A new phone and a new camera

You’d think I was talking about two purchases, but no, it’s only one. And it’s the Sony Ericsson k800i. After much heming and hawing between the w810i and k800i, I finally decided on the heavier, chunkier, metal chasis (versus plastic), 3.2 megapixel (versus 2) latter.

After 3 – 4 Nokia phones, I thought it was time to give Sony Ericsson another try. My last encounter with an Ericsson was the GH688, and the other Nokias included the 6230, 8250 and 8210, all very solid phones. I tend to buy phones on function and hardiness rather than looks. And I’m not a frequent upgrader.

As I moved from Ericsson to Nokia many years ago, I found the user interface quite different and had to get used to Nokia. Now I find myself having to struggle with the Sony Ericsson once again. Overall, I think the userability of the phone is not as well thought out as my last Nokia, the 6230.

But of course, the highlight of the k800i is the integrated 3.2 megapixel Cybershot camera with a real Xenon flash. Yeah, no more of those puny LED lamps.

Okay, so how is the camera?

It being a Sunday, I tested it at my usual Sunday spots: Fairprice Xtra in the sticking-out-like-a-sore-thumb AMK Hub, Sheng Siong and some pet shops.

Well, like all point and shoots, it suffers from shutter lag. Bad shutter lag. (Incidentally, it’s not just the camera. I find that any keypress on the phone seems slow. It takes like .5 of a second longer than it should to react.)

Back to the camera, it really is just like a point and shoot digital camera when they first came out. I would say that the camera is no better than my Fuji FinePix 4800 Zoom. Perhaps a little weaker.

But that’s saying a lot already. The Fuji Finepix when it came out in 2001 cost me almost $2000. This phone, without contract is about $5-600. Plus, it’s smaller and has a phone. (We mustn’t forget this is still a mobile phone afterall.)

Because of the shutter lag, this means you can’t shoot and move. Which is what I like to do. You actually have to stop, and take a picture. Not very good for on-the-shy shots. As I like to take photos from moving cars / vehicles, it looks like I still need my D70 with me.

Furthermore, the response of the shutter press is not very good. So you don’t know if you’ve successfully pressed the shutter or not. I missed many photos because of that. I’d thought I’d taken a shot, but I actually hadn’t. Very annoying.

Plus, because the phone seems to have been designed to be used with two hands rather than one when taking pictures, it makes sneaking shots more difficult. It’s hard to take pictures with one hand.

As you know, my opinion of Fairprice Xtra and the entire AMK (Ang Mo Kio) Hub wasn’t very good. I’m sorry to report that my impression hasn’t changed. But now, I’ve got photos.

Overall, I find the Cybershot k800i’s colour rendition quite accurate and not overly saturated. And if you stay still and remember that darn shutter lag, photos can be clear.

These photos were not doctored in any way, except one was cropped slightly and every one was re-sized and watermarked. No changes in sharpness, saturation and any amazing stuff that you can do in GIMP or Photoshop.

Fairprice Xtra cashier area. Not much action yet. Taken while walking, so it’s blur.

Cleaning machine making the rounds at Fairprice Xtra. Such machines assume the tiling is pretty smooth so that it can pick up the water that it’s used to mop the floor.

But the tiling is not super smooth which is why you end up with floors like this:

Even though the areas taken above were just on either side of each other, you can see how the k800i’s White Balance goes off.

The dirty floors were taken at 0913hours on Sunday. You can imagine it’ll just get worse. This is why you need real people to clean floors. All you need is one more person finishing up the job that the cleaning machine can’t.

The next picture is why I thought the colours replicated by the k800i were quite good. Yes, these tomatoes were really this colour.

As usual, Fairprice only sells one MAGAZINE, they loudly declare. Why there’s a food demo counter next to it beats me. Why are magazines next to fresh meat and produce? I don’t know about you. I like my reading material dry.

