Nokia faked the still photos too

http://sefsar.com/nokia-faked-the-still-photos-too

by peritpatrio • 14 years ago

295 116 14 years ago

eckyptang2• 14 years ago

There is definitely something up. The Register got their hands on one but the minders managed to stop them sending the photo externally:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/05/handson_nokia_lumia_...

"Alas, the Minders leapt into Red Alert mode to prevent me transmitting the results, you'll have to take my word for it."

joethompson3• 14 years ago

They are as noted prototype devices – with no announced release date – so it's completely in the realm of possibility that the camera simply isn't ready yet. Of course that doesn't excuse the misleading video and pictures Nokia used to advertise it.

wisty2• 14 years ago

The one actually marked "taken on a prototype" looks legit - tonnes of ISO noise.

drats• 14 years ago

Andrew Orlowski has to be one of the most unreliable troll journalists and last person who's word I will take at face value.

eckyptang2• 14 years ago

I agree and I take things he says lightly, but he's right on this one.

tribeofone2• 14 years ago

This is too funny. And on top of all this, the sheer comedy of the ad. I mean whats going on here? Is this supposed to be some date night? A couple on vacation? No. Felt more like a guy who somehow landed a girlfriend/date above his league and is trying to get as much as possible on camera to show his friends because they won't believe him.

CamperBob2• 14 years ago

That, and the example shots all look like someone picked the wrong LASIK surgeon.

kleiba• 14 years ago

No way... Fake pictures in ads? Who would have thought!

TeMPOraL2• 14 years ago

It's not just a picture IN ad, it's also picture OF what's advertised, and that, at least in some parts of the world, is required by law to be real.

goblin893• 14 years ago

I guess it depends on the amount of ‘real’.

Is post-processing allowed, for example? If yes, everything including light spikes could be claimed to be artificially added, not resulting from using different equipment. If pictures are required to be straight from the camera—well, there still are inevitable pre-production and (more importantly) RAW conversion steps.

There's a need for more complex regulations here.

goblin893• 14 years ago

I've heard[0] that ‘big’ camera makes like Canon or Nikon regularly advertise their products using photos made with completely different equipment. It would be more surprising if Nokia used actual photos made with Lumia in promotion materials, I guess.

[0] http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d3/h3d-1.htm: “For those of us in the press (Ken), we laughed when we looked at the EXIF data of Nikon's PR photos of the D3. They were shot in a studio, so of course Nikon had them shot with an appropriate camera: a $30,000 Phase One P45 back.” Anecdotal evidence, but I'm unable to find another source, so take it with a grain of salt.

raverbashing• 14 years ago

I wonder what the manufacturers of the P45 use to take their fake pictures =)

dagw• 14 years ago

Let's be careful about what we're talking about here. If the pictures are of the actual camera and are about showing the physical product then they're no doubt often shot in a studio with a proper studio camera. That's (probably) what Ken is talking about and there is nothing underhand about that.

If on the other hand the pictures are about showing what kind of results the camera can produce then I very much doubt they'd risk faking it by using a different camera.

epo• 14 years ago

Rockwell is a noted self-publicist with a politician's reputation for truth and accuracy. Nikon can take their PR shots with whatever is best, should P&S publicity shots be taken with that P&S model? Of course not. If on the other they take photos with professional equipment and claim or imply that it was taken with a mobile phone then that is deceitful.

M4v3R• 14 years ago

How Apple advertises their camera in iPhone: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1127246/Screenshots/sb53.png

You can say what you want about Apple, but they did it right. Unretouched photos. Full-res available for download.

Source: http://www.apple.com/iphone/built-in-apps/camera.html

mtgx3• 14 years ago

Kudos to Apple for using real pictures, but this also made me realize how I hope phone cameras become much better and soon, because that pictures looks quite blurry to me. But at least they are showing people exactly what they can buy, instead of some fake or heavily retouched image that won't be reproduced in real life by 99.9% of the iPhone users.

ivanbernat• 14 years ago

Why so much hate on Nokia?

zoul• 14 years ago

Because using fake stills is something people are not happy about?

LaRakel• 14 years ago

Because clearly, they lie about what their products can do.

Monotoko• 14 years ago

People have done that since the dawn of radio adverts and billboards...

tribeofone2• 14 years ago

This stinks of Microsoft. Only one of their ad agencies could put together such a soulless dramatization of a couple's date night.

forgottenpaswrd• 14 years ago

Because from love to hate there is only one step. When you trust someone or something you don't want to be taken advantage of.

A friend of mine loved his Nokia's phones. He always bought Nokia for 10 years during his teenage years because they were very good phones. He had good memories of those times.

He wished he could buy Nokia again, get super enthusiastic with the videos and now he discovers that he has been fooled. F*ck them!!

cooldeal• 14 years ago

Because this is HN, which is heavily anti-MS and where people cling to their iPhones and Android devices and love to hate on the platforms they don't use.

Or else why would the actual announcement articles get only around 30-40 points(which were later flagged off the front page anyway!) but this one is already close to 200 points. Winsupersite.com is hell banned on HN from even being submitted because of the haters flagging articles to death. Go figure.

anovikov5• 14 years ago

I can say precisely which lens was used to make that photo: Canon EF 17-40 L USM on a DSLR. Or some other very, very similar lens. No photographer can mistake this for anything.

Like this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/meonoctis/5661946485/in/set-721...

neya• 14 years ago

Wow. Are you a professional photographer? If yes, nice to see you in here! =)

cgs10192• 14 years ago

Wait...why can you say (very, very precisely) that lens (or similar) was the one used? Because of this other picture? I see no resemblance... Would you mind elaborating? I have no idea what you are implying or why.

