Nokia 6210 Navigator camera samples

The Nokia 6210 Navigator puts in a decent mid-range imaging performance

A selection of digital images taken with the Nokia 6210 Navigator to show the quality of its 3.2-megapixel camera

Published on Aug 23, 2008

The Sat Nav equipped Nokia 6210 Navigator is a mid-range smartphone with a mid-tier 3.2-megapixel camera.

The 6210 Navigator's camera hasn't got the Carl Zeiss optics of its higher-spec 5-megapixel cameraphone stablemates, but it does have an autofocus system inside, and sports an LED flash.

It can take images that are acceptably large for regular-sized photographic prints, at up to 2048 x1536 pixels resolution with its main camera. There's a secondary low res camera, too, on the front panel above the display, for video calling and low quality QVGA self portraits.

Features
A camera key on the side of the phone can be used to launch the shooter; the 2.4inch screen immediately rotates into landscape viewfinder mode. The camera key is also a 2-step shooting button, enabling you to lock the autofocus onto a particular subject before taking an image, enabling you to compose better images. The volume rocker does zoom in/out duties with the 4x digital zoom.

Onscreen, there's a frame in the centre of the screen for the autofocus; you half depress the camera button and wait for it to turn green to indicate focus has been locked.You can then shoot with the in-focus subject central or adjust the camera position before pressing.

There's a fairly routine selection of adjustments you can make to the default automatic metering system, plus a reasonable variety of shooting settings. You can pull up a list of options and scroll through to various sub menus to make changes, and there's a toolbar you can set to appear for quick activation of the main options - video capture, panorama shot, night mode, multi-shot, flash, and secondary camera.

Within the menus, you can set the flash to on/off or auto, engage a self-timer (10, 20 or 30 seconds), and there's a sub menu set aside for picture adjustments: brightness, contrast, white balance (auto, sunny, cloudy, incandescent and fluorescent)and colour tones (normal, sepia, black and white and negative).

Post shooting there are some basic image and video editing tools available to tweak your photos. Also available is the now standard Nokia online upload facility to add pics and video clips to blogs and websites. The Share online app makes it easy to upload images to supported sites, including Flickr Vox and Nokia's own Ovi portal.

Performance
With its mid-range type of camera, the 6210 Navigator puts in a decent mid-range imaging performance. Its autofocus set up works well and is responsive enough. The camera is capable of working well in a variety of external lighting conditions, though naturally, good bright light will get you the best results.

The auto metering system normally works well, and handles exposure and contrast levels effectively; it deals well with subtle tone changes between light and dark. Occasionally we found colours could be slightly washed out (possibly owing to white balance misreading in variable lighting), but mostly we found colour reproduction pleasant and natural.

The low-light performance in dark environments isn't great, however. The LED flash doesn't produce as much effective illumination as a xenon camera flash (such as the one used on the 6220 classic and N82), and shots taken with the flash quite close to a subject can turn out quite murky.

Fine image detail is limited by the megapixel count, so you can't expect the same level of image information as you'd get from Nokia's big-punching 5-megapixel top enders, but for its class the 3.2-megapixel camera on this phone can produce very acceptable, decent quality shots.

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With a mix of stromg lighting conditions and cloudy skies, the camera manages to capture a striking image, with a decent amount of detail for a 3.2-megapixel camera, and good colour handling of the sky tones
This street scene has plenty going on, but the camera manages to maintain a good colour balance and exposure level; contrast in the background of the picture is reasonable too, though detail is limited
By using the autofocus, you can change the way an image looks. Here we focused on the bike handle (pressing the shooting button halfway) and pulled up slightly to take in the market stalks. In this shot the market is out of focus

In this shot, using the autofocus to change the focal point of the shot, the market stalls in the background are in focus, while the bike handle in the foreground is soft
The camera can render colours brightly, with vivid natural tones reproduced very well
The 6210 Navigator's autofocus system is decent at mid-range and close-up shots; the camera here captures the rich colours of the sunflower and you can see a good level of detail

In this shot, there's a commendable amount of detail in the close-up shot. With subdued lighting though, the vibrant colours of the flower are somewhat washed out
In indirect light, the camera can still produce a decent amount of detail and sharp, well-balanced shots
This shot taken inside under fluorescent lighting appears to capture the image reasonably well, but when it's blown up you can see that detail is soft and colours are muted