Day 3 with the Nokia N82

01.23.2008

After a today’s thrilling orthodontist appointment, I took a brief walk up and down Vancouver’s Commercial Drive with the N82 in hand. Today’s objective: to upload the photos while mobile and to get Shozu’s geotagging feature up and running.

Skytrain curve

As I mentioned in an earlier review, I’m a little disappointed in the N82′s straight out of camera performance. I tend to like contrasty, vibrant photos with rich, warm tones. When I shoot with my Nikon D80, I capture photos in RAW format and then post-process to my own aesthetic standards. The N82 is only capable of capturing JPEG photos which is fine for most situations, but if it were capable of shooting in RAW, Nokia would probably win the hearts of many photographers.
Even though the N82′s Gallery application contains photo editing features, I’m not terribly inclined to edit a photo on the fly before uploading it to my favorite service. Even with the N82′s light sensitive display, I find it difficult to see the screen in full sunlight. It’s not a good idea to make adjustments to an image when you can’t see it clearly.
Still, the image editor performs very well. You can increase contrast and brightness, convert your photos to sepia or black and white, resize (fabulous if you’re concerned about minimizing data charges), crop, as well as a few other gimmicky features like “cartoonizing” a photo right within the N82.
Compare the difference between an unedited photo and one I corrected using the built-in image editor. First, the unedited photo:

2214465615_e0293be6e0.jpg

Next, the photo with improved contrast:

Image098-001.jpg

I doubt that Nokia’s editor would ever replace iPhoto or Picnik, but it does the job well and without needing to upload photos to a separate computer.
Each day I find some new and surprising thing that makes me really appreciate the N82′s power. There are so many features in this very small package for photographers to love. The N82 won’t ever replace my D80, but it isn’t meant to — it’s meant to be a tool that satisfies our need to share our surroundings with friends and the world immediately and easily. Good show, Nokia.

  • http://www.blackphoebe.com/msjen msjen

    Hi Cecily,
    I really like the redesign of the site. Very sharp, esp. the footer. Most footers are overkill, but yours is to the point and useful.
    Thanks for the above post, I appreciate hearing the perspective of photographers who are using digital prosumer SLRs.
    The thing that I like *best* about mobile phone photography is the jpg photos that I can post directly from the phone to my blog or Flickr without any mediation of my computer or Photoshop. I don’t edit a all, but look at the photo and send it or not. If not, then it gets archived on my hard drive for possible later use.
    I find myself wondering more and more lately how much of photography is now really photo illustration, as many photographers will spend more than an hour per photo massaging it in Photoshop before letting it see the light of day. Thomas Hawk did a blog post on everything he does to a photo before he posts is, and I was shocked.
    I think there is room for both sending a jpg camera phone photo directly from the mobile to a server and for digital SLR RAW files to be massaged, as well as everything in between.
    But I really like the color and composition of the N82 photos that you have been posting to your flickr account.

  • http://www.blackphoebe.com/msjen msjen

    Hi Cecily,
    I really like the redesign of the site. Very sharp, esp. the footer. Most footers are overkill, but yours is to the point and useful.
    Thanks for the above post, I appreciate hearing the perspective of photographers who are using digital prosumer SLRs.
    The thing that I like *best* about mobile phone photography is the jpg photos that I can post directly from the phone to my blog or Flickr without any mediation of my computer or Photoshop. I don’t edit a all, but look at the photo and send it or not. If not, then it gets archived on my hard drive for possible later use.
    I find myself wondering more and more lately how much of photography is now really photo illustration, as many photographers will spend more than an hour per photo massaging it in Photoshop before letting it see the light of day. Thomas Hawk did a blog post on everything he does to a photo before he posts is, and I was shocked.
    I think there is room for both sending a jpg camera phone photo directly from the mobile to a server and for digital SLR RAW files to be massaged, as well as everything in between.
    But I really like the color and composition of the N82 photos that you have been posting to your flickr account.

