Nokia 808 PureView packs a 41-megapixel camera

At this week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Nokia announced the 808 PureView, a smartphone with an astounding 41-megapixel image sensor. The Nokia 808 will be the first smartphone by Nokia to include its new PureView imaging technology, which combines a high-resolution sensor with Carl Zeiss optics and Nokia-developed algorithms.

Typically you might want a high megapixel camera in order to take photos that can be printed larger - what makes the Nokia 808 PureView special, however, it what it does with those pixels. The 808 uses a new pixel oversampling technology, that captures seven pixels of information and then condenses those into one single pixel. This reportedly results in an exceptionally sharp photo, and the ability to zoom in on any portion of a 5-megapixel picture without losing clarity in the image.

The technology also works on video, so you can shoot a full HD video at 30fps and 4x zoom. Nokia has made some untouched images taken with the camera available online (as a sizable download) so you can get a feel for the quality.

In addition to offering a decent lens and large image sensor, the camera also has a few other notable features. It can capture photos quickly (in less than a second), has a Xenon flash as well as an LED video light for shooting in dark places, and offers integration with services such as GetMe Rated (for having other people rate your photos) and Vimeo, for sharing your videos with the world. Nokia claims the phone can capture audio at CD-like quality, and the handset is also the first smartphone with built-in Dolby Headphone technology, so you can listen to tunes (or your videos) in Dolby Surround sound using any set of stereo headphones.

Besides the camera and sound, the rest of the specs for the handset are actually on the low end of things. The Nokia Belle phone has a 4-inch screen with a 640 x 360 resolution, a 1.3Ghz single-core processor, and 512Mb of RAM. The handset comes with 16GB of storage space, but supports microSD expansion up to 32GB.

The Nokia 808 PureView is expected to roll out in May for around US$605.

Source: Nokia

App removes wandering people from photos

It's kind of a funny thing, when you think about it ... even though it's normal to see other people milling about in public places, when we take photos of those places, we often don't want any of those people in our pictures. Ordinarily, this means standing around and waiting, then blasting off a shot in the split second when no one is within your frame - except perhaps the person you're taking a photo of. Swedish photography company Scalado, however, has now developed an alternative for use with mobile devices. It's called Remove, and appropriately enough, it removes those pesky "other people" from your photographs.

Remove works by initially taking a burst of shots in succession. By comparing those shots with one another, it is then able to identify which objects are stationary (the scenery, and/or your posing subject) and which ones are moving (those dang people). It then highlights the moving objects on a preview screen, and allows you to select which ones to remove. The end product is a composite photo, with the offending humans taken out.

Although a certain unwanted person may be blocking the background in one shot, that same bit of background will be visible in another shot - this little fact allows the app to fill in the background when it removes the person. Needless to say, Remove can't help you with bystanders who are standing still ... perhaps if it had a feature that used your device's speaker to yell "Hey buddy, get outta my shot!"

The app is presently still in the prototype stage, but a full version should be ready for a demonstration later this month, at the 2012 Mobile World Conference in Barcelona. It is reminiscent of a system being developed at the University of California, San Diego, that is able to remove pedestriansfrom Google Street View images.

Next iPhone to feature light field camera?

According to recent speculations, the next generation iPhone might be packing Light Field Cameras. If another excerpt from Adam Lashinsky’s upcoming book “Inside Apple” is a sign of things to come. Apparently Steve Jobs expressed a great interest in Lytro (the creator of the Lytro Light Field Camera) and even met with the CEO of the company to discuss plans before. In case you aren’t familiar with the concept of the Light Field Camera, it is a simple camera that lets people capture “the perfect shot” instead of having to deal with the hassles of setting up the right focus, shutter speed etc on the spot. Images captured with the camera can then be manipulated on a computer after the shooting is done.

The company’s CEO, Ren Ng, a brilliant computer scientist with a PhD from Stanford, immediately called Jobs, who picked up the phone and quickly said, “if you’re free this afternoon maybe we would could get together.” Ng, who is thirty-two, hurried to Palo Alto, showed Jobs a demo of Lytro’s technology, discussed cameras and product design with him, and, at Jobs’s request, agreed to send him an email outlining three things he’d like Lytro to do with Apple.

If we do see light field cameras in the next iPhone, consumers are going to take photographs with the iOS device very differently in the future. What do you think?

Strap-on macro lens works with any smartphone camera

The cameras on most smart phones tend to be rather simple affairs so it's not surprising that savvy inventors have dreamed up numerous add-on attachments such as mini-microscopes and wide/telephoto adapters. They do tend to be rather elaborate and brand-specific, however, not to mention somewhat pricey. Not this one though - the Macro Cell Lens Band is a simple close-up photography solution that has two definite pluses - it works on any camera equipped phone and it's very inexpensive.

The Lens Band is decidedly low-tech, just a thick rubber band with a thin plastic lens smack in the middle of it, but judging by the sample shots, it produces surprisingly good quality images.

Installation is quick and simple, take the band out of your wallet or off your wrist, wrap it around the phone with the lens positioned correctly and you're away.

PhotoJojo sells the Macro Cell Lens Band for US$15.