Using The Nokia N82 As My Main Camera
Ever since I received my N82 Black, I have been using it as my main digital camera. I own a 4MP Kodak camera, but I didn’t even bring it with me to Paris because I know that I would never carry an extra gadget in my bag, and because its battery consumption got ridiculous with time and frequent usage.
So for the past months, the N82 has been serving the duty of being my one and only digital camera and that opened my eyes to the advantages and issues which arise from that.
Advantages Of Using The N82 As My Main Digital Camera
- Always with me: I can’t count how many times I have told myself before “oh, I wish I had a camera now!”. The N82 is always in my pocket, always powered on, and always ready to take a snap in a record of 7-8 seconds. Powering a digital camera and taking a picture takes more, and that’s if you even happen to carry it with you all the time.
- Sending over Bluetooth: Many times I take a picture of a friend and they like it and ask me to send it to them. Many times I forget the USB cable that connects my camera to my laptop. Digital cameras don’t have bluetooth whereas the N82 does, which means that in only a few seconds, I can send images to my friend’s phone when they need it, or to my computer when I can’t find the USB cable. No wires, no hassle.
- Immediate sharing: With a digital camera, the best thing you can do after taking a picture or video is viewing it and waiting until you connect to a computer to be able to do something with it. With the N82, I have several immediate options: I can MMS, email, or even use my all-time favorite Shozu to instantly upload images to my Share on Ovi, Flickr and Facebook accounts, and videos to my YouTube, Blip and Share on Ovi accounts. Again, no wires, no hassle.
- Geotagging: Being in a foreign country, I get a lot of comments from my friends like “oh, where is this place?”. The N82 allows me to geotag my images, meaning when I upload them to Share on Ovi or Flickr, people can see where the image was taken, on a map. Highly convenient to avoid these questions from friends, and to avoid forgetting for myself.
- Live Streaming: With the multitude of streaming applications like Flixwagon, Kyte.tv, Qik and many more, I can instantly live stream my videos over the air to my accounts, and hence offer my friends the option to see what I’m doing, live.
- Direct scanning and text conversion: Ricky wrote earlier about Multiscanner, an application that directly converts images of text to actual text, which you can then edit, save and send. Can the average digital camera brag about being able to do that? No. I have found that although Multiscanner runs on the N82, the image it takes is too bright, due to the Xenon flash, to be used properly by the application. What I do is take the image of my paper with the Camera as usual, on Close-Up mode, then open the image in the Gallery and send it to the Text Recognizer. A few more steps, but MILES better than carrying an actual scanner around, right?
- Better Quality Indoors: I only have one friend who carries a separate digital camera, a 7MP Kodak one (my other friends rely on an N73, 6220 Classic, 6120 Classic and E65 for their images, seriously). But comparing the N82 to my friend’s 7MP Kodak, I came up with the conclusion that the N82 takes much better pics at night and indoors. She even agreed to that herself, and when we were out bowling last Saturday, she kept her camera in the bag and asked me to give her my N82 to take pictures.
Issues Of Using The N82 As My Main Digital Camera
- Washed Out Colors: Even though I love the quality of my N82’s images, it’s only when I compared them to my friend’s standalone Kodak camera that I found out they were washed out. The difference is especially flagrant outside and in sunlight, where the N82 turns all the colors very pale whereas the digital camera shows bright and vibrant colors. It’s really annoying and I wish Nokia would fix that with some firmware update.
- No Flash Button: the lack of a physical Flash button on the N82 is really annoying as I find myself very frequently needing to toggle Flash On/Off/Automatic.
- Lower Quality: The N82 gives lower quality than standalone 7MP, 8MP, 10MP digital cameras. But for my usual routine of “view on the computer screen then upload”, quality isn’t THAT much of a problem.
A Final Word
Both the N82 and standalone digital cameras offer some similar options, like image and video recording, TV-Out, and my favorite Close-Up and Sports modes. Even though there are some issues with it, relying solely on an N82 for every picture I take is a personal choice I made because it trumps all digital cameras with its portability, ready availability and the convenience it offers of being able to geotag and immediately share files over bluetooth, MMS, email, online image and video services, and online streaming sites. Multiscanner is just the topping on the cake, and confirms my decision of never again buying a standalone digital camera.
Of course these advantages and issues are not only limited to the N82, but are the same for the N95, N95 8GB, N96, 6220 Classic, N85, N79,… Have you made the switch to your phone as your main digital camera? Do you see any more issues or advantages that I haven’t mentioned here?
(Haven't tried it though, and not sure about the quality either)
However I saw the almost same solution at a local Handset store where you could either put your memory cards into a slot or send pictures over Bluetooth to order prints of them.
The only exception for not using the N82 as a main camera is if you are a "photophantasm" who likes to take pictures with Digital SLR cameras.
(I've got a female friend who does)
For everyday use I really agree that it holds.
As for the replacement for digital camera that happened a long time ago, whereas my N6600 replaced my Sony Cybershot DSC-P2 (2 Mpx) because I found out that the latter couldn't take pictures good enough in the dark of a Platypus duck which was in an aquarium. (More like it didn't display anything whereas the N6600 caught it).
Optics-wise we all know the story, and it's really more simple to scale down / crop the details the more megapixels you have on a camera.
Digital cameras can of course have the same features when it comes to connectivity mostly in form of an external combined memory / wireless / bluetooth card.
But the more functions we have on a device the more we can do with it, besides making our lives easier and connected.
That's why we choose smartphones aren't we?
edit: I found it http://symbianv3.com/nokia-multiscan...s-with-camera/
I got it from theguru's post about multiscanner.