Microsoft Lumia 950 camera review

Thanks Lars for your review and outstanding pictures. Now, if I can pony-up $500...

Compared to the iphone, I'm seeing stunning image quality and much better iso. This for me represents a replacement for a compact camera which the Iphone gets nowhere near.

Considered on its merits as a camera rather than image editor, it far surpasses the water colour paintings of much of the competition even some compacts (thinking here of that fuji 'tough' underwater abomination). And on that level, deserves a much higher rating.

still functional and avalaiuble in windows 10 mobile the lumia panorama, just have certain problems with stitching but still functional

I own the 950XL and I wholeheartedly agree with the comments about the missing Panorama feature.

I find it amazing that a company who developed and owns Photosynth, leaves a simple panorama mode out of their €699 Flagship phone. Especially since they offered that feature in previous phones (Nokia phones).

There are more unitelligible choices like that. E.g. Nokia was the first to popularize the 'double-tap-to-wake' feature, and used it on most of their phones in the past years. Now that almost every Android OEM has copied this feature, Microsoft decides to leave it out of their Flagship phones.

The 950 XL has become a decent phone, having received half a dozen updates since its launch. No more hot flushes, and spontaneous reboots like in the first days. The swipe keyboard now also works in the browser (although not flawless yet). Even the creaky back cover has somehow stopped creaking. Now they need to focus on fixing the final bugs and give us the Panorama mode...

I have a Lumia 1020 and it nock the socks of everything out there. The apple comparision makes med wonder why anyone is buying in to that overhyped brand. It seems totaly useless. Long live 1020:)

I'm an IT manager at a large company. The most exciting thing about Win10 is that it is one operating system that run on many platforms (phones/laptops/desktop/tablets/xbox/watches/IoT/etc). This will allow developers to truly write an app once and have it run on all these devices. This has long been the dream of computer science. As a consumer you won't have to buy an app for each device - the app you own will run cross platform and become responsive to your screen size. Think of how some websites have desktop and mobile versions. This is the idea for apps. As an example, if this works, I'll be able to replace $40,000 Cisco teleconf units (that users hate) with an XboxOne running a Skype for Business app!

About the phone, if you read the rumors, Microsoft will release a premium phone under the Surface brand late this year or early next. I think it will be Intel based and not a traditional mobile chipset.

As an owner of this camera, I agree with portions of this review and disagree with others.

First of all, there are some inaccuracies. The review states there is no way to force HDR on. That is wrong. HDR can be set to on/off/auto. In the early builds this was the case and HDR was actually called Rich Capture. Microsoft renamed it to HDR to be more standard for people switching from other platforms. Perhaps the reviewer didn't have the latest version of the OS or camera app. The app is seemingly updated each week.

The review states that there is no built-in panorama lens. That is correct and I don't understand why. Previous versions of the OS had great pano lenses to select from.

The 3-LED flash system gives natural skin tones and aides in the ability to "pick the best light" after the photo has been taken.

Using Win10 (not mobile) Photos app you can select a frame from a living image and select best light.

It's becoming a good ecosystem. Large Win10 update coming in June.

Nice! :) It would be interesting to see a review update with the improvements (if any) of the latest W10m and Camera app versions (the first releases of the OS were still in a "beta" phase).

The problem with the Microsoft phone isn't the hardware, the software, or even the anemic store. It's the fact they have screwed the customer over and over on perfectly good hardware, if not excellent, that was just released a year or two ago with no updates that were promised to latest OS and have since reversed the decision.

Why would I support them again?

Madrid. The city where I was born. A nice place to test smarphones.

actually, Lumia 950 is doing great against top rated phones:

https://youtu.be/YQWfqNbdgHw

I have yet to hear a convincing argument behind choosing the 4:3 aspect ratio for these sensors.
Fixed Aspect Ratios are always a compromise since the ideal framing depends on the subject, artistic expression, the display medium, etc. But given the current known circumstances, lots of pixels get wasted or pictures end up with large blacked out areas at time of display when the sensor is 4:3 native.
IMO the 3:2 AR is the ideal compromise because it sits between 4:3 and 16:9, yet it is really rare to see one of those in these phones.
I guess everybody is copying Apple even in the bad aspects of the phone, pun intended !

The sound quality of the drums in the street parade is very impressive. Thanks for going abroad to test out the cam.

Wow, that phone looks ugly.. Did they fire some people in the Lumia design department? I mean I think my Lumia 735 looks great.

Using my 950XL, I printed a DNG file at 13x19. Very impressive results worthy of framing

From what i see Nokia 808 Pureview is the best of all.

Windows 10 Mobile and Windows 10 in general, is far superior to the toy OSes.

This phones only problem is that runs on Microsoft's useless OS,
The camera is nice for a phone !!!!

had the phone for a week. Mostly all good. Only issue is that it overheats and as a result, the battery life sucks. Other than that is nice. Got the dual sim version, like it. even though data is only allowed on one Sim, not a big issue.

I had a Windows Nokia phone before. Actually, a really great phone but the Windows APP store is ridiculously anemic. I mean really, you cannot download Firefox or Chrome? Is this still 7th grade? Microsoft will never be able to capture app developers to support their phones. I like trying new phones out but Samsung and Android got it down pat.

Having owned the 950 since December, I definitely prefer Win10 to the other OS option out there for its KISS setup. Still haven't tried to do any photo or video editing in desktop Continuum mode yet.
Microsoft updated the OS this past Sunday the 10th. One can now manually select HDR to be off, on, or auto. Hopefully, panorama update is next.

It is kind of sad that you went into writing this review without bothering to update your phone's OS and camera software.

Also, not having taken the time to understand how the app works, which would be fine except because you raise up those points as "shortcomings". I would expect anyone expending their own money on the phone to learn hot to use it, and therefore your review misleading.

FWIW
1) It has been a short while Microsoft updated the app so that "force HDR" is available.
2) You can start video recording by long pressing the shutter button at any time, without requiring to change modes whatsoever.
3) On my up to date 950XL the camera launches instantly (less than a second), doubt the 950 takes 2s.
4) Launching the camera does not require a "long press" of the camera button, but a single short press.
5) Every PureView Lumia has had a dedicated HW button, so I don't get "the old fashioned "camera icon" thing.
6) The Lumia 950XL does not have a front flash.

Wow nice IS

I've had one since December, and I can say it's camera is really good, it, needs a better app though built in and the tones are yellowish. But it's very good as a camera. The lens is great u get alot out this small sensor.

Looking at the studio scene comparisons, the Lumia 950 matches or outperforms all other phones.

The article states -

The 950 XL offers a larger screen, a more powerful Snapdragon 810 chip and a slightly larger battery, but the camera setup is essentially, apart from a front flash (identical to the 950's).

You need to take out the brackets after the word "flash" and replace it with a comma so that the sentence says what you meant it to say. As it is, the reader would surmise that the flash is identical to the 950's!

Image quality looks fine for a phone.

Unfortunately recent phones from most brands uses the amateur 4/3 format (and 16/9) which is really disappointing.

Earlier models of the Lumia series also had the professional 3/2 format which could easily be added in software. Not sure why we can't have that format any longer.

Just a minor note: The frame lines are bugged in the screenshot, being offset to one side. The most recent Camera app update fixes that, and rich capture mode has been renamed Rich HDR, and comes with 3 settings on/off/auto.