PureView in real life (Nokia 808 and 1020)

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Yes, yes, we all know that poring over someone else's holiday photos can be tedious, but when they're taken by someone who knows what they're doing with a smartphone camera and when they're all examples of what can be achieved with one of Nokia's oversampling PureView devices then maybe you'll find them more interesting - and inspiring?

To start things off, here's Rohit Nair's gallery of Nokia 808-shot photos from his recent trips to Bhutan, Sri Lanka and India. The full set is at flickr.com/photos/in-the-elements-with-nokia/. But here are a couple of my favourites:

Colonial Vestiges

Great composition and clever handling of exposure to keep as much detail in the structure against the bright overcast sky.... It's taken very low down too, which always adds an unusual and arty edge...

Sunset at the dam

Oh, I'm a sucker for a good sunset, with nice rocky silhouettes here to frame it... You can imagine standing there, watching the sun go down...

Secondly, All About favourite photographer Mike Macias (with his cool night job down at the docks a highlight!), in this case with some great shots taken with his brand new Nokia Lumia 1020.

Sleeping cat

Fabulous detail from the Lumia 1020 and a perfect subject shot that Rafe's bound to enjoy, methinks....

Child close-up

A great candid macro shot, with subtle 'bokeh' (shallow depth of field) meaning that the main subject gets emphasised all the more.

Finally, having been away myself, a couple of quirky shots with a slight story behind them. Each of these was also taken on a PureView device, in this case the Nokia 808:

Arty gull sky shot

My aim was to try and shoot the perfect seagull shot and I experimented with various focus and exposure settings, but it turned out to be a lot harder to get a crisp gull shot as it flew by than I imagined. The thing is that you can't really focus on something so small and quick, so you have to guess a focus and exposure and then try and grab a bird when it gets close to the chosen range/spot. 

However, in the end I was panning with this bird and fluked a perfect gradient from midnight blue to scorching white as a background for this gull heading towards the horizon. Such a pure sky....

I was also experimenting with the oversampling and PureView zoom at various gigs - in my tests, I was never happy with the 'zoomed in' shots - reducing PureView devices down to 1:1 pixel use on the sensor destroys the oversampling and noise reduction advantage. So it's best to avoid zoom altogether and simply try and get closer. Being a gig, I also wanted the atmosphere and lighting, rather than the bleached out look from a Xenon flash, so I experimented with artificially raising the ISO, in this case, to 800, which worked pretty well:

High ISO gig shot

With August being a time that many of us have been away, for short or long trips, are there any holiday photos from the Nokia 808 or Lumia 1020 that you'd like to share with the world in the comments?