The megapixel arms race is a hotly contested one that’s set to rage onwards throughout 2009 as the pixel ceiling moves upwards from 8 megapixels to twelve courtesy of Sony Ericsson’s Idou and the upcoming 12-megapixel LG handsets.

However, they’re not here yet and pixels alone don’t make for a good photo, so we’ve taken most camera-centric handsets from the top manufacturers out on the road to see if they produce anything worth framing.

We’ll primarily be testing the sharpness of each of the images, but we’ll also check out how each phone deals with colour reproduction and the maintaining of detail in darker images, traditionally prone to becoming featureless masses when using a less capable camera. We haven't delved into zoom functionality as they all have digital zooms that, by their nature, only use the full wide angle image as their source.

The BT Tower test
You might not want to buy a postcard of it, but the BT Tower is still one if the most recognisable sights London has to offer. It's laden with all sorts of odd appendages, making it a great candidate for far away photography tests.

We've taken some shots of the tower, with some of the street we took the shot on visible too for some simultaneous comparisons of detail achieved at differing distances. Take a look at Figure 1 for an explanation of where we took each of the three tests from exactly within the image.

Test 1: The Tower
With the tower itself set against a rare blue sky, it's easy to tell which cameraphones manage to make the tower's presence really stand out. The LG KC910 Renoir and Motorola ZN5 make the tower appear bold against the sky, a shiny beacon of all things telecom related.

The Samsung Pixon doesn't fall too far behind, but the Nokia N96 and Sony Ericsson C905 images appear washed out in compaison, as if there's a slight translucent veil between the camera and the tower itself.

Assessing the sky tones, the C905 and KC910 have the most vivid blues, although it's almost as if the abundance of blue has seeped into the tower itself on the C905. The N96's sky looks a little grey in a side-by-side comparison, complementing the disappointingly washed-out look of the tower itself.

The real abberation here though is the ZN5. The tower may look nice and bold, but the sky is an entirely different tone to the others. It's darker, the blue looking as if it might trip over into purple is it went too much further. In reality, the sky was a real summery shade blue, not the odd colour that the ZN5 has come up with.

See Figure 2: for a comparison of the five cameras

Test 2: The Trees
Patterns of tree branches are good for testing for digital artefacts and chromatic abberation, which is whether the edges of objects take on a generally purplish hue that simply wasn't there in the real world. The first thing that might strike you on looking at the results of the tree test is quite how dark and pronounced the KC910 branches are compared with the other handsets.

Each branch stands out like a thick wooden rod, despite making up only a fraction of the whole image. In sharpness terms this is most impressive, but the amount of digital artefacting around the branches when compared to the Pixon or C905 images suggests that some of this sharpness is made up in processing- that essentially a sharpening filter is used on the images after they're taken.

At branch intersections in particular, the Pixon shows up some issues in its colour reproduction as purple auras start appearing. There's a certain amount of purple edged-ness in all the samples, but the additional clarity of the KC910 and Pixon images brings this to the fore a little more. Demonstrating the same skies we saw in the last test, The N96 seems washed out while the ZN5 looks a little unnatural.

See Figure 3 for a comparison between the five cameras

Test 3: Super Zoom
On top of the BT Tower is another little scaffolding-style tower. To get down and dirty with the extreme detail abilities of the cameras, we looked at some extreme crops of just this little steel outcrop. As you might expect from the previous tests, the KC910 produces the most detailed image, with the cross-cross of beams on the tower's side more or less completely visible.

Although it appears to offer a similar level of detail, the ZN5's reproduction of the beams is more of a mess. You can't see the separate beams, just that there's some sort of metallic activity there. The Pixon and C905 fare well here too. There's not quite the same striving for boldness as the KC910, but the Pixon in particular lets you see the constellation of beams fairly clearly.

The clear loser here is the N96. Although the basic structure of the the tower is clear, the finer detail has been reduced to mush, while the darker parts of the tower look distinctly grey.

