seen. The photos taken were clear, and did not look out of place as my desktop wallpaper.

From: Ian
Photos were very clear as the Nokia N96 features a 5 megapixel camera. I even went to different places to try the camera at different times of the day (also at night), and photos were still clear. Taking good photos at night is an important point for me as I have tried many other phones which disappointed me with their blurry results. With this phone, the pictures are clearer and nicer.

From: Eric
The Nokia N96 takes great pictures/videos. I tested it in both indoor and outdoor settings and the quality is turned out good.

From: Tan Ghim Hoe
The camera is very clear and there are also enough features to match a digital camera. At a 5 megapixel resolution, the photos taken by this phone are as good as a digital camera. The plastic feel of the camera button let it down though as at times it can be rather difficult to press the button.

From: Marcus Lin
Despite not having the face or motion detection functions, the 5MP camera phone equipped with Carl Zeiss lens and flash takes clear and quality pictures in both day and night. Shoot, edit and share your passions with the world anytime, anywhere, with Nokia’s own Share on Ovi service. In addition, the geotagging functionality via GPS automatically tags pictures taken with their corresponding GPS coordinates, so you will never have to wonder where the pictures were taken.

From: Donald Jiang
The pictures taken from camera, 5 megapixels, autofocus and the Carl-Zeiss optics appeared crisp and sharp. A xenon flash would be preferred though.

From: Joseph Teo
For outings, I would still bring my good old 5 megapixel digicam as I feel that the pictures taken on the Nokia N96 is not as sharp and the color is not as natural. Nevertheless, it is a good alternative when you want to snap away during events but have left your camera at home.

From: Donald Owng
Even though the Nokia N96 boasts a 5 mega-pixel Carl-Zeiss lens, the pictures I took at the Singapore Motorshow didn’t turn out good. Nokia needs to do something here to improve their camera quality.

From: Jonathan
I was testing out the other cool feature on Nokia N96, which is the 5 megapixel camera with geo tagging functionality via GPS. When enabled, it automatically tags the images with its GPS location coordinates, which you can later use to sort the pictures on your PC or online photo service. It has most of the usual functions of a camera and the images were brilliant enough to make them ‘pop’.

From: Jerry Lee
The Nokia N96 comes with a 5MP camera with auto-focus and utilizes Carl Zeiss optics. Image quality is about as good as can be expected of a camera phone, but video capture is where the Nokia N96 really shines, recording in VGA quality at 30FPS. Geotagging (when enabled) allows one to revisit where moments were immortalized by simply selecting “show on map” from the options while browsing through the gallery, which opens Nokia Maps and displays the location at which said images/videos were taken. So not only do we know when a photo was taken, we now know where as well.

From: Nicholas Goh
I was very impressed with the Nokia N96 in terms of photography. The 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss lens really pulls its weight. Pictures taken during the day were sharp and colors were crisp. If high resolution is not required, the Nokia N96 will suit your photography needs just fine. However, the quality is very lighting-dependent, so don’t expect great pictures in low-light conditions.

Another commendable feature is Geotagging. When enabled, photos taken are tagged with the GPS coordinates. Photos can be easily sorted by location, which is really neat.

From: Faith Y
The 5 megapixel camera takes some of the sharpest pictures for a mobile phone. The camera’s dual LEDs also help greatly with capturing shots in dim areas.

From: Erda
Photo quality is quite good, only failing for night shots.

From: Matthew Seeto