Sony Ericsson K850i Cyber-shot review – Camera

7th April 2009 Author: Meraj Chhaya - - Views:

 

As usual, the camera is the most important bit of any Cyber-shot phone. The phone is exactly made to show the world the power of Sony Ericsson in this field.

The only way to see how good it is, is to compare against the phones in the same category. We conducted a comprehensive test against the K850i's rivals, the Nokia N82, Nokia N95, and the Samsung SGH-G800. (Part 1, Part 2)

We won't review the captured images as we have already done it once, you can check them out on the posts above.

All the screenshots are courtesy of GSMArena. Our conclusion for this review is still coming soon, but if you can't wait, you can check other K850i tests.

There are three camera modes which can be selected by using the switch on the image above. They are: Image capture, Video capture, Image and video playback. We'll review them in that order:

Just like any good camera application, the Cyber-shot application has options on the viewfinder which allows you to configure the following:

• Mode – Normal, BestPic, Panorama, Frames
• Light mode – Auto, Twilight Landscape, Twilight Portrait, Landscape, Portrait, Beach/Snow, Sports, Document
• Resolution – 5MP, 3MP, 1MP, VGA
• Focus – Macro, Infinite
• Flash – Auto, red-eye reduction, Off
• Self-timer
• ISO – 100, 200, 400
• Metering mode – Spot, Auto
• White balance – Daylight, Clouds, Fluorescent, Incandescent
• Effects – Black & White, Negative, Sepia, Solarize

While on BestPic mode, the camera takes nine shots of whatever you are trying to capture in the following order: four shots while you are pressing the autofocus button level, one while you press the capture button, and four more when you let it go. After that, you select which image you wish to keep. This is a good way to select a good image, especially if you usually take many blurry pictures. The mode indirectly counteracts camera shakes and incorrect focusing.

The Panorama mode allows you to take several images and “stitch” them up together at the right or left side. It didn't work very well for me though.

Frames is a basically an effect where you can have a frame around your captured image.

The light modes balance the camera so that it captures an image which is correctly rendered. For example, a landscape image would have a long focus as you don't generally have a single object, but a spread focus point at a long distance. Beach and snow have environments which are severely lit, the sand or snow is usually extremely bright to a camera, and letting the camera know that you're in one of those locations would help for a better image, instead of letting it guess through the auto mode. Documents is the same thing, as usually the image will appear blurry if the camera doesn't focus well, but instead of document mode, the macro mode would be helpful as well. It's always beneficial to have extra options.

For those that do not know, an image with less megapixel wastes less space, but also conserves less definition of the image, as it becomes smaller.

A macro mode is used to focus a close object, so that the camera can target it well. The object should be atleast 10cm from the camera, and in a well lit area for better definition (I capture my review pictures in my garden when it's really sunny).

Unfortunately the ISO mode seems to be the same in all 5 megapixel camera phones. 400 is the maximum. A greater ISO mode allows for better night pictures. The latest 8 megapixel camera phones have ISO of up to 1600.

Metering was something new for me as I hadn't seen it in mobile phone cameras. You can choose to focus on a certain object while ignore the environment light when you choose Spot metering. For example, let's say you have a person against the sun. The person would appear black, and the background would be white, as the camera would be confused by the light intensity, but when you select spot, the camera focuses only on that person, and he/she in rendered much better.

There are eight shortcut buttons. Two for zoom, two for brightness, two for mode, one for timer, and one for flash. If you can't remember where the latter four buttons are, check this video.

Under the “hidden” settings you find the following options:

• Picture quality
• Autofocus light – On, Off
• BestPic Speed
• Review
• Stabilizer
• Memory selection
• Auto rotation

The video recording section of the Cyber-shot program has the same on-viewfinder settings, and has a time bar at the top as well.

Under the video recording settings, you can select the following options:

• Video length – normal, picture message
• Light – on, off (something the N95 and the N82 don't have)
• Night mode – on, off
• Self timer
• Microphone
• Metering mode (may be useless in a video)
• White balance
• Effects
• Stabilizer
• Review
• Memory location

In terms of settings, the K850i is a major winner, and what impressed me quite a lot is that the K850i has practically two flash lights, one with 3 LED and the other with 1 Xenon tube. The Metering mode is also nice for some image scenarios, and it should be included in most camera phones in the future.

The Photo Viewer mode allows you to “Pan + Zoom” on the pictures in a fast way, with no lengthy zoom processing. You can also add tags, which isn't possible in NSeries camera applications or gallery. PictBridge is also available. The best part of this application is the picture playback, which is also known as slideshow. You can select various modes for the playback, which are just fantastic: silent, sad, romantic, happy, and energy.

If you read the comparison review with the K850i, you already know which phone has the best camera. If you think we have missed something, or just want to give your input, please do so at the comments section!

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