After I already posted a picture here from indoors, right under a light bulb, I wanted to test the camera also outdoors. I tested the camera a week ago (when I also shot some images with my DSLR), and today again when I went skiing.
To be honest, I haven’t really been very happy with the results.
First of all, I have to admit that I tested the camera under rather difficult conditions, that is cold temperatures, snowy landscape (always difficult for sensors) and no direct sun light (which is kind of tough to see these days, as we still have a couple of days of polar night left here …).
Anyhow, my main findings where
- that it is very difficult to get images in focus. Around half to 2/3 of my images weren’t satisfactorily in focus.
- The depth of field is quite poor. Even if two objects are close to each other and a couple of meters away, I found it impossible to have them both in focus.
- The sensor is not very sensitive to light. Images at ISO 100 often turned out dark, images with higher ISOs than 200 had lots of noise.
- The white balance puzzles me. I sometimes took images right after each other. Same frame, just another object in focus, or just a second image after slight re-framing, and yet sometimes the white balance turned out quite different.
My conclusion is that the camera sensor is certainly better than the that one of the FP1U, but if I compare it to my Nokia Lumia 625 (work phone), the FP2 camera is more difficult to handle and the results are less satisfying.
As I said, the conditions were rather tough, but I wanted to see what I can get out of the camera.
The app is really poor, I will definitely look for another one, as the stock app doesn’t offer much control over the camera.
I have put a couple of images on my blog. You have to follow the link from here, since I didn’t link to the page with the test images directly on my blog.