See Figure 4 for a comparison of the five cameras

The Statue Test
Reproducing detail in front of a clear, bright sky is one thing, but doing so within a largely dark mass is another proposition. We took some photos of a nearby statue to see how well these cameras could cope with reproducing subtle differentiations in dark tones.

The test key for the statue test is labelled figure 5 on the right.

Test 4: Statue head
The first thing you might notice here is the variance in darkness of the statue head overall. The N96 and C905 produce comparably greyish images, but where the C905 picks up the highlights on the chap's chin and cheeks, the N96's offering is more formless and blob-like.

The ZN5 didn't handle the test particularly well, producing a too-dark image that features quite a lot of noise, both in the statue head itself and the space above the statue. It has managed to retain some detail, but the overall performance is disappointing, clearly the noisiest image all the five.

The KC910 and Pixon fared the best, although the Pixon out front with an excellent level of contrast that brings out far more clarity in the facial features than any other phone on test. Next to the Pixon, the KC910 is a little unconfortable to look at, with more prominent highlights and more managed contrast levels.

See Figure 6 for a comparison of the five photos

The Leaf Test
Not everyone just wants to take pictures of buildings and statues, so we took the five handsets out to see some nature. Since we were in London, this wasn't the easiest task, but in the end we managed to find a scrap of greenery to see how the cameras coped with the greater colour variance involved in the natural world.

The test key for the statue test is labelled Figure 7 on the right.

Test 5: The Leaf Test
Although a little tougher to judge than some of the previous tests, some observations can definitely be taken from the Leaf test. The Pixon holds up well, managing to blend the yellow tones with the base greens to give the handset the most natural-looking image in the test. Next to it, the KC910 seems almost cartoonish.

Although vivid, the greens seem to verge on the luminous at some points. To an extent, it's the natural partner to the KC910s sharpened-looking photos. The results are bold and eye-catching, but not necessarily all that realistic.

The ZN5 comes up with its trademark off-kilter colour management resulting in some gold-tinged leaves. This effect could be reduced by altering the colour temperature, but without any processing the colour seems distinctly tainted under the ZN5's particular sort of filter. This aside though, the variance in the tones themselves is up there with the Pixon.

The N96, on the other hand, gives flat-looking tones that are affected by the sort of dullness we noted in the other tests. The C905 falls somewhere between the Pixon and KC910 in performance terms, missing out the latter's luminous effect but not quite achieving the tonal dynamism of the Pixon.

See Figure 8 for a comparison of the five photos

Conclusions
Although they still produce competent images, the Motorola ZN5 and Nokia N96 disappointed with their innacurate colours and lack of detail respectively.

The Samsung Pixon and LG KC910 Renoir comes out tops, the KC910 offering more intense images with greater sharpness, while the Pixon arguably deals with colour with a little more panache. The Sony Ericsson C905 puts in a good performance all round, but can't quite compete with the two top dogs.

Pure image quality aside, all the cameras on test have decent LCD screens that refresh with a good level of smoothness. The Motorola ZN5 is particularly impressive in this respect, with a lightning-fast screen that's also pin sharp. In keeping with its performance elsewhere, the N96's lags behind slightly, juddering a little as you pan. The effect isn't prenounced enough to make it a troubling issue, though.

If you're into picture quality, go for the LG or the Samsung, and if you're planning on enlarging your photos, the former's the best bet.

	Sony Ericsson C905	Samsung Pixon M8800	LG KC910 Renoir	Nokia N96	Motorola ZN5
Megapixels	8.1	8.0	8.0	5.0	5.0
Digital Zoom	16x	16x	16x	8x	4x
Flash Type	Xenon	Xenon	Xenon	Dual LED	Xenon
Face Detection
Smile Shot
Macro
Autofocus
Panorama
Detail
Colour Reproduction

View all features on our features index page.