  • Cecily Walker

    I wish I could take credit for the design, but it’s one of Derek Powazek’s WordPress designs.
    As much as I love the N82, I haven’t shot JPEG photos in over a year. Post-processing in Photoshop is for me the equivalent of taking film and developing it in the darkroom – it’s just part of the process. The camera has one vision, I have another, and darnit, I’m a control freak and I want to be the one to dictate how my shots turn out! :)
    The great thing is that the N82 accommodates our two distinct approaches to photography.
    It’s funny that you mention composition, though. I’m finding it difficult to get well-composed shots out of the N82. I think it might be the widescreen view, or it might be the fact that I can’t see the display well in bright light.

  • Cecily

    I wish I could take credit for the design, but it’s one of Derek Powazek’s WordPress designs.
    As much as I love the N82, I haven’t shot JPEG photos in over a year. Post-processing in Photoshop is for me the equivalent of taking film and developing it in the darkroom – it’s just part of the process. The camera has one vision, I have another, and darnit, I’m a control freak and I want to be the one to dictate how my shots turn out! :)
    The great thing is that the N82 accommodates our two distinct approaches to photography.
    It’s funny that you mention composition, though. I’m finding it difficult to get well-composed shots out of the N82. I think it might be the widescreen view, or it might be the fact that I can’t see the display well in bright light.

  • http://www.blackphoebe.com/msjen msjen

    Derek made this template? hmmm… very nice. Other designs I have seen of this have overly busy footers, this one does not. Bravo Mr. Powazek.
    Forgive me if the above comment was disjointed, as I have been on cold medicine all week.
    [Cecily, please humor me here. Please... I swear the Benadryl has worn off...]
    ****
    I have just written a whole novella, and think I should take it over to my blog rather than torture yours with my realist opinions.

  • http://www.blackphoebe.com/msjen msjen

    Derek made this template? hmmm… very nice. Other designs I have seen of this have overly busy footers, this one does not. Bravo Mr. Powazek.
    Forgive me if the above comment was disjointed, as I have been on cold medicine all week.
    [Cecily, please humor me here. Please... I swear the Benadryl has worn off...]
    ****
    I have just written a whole novella, and think I should take it over to my blog rather than torture yours with my realist opinions.

  • http://www.blackphoebe.com/msjen msjen

    Here is the summary of novella:
    I have been thinking about what is the difference between what one would do in the darkroom and what one does with photoshop. Since most pro film photographers I know use labs and don’t do their own darkroom work, the comparison then gets left to the art film photographers I know. Many of them only shoot in black and white and do have fun in the darkroom, but with contrast, cropping and edges and not much more.
    I guess the rhetorical question I am raising, and have been raising in person to various photographers for 2 years now, is where is the line between a little alteration of contrast, cropping and color levels in photoshop and the full scale alteration of the photo?
    When does the love of fiddling with photoshop overtake the love of shooting photos?

  • http://www.blackphoebe.com/msjen msjen

    Here is the summary of novella:
    I have been thinking about what is the difference between what one would do in the darkroom and what one does with photoshop. Since most pro film photographers I know use labs and don’t do their own darkroom work, the comparison then gets left to the art film photographers I know. Many of them only shoot in black and white and do have fun in the darkroom, but with contrast, cropping and edges and not much more.
    I guess the rhetorical question I am raising, and have been raising in person to various photographers for 2 years now, is where is the line between a little alteration of contrast, cropping and color levels in photoshop and the full scale alteration of the photo?
    When does the love of fiddling with photoshop overtake the love of shooting photos?

  • Cecily Walker

    I don’t think you can separate working in Photoshop from the digital process. For some photographers, it really is only used for adjusting color, contrast. But for others, the sky is literally the limit, and I don’t think that they’re any less – or any more – of a photographer than someone who still shoots with film and only works in the darkroom. Their choices may not suit my own aesthetic vision, but it doesn’t make it better or worse.
    Seeing the “Making the Photograph” exhibit at the Center for Creative Photography in totally changed my view of photographic processing – both film and digital. Ansel Adams, Richard Avedon, Edward Weston and Garry Winogrand all used different films, darkroom tricks, chemicals, and papers to achieve different results, but no one questions their art. Why then when one can achieve similar results digitally do we view it with a wary eye?
    There is a line, to be sure, but I think that line is irrelevant. Unless one is a documentary photographer or photojournalist, I don’t think photographers bear any responsibility to representing a scene as it really appears. Authenticity is relative. We could both be looking at the same scene out of the same window, but I bet our descriptions of that same scene would be different. Which would be more real? More authentic?
    But what do I know – I’m just a hobbyist. ;)

