Camera review – UPDATE

Today on my way to University, during lunchtime and on my way back, I’ve shot some really nice pictures using Satio. I used many modes and shot pictures at different resolutions.

What I have learnt is that it’s not worth taking pictures at lower resolutions (e.g. 5Mpix), as there is no significant gain in things like noise reduction, and your picture is simply much smaller.

The pictures were taken on a typical London day – cloudy, but not rainy. I think it’s perfect to make unbiased camera test – medium light conditions, as we don’t always have sunny days, do we ?

I’ve shot the pictures using BestPic mode, using Touch Focus, Panorama (only 1, and first one in my life, so not perfect, but quality is amazing! )

Some of the pictures are taken in Beach/Snow mode, however this didn’t have much effect on sky, I think it did boost greens a bit, but not much.

Only one picture was taken to test the flash (in very poor lighting conditions), and I think the outcome is good.

The one taken on underground station (with a train approaching), is very badly focused – on the darkest point on the picture. This has boosted overall picture brightness a lot (the station is no way near as light ), but also dramatically increased the noise. I thoughtI would include it as well, just to show what you should not do

Basically, this is a very amateur review. I am a photography lame. I though some of you guys would like to see what you can get out of Satio even if you don’t have the experience of all the reviewers

P.S. The only picture I am disappointed with is the ‘Park’ one. The place looked lovely, so my hopes were really high for that one, but I didn’t focus it properly, so the area in the back is blurred (girl in the middle took the focus on 12 Mpix picture )

Regarding the videos, I’ve taken 3.

1. Satio hold in one place – busy street

2. Satio hold in my hand, while I was walking

3. Video taken through train window. Will give you some idea of smoothness, but  bear in mind that it was taken through dirty, and reflective window

I hope you’ll like them though

One more thing I’d like to add. Panorama and Touch focus are my favorite modes so far. Panorama for it’s great quality and ease of use (I really had no idea hot to take such pictures, and my one still looks very good).  Best-Pic is also very good, but only if you have problems with keeping your hand in one place. I didn’t, and all of my Best-Pic looked pretty much the same

Regarding the review part, there’s not much I have to add really. You see it the best on the pictures. Basically, some experience is required to take excellent pictures, but even if you don’t have any experience i.e. for example you don’t focus properly (like me on some pictures) you can still expect some really decent pictures, which are more than good enough for A4 printout.

I am very impressed by the colours of Satio pictures – they are very natural and not oversaturated like Samsung or Nokia (too much saturation looks nice most of the time, but you cannot recover original colours, while with Satio pictures, you can always saturate the colours in post processing).

Amount of resolved details is great too. For example, look at the squirrel on pixel level – virtually 100% clear.

Satio camera is really great, and definitely the best one around. It should easily replace our compact camera most of the time. Well, mobile phones will never replace DSLRs, so it’s not a very good point of reference, but some of the pictures I’ve taken today, e.g. Natural History Museum are good enough to actually branded as DSLR-like

Video on the other hand, speaks for itself really. Satio is a king of VGA recorders. Videos are absolutely smooth and very clear. The amount of details is outstanding (well, 3.6MBPS bitrate explains it really ) BTW, bitrate used to be 4MBPS in earlier firmwares, however I think it was a good step to decrease it, as it saves battery life AND I didn’t notice any decrease in quality

UPDATE:

I’ve taken 2 night. Both without a tripod and both pretty good. On the galss building you can still see clearly what’s inside, and on the other one you can even read the registration mark Both pictures are perfectly good for A4 printout. But again, non of them ar artistic or professional in any way They are just to test a night mode

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