And I’ve seen these ice cream displays around but haven’t taken a picture or commented on them. They’re the greatest. Why aren’t they used more? The don’t take much more floor space that the old freezers. In fact, I think they take less, because the width is narrower.

Plus, you can keep more varieties of ice cream, can view what is sold without opening the freezer and digging through the popsicles. This means less electricity wasted, less maintenence and a neater display.

Early in the morning, and they’re out of bags at Xtra. Wake up, guys.

Some interesting frozen stuff available, but not particularly cheap.

In another blog about “Potential Death Traps in Ang Mo Kio Hub“, Kevin wrote about the blind corner mirrors that were still wrapped. Since I drove down to the carpark today, I’m glad to see the plastic wrappers have been removed, but what shocked me were the walls along the driveway down into the carpark.

It’s a blur shot, taken from a moving car, but you can already see the water lines. They’re yellow. Indicating rust perhaps? Are the iron beams within rusting already? This isn’t the worst wall by the way, which is in the middle of the spiral down and I couldn’t stop and take a picture. It’s barely a month into Fairprice Xtra’s opening at AMK (Ang Mo Kio) Hub and things are already crumbling away.

That plus the dampness that I’d talked about in my earlier entry about AMK Hub, worries me.

Okay, I think the Sony Ericsson k800i is performing okay so far.

I took it outside to Sheng Siong Supermarket at Serangoon North. As you can see from the external pictures, this camera does suffer from CA or chromatic aberration. This is the presence of coloured (purple/red) fringes along the edges of your subject, usually happens in bright light.

All set up for Chinese New Year at Sheng Siong. These huge “pineapples” were everywhere. The red isn’t oversaturated, which is nice.

Things are going up, up, up, even at Sheng Siong.

This is one thing I dislike about Sheng Siong. Putting out frozen stuff to sit without proper refrigeration. Make a statement. Do not buy from such displays. And when you see staff there, tell them to put it into the freezers. This usually happens on crazy Sundays. I assume they sell the whole lot in a day. Even then, this is not good practice.

I need to get some dog food, so I go to the pet shops in Serangoon North. The k800i is holding up pretty well thus far.

But before we get distracted, I pop over to the fish monger there.

After that, I’m carrying ten kilos of dog food, 6 pineapples and a whole lotta other stuff and cannot take any more pictures.

As a phone, I think the SE k800i can be a little bit more user friendly. There’s too much dependence on the “back” key and the “c” (cancel) key doesn’t do much. With a Nokia, the cancel also gets you back to the main screen, so if you get lost, there’s an easy escape out to the very beginning so you can restart your steps.

And sms-ing! Oh boy. there’s another thing to learn because the space bar key is at total opposite ends, so the phone keeps telling me “Word not in dictionary”.

In terms of connections, I like that the k800i has a provided USB cable that connects right into the computer. I wish the connector on the phone was also USB, but it’s some proprietory connector that has been with Ericsson for ages. (It looks very similar to the one on my GH688.)

Connecting to the PC is easy and the Mac is super easy. You can just drag and drop files in. The Mac recognises the phone memory and card faster than on the PC. The phone and card get a drive letter each.

The contents look remarkably similar with the phone memory preferring lower case folder names.

But the system folders on the phone and card are different.

And the phone has a bunch of webpage bookmarks that are downloaded from Starhub. These are not present on the card memory.

Interestingly, the photos are not stored in the Pictures directory, but in the DCIM directory. Those with digital cameras will recognise this folder. It is said that when you plug the phone into Mac OSX, iPhoto automatically detects the phone camera and asks if you want to download the pictures into iPhoto. I cannot test this as I did uninstalled iPhoto.

One of the great things about the phone is that it saves all the EXIF information. This means you can tell how the camera is taking the pictures by checking out the ISO, aperture and shutter speed used. This really helps in understanding how the camera works in different environments. And when you know how the camera thinks, you can adjust how you use it to improve your shots.

I guess this is how it’s got to be with the phone. I gotta learn how it works and adjust my behaviour accordingly.