  • Cecily

    I don’t think you can separate working in Photoshop from the digital process. For some photographers, it really is only used for adjusting color, contrast. But for others, the sky is literally the limit, and I don’t think that they’re any less – or any more – of a photographer than someone who still shoots with film and only works in the darkroom. Their choices may not suit my own aesthetic vision, but it doesn’t make it better or worse.
    Seeing the “Making the Photograph” exhibit at the Center for Creative Photography in totally changed my view of photographic processing – both film and digital. Ansel Adams, Richard Avedon, Edward Weston and Garry Winogrand all used different films, darkroom tricks, chemicals, and papers to achieve different results, but no one questions their art. Why then when one can achieve similar results digitally do we view it with a wary eye?
    There is a line, to be sure, but I think that line is irrelevant. Unless one is a documentary photographer or photojournalist, I don’t think photographers bear any responsibility to representing a scene as it really appears. Authenticity is relative. We could both be looking at the same scene out of the same window, but I bet our descriptions of that same scene would be different. Which would be more real? More authentic?
    But what do I know – I’m just a hobbyist. ;)

  • http://www.blackphoebe.com/msjen msjen

    Hobbyist? Pshaw! Maybe you don’t make your rent with your photography, but you are passionate about it… You have opinions and write on them, so you have long passed the hobbyist phase… ;o)
    Regardless of the camera we use when we go out to shoot, we do, whether we recognize it or not, place constraints on ourselves be it with the hardware or with our brains (will only shoot cranes today) or with our technique etc. And whether we recognize it or not, as photographers, we place ourselves within a movement or theory or historical genre.
    What I like about shooting photos with a mobile phone and then directly sending it to my blog or flickr is that it does place hardware constraints on me (up to the N95 & N82, 1 – 1.3 megapixel constraints, point & shoot, etc) and I *choose* to place the constraint of no editing on myself and I *choose* to send it to the web (presentation space) without any editing. Thus, when I shoot with a mobile phone, I choose to place myself in a 21st cent. digital photo realist genre. I like it. I like the freedom.
    It is a very different set of constraints & theoretical space I place on myself when I am shooting with my Nikon FM3A film SLR. Or the constraints I place on myself if I use a borrowed Nikon D40 or… or…
    (p.s. At my master’s program, my project advisor was a Photo Theorist. And I have previously taught Art Theory at the college level. I like I said in my previous comment, please forgive me…)

  • http://www.blackphoebe.com/msjen msjen

    Hobbyist? Pshaw! Maybe you don’t make your rent with your photography, but you are passionate about it… You have opinions and write on them, so you have long passed the hobbyist phase… ;o)
    Regardless of the camera we use when we go out to shoot, we do, whether we recognize it or not, place constraints on ourselves be it with the hardware or with our brains (will only shoot cranes today) or with our technique etc. And whether we recognize it or not, as photographers, we place ourselves within a movement or theory or historical genre.
    What I like about shooting photos with a mobile phone and then directly sending it to my blog or flickr is that it does place hardware constraints on me (up to the N95 & N82, 1 – 1.3 megapixel constraints, point & shoot, etc) and I *choose* to place the constraint of no editing on myself and I *choose* to send it to the web (presentation space) without any editing. Thus, when I shoot with a mobile phone, I choose to place myself in a 21st cent. digital photo realist genre. I like it. I like the freedom.
    It is a very different set of constraints & theoretical space I place on myself when I am shooting with my Nikon FM3A film SLR. Or the constraints I place on myself if I use a borrowed Nikon D40 or… or…
    (p.s. At my master’s program, my project advisor was a Photo Theorist. And I have previously taught Art Theory at the college level. I like I said in my previous comment, please forgive me…)

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