Sony Ericsson C902 camera samples

The C902 is one of Sony Ericsson's higher range Cyber-shot branded cameraphones, featuring a 5-megapixel camera and a photo-friendly digital camera-style user interface that includes touch sensitive controls.

The photo-centric Cyber-shot mobiles series takes technology cues from Sony's standalone digital camera lineup, and are designed to offer mobile users a high quality photo experience. With a 5-megapixel camera, the Sony Ericsson C902 should be capable of producing high resolution images that look sharp and detailed in standard photo print size.

The camera's autofocus system gives you control over image composition, with a face detection option for better shots of people and a macro setting for sharp close ups. Many other control adjustments are available for overriding the automatic metering system and adding effects. There's also an image stabiliser and multi-shot options, plus a range of post shooting editing and picture tweaking software pre-loaded.

The C902 is a 3G phone, so as well as the main camera on the back, there's a secondary low resolution camera on the front for video calling.

Image resolution
The main camera can capture images at a maximum size of 2592x1944 pixels, although users can choose several lower settings (3mp, 1mp and VGA) if they don't need that high quality level for snaps, and/or want to save memory.

The C902's camera is hidden away beneath a slide out cover, which extends 13mm from the top of the phone. In regular use, there's no clue where the camera is the phone's slimline body, but slide open the cover and the lens and flash peep out. This action automatically fires up the camera on the phone's display, and switches it into a camera-like landscape view.

Unlike the K850i, the C902's predecessor in Sony Ericsson's Cyber-shot line-up, the C902 doesn't have a high quality camera-style Xenon flash, relying instead on an LED photo flash. While this does shed light onto darker images, it doesn't have the power of a Xenon flash and lacks subtlety for in-filling illumination for close up shots - colours of near subjects can look burned out.

Features
Holding the phone in landscape orientation, like a regular camera, there's a dedicated camera shutter button on the side, and the volume keys double up as the zoom - there's up to 16x digital zoom, depending on which image size setting you're using.
The display is a modest-sized 2-inch 262K-colour QVGA screen, and in camera mode eight touch sensitive icon buttons appear in rows above and below it.

The touch sensitive buttons are on hand to provide quick and easy access to certain key settings adjustments and features. The bottom row comprises buttons for Shoot mode (auto, BestPIc, panorama and frames), Scenes (shooting exposure settings, including auto, twilight landscape, landscape, portrait, beach/snow, sports and document), timer, and flash on or off.

Above the display, you get buttons for switching between camera, video capture and the image gallery, plus a focus setting (auto, face detection, macro and infinite).

Some of these buttons are used in conjunction with the phone's main D-pad, which is used to select options. It's easy, intuitive stuff - and handy to - that echoes the basic buttons on a standalone digital camera. Similarly, a Settings softkey pulls up onscreen the full rundown of settings adjustments.

Among the settings, BestPics offers a clever way of capturing the exact image you're after (particularly good for dynamic scenes, such as sports), by presenting a range of shots captured fractions of a second before and after you've actually pressed the shutter. This clever technology works very well.

Additional features include metering settings and white balance adjustment (auto, daylight, cloudy, fluorescent, incandescent), colour effects (black and white, negative, sepia, solarize) plus picture quality adjustment, digital stabiliser activation, and Add position - a geotagging option that adds location metadata in conjunction with the phone's Google Maps application. This positioning info allows you to view images superimposed on maps of where they were shot, addressing that "Now, where was that taken..?" question.

Performance
With its Cyber-shot pedigree, it's no surprise that the quality of images taken with the Sony Ericsson C902 is very high compared to most cameraphones. Images are sharp and detailed, with excellent colour rendition and good handling of varying lighting conditions. The camera's automatic metering system adjusts quickly and efficiently, and auto exposure is usually impressively handled. The camera also deals very well with high contrast images.

The quality of images from the cameraphone may not be as good as a high quality 5-megapixel digital camera, but for a mobile phone, results are very good indeed - among the best currently around in good lighting.

The LED flash is disappointing for low-light illumination, however. It isn't as effective as the Xenon flash used the Sony Ericsson K850i Cyber-shot phone. Low-light shots without the flash however are much better than average for a mobile phone.

The 2-step autofocus system enables users to compose images as they want, focusing on particular subjects within an image and setting metering levels accordingly rather than simply point-and-shooting and hoping for the best as you would with a fixed focus lens. This provides much more flexibility for creating interesting images, and the C902's software is exceptionally responsive. The face detection and macro modes do their jobs very well, with the former picking out faces in busy scenes even in lower light.

We would have preferred a larger display as a viewfinder, and for perusing and editing images once taken. Nonetheless, the Sony Ericsson C902 puts in a fine performance as a camera in an attractive, ultra-slimline package.