SquareWheel3• 14 years ago

The shine on the lights appear very similar, to me. But I am no professional

anovikov5• 14 years ago

I just mean it is a lens with a very similar optical schema than the Canon 17-40L. The diffraction pattern around light sources is very similar. I played around with this lens some time before with my previous DSLR (now i am a Nikon user) and enjoyed it really. I don't mean it was exactly that lens, but something very close - definitely not fixed f/2.0 cheap lens of a smartphone, that kind of halo with 'rays' around light sources is possible only with a lens having many internal components which will be too thick to fit into a smartphone, and not f/2.0, and of course too expensive for a smartphone.

So i fully agree with the article saying it was a fake.

SquareWheel3• 14 years ago

Just as an aside, what is with the comments? Does every user have their own "award" to present?

SquareWheel3• 14 years ago

Wow, never been so downvoted before. I didn't realize everybody was so familiar with the Flickr website and this award business was common knowledge. For the record, I did Google it and couldn't find any relevant information.

Cripes, I asked a simple question.

Evbn3• 14 years ago

It is the comment spam mechanism on Flickr.

mehrshad• 14 years ago

I thought the backdrop looked familiar. The first and third photos were taken next to the Sokos Hotel Vaakuna (located across the rail depot), where I stayed when I was in Helsinki in late June, at the time of the summer solstice (20+ hours of light). I'm no photography expert like anovikov, but I can attest that the street lighting was nowhere near as bright as depicted in these photos, even at 2am when it was darkest (dark = same brightness in the sky as first photo).

Now it's perfectly normal to slightly alter promotional collateral as long as there's some YMMV caveat. But with such a flagrant abuse of consumer trust as presented here, it calls into question just how desperate Nokia is that they need to misrepresent a core feature of their savior product.

sesqu• 14 years ago

The lighting was artificial[1]. I don't mind that part as much though, it's the professional camera that's more disingenuous.

[1] https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/578446_101510870...

brk• 14 years ago

For most people shooting Canon gear the 24-105L is the much more common go-to lens for street shots like this.

For true pros, the 16-35L would be more common than the 17-40L, since it is an f/2.8 instead of f/4.0 lens. It's almost a given that anyone shooting Canon owns the 24-105L, so when opting for a wider angle lens the 17-40 and 16-35 are your two most common choices. The 16-35 gives you the wide-angle, PLUS lower f/stop (The 24-105L is f/4.0 also)

I don't think you can tell with any degree of certainly which specific lens was used for these shots.

anovikov5• 14 years ago

Agree, i cannot. Probably not 24-105, but any other of these easily.

deepGem• 14 years ago

Not to miss the 24-70 f/2.8L

jonah2• 14 years ago

"Professional driver on closed course."

"Screen image is simulated."

"Product enlarged to show detail."

etc. etc.

Yes, yes, we like "truth" and all. Especially when they're selling a camera after all, but getting a great cameraphone image and getting an image that will work on tv are two different things. No real surprise. Maybe disappointment, but no suprise.

coob• 14 years ago

Except there's no implying or warning, just outright lying about this being a sample image.

jonah2• 14 years ago

Agreed. They should have small disclaimer text at the bottom. And that's what everyone should be up in arms about, not that they faked it in the first place.

I know there are rules for food advertising, but don't know about other types of products... There's not a safety liability issue like with cars, but.

nhebb• 14 years ago

Wait, does this mean that the Eggo Nutri-Grain waffles are not healthy for my kids? But what if I add "farm fresh" butter and "fat free" syrup? My world is spinning out of control.

Dylan168072• 14 years ago

I must be missing something because I don't see what's unhealthy about those waffles. They're primarily made of flour, not issue there, and they're not particularly high in fat. It's not like they're sugar-glazed cereal.

kmfrk• 14 years ago

In a country with decent consumer laws, they'd probably get slapped with a suit or fine for false advertizing, if they used this to promote a product that could be bought or ordered.

MartinCron• 14 years ago

This is more like "Professional driver on closed course in a completely different car than the one we're selling you"

yread2• 14 years ago

I wonder why did they do that, it was pretty obvious. The second picture looks good enough.

moneypenny• 14 years ago

I might be able to take that photo on that phone. I would use a high-output continuous light balanced with gels to match the ambient colour, and create diffraction stars by putting a cross filter in front of the lens. I think it's fake too, but I'd have a go at making it.

digitalengineer3• 14 years ago

There's only one way out of this for Nokia. They need to release new photo's and video's created with the new Nokia Wndows 8 Phone right the f* now. With as much EXIF and/or metadata as possible. If I was Nokia I'd hire the best photographer-artist the world knows and make a big splash about it.

yread2• 14 years ago

Maybe they are planning to do just that. How else would they miss the truck reflection - isn't that way too obvious?

digitalengineer3• 14 years ago

You'd be suprized how often mistakes are overlooked (mostly due to tight deadlines). Have a look at http://www.psdisasters.com/p/greatest-hits.html for a good laugh.

infinity• 14 years ago

On the other hand, it is very easy to edit and fake EXIF and metadata. Adding EXIF data fields to demo pictures does not increase the credibility.

digitalengineer3• 14 years ago

All right. How about hiring the best photographer-artist and letting people sign up and co-create photo's with them? Everything will auto-upload to the cloud in the artist's album live. No cheating there and I'd sure go for an experience like that.

jswanson2• 14 years ago

Or they could just pretend this never happened.

A search on Google News (anecdotal, yes) https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws...

None of the articles have anything related to this in the title, and the first three articles do not mention any faking.

It feels like a big issue in tech-savvy circles on the internet. But I doubt most consumers know or care.

strager• 14 years ago

The second result for me (posted 7 minutes ago) is related to this topic: http://i.imgur.com/oJQYf.png

zerostar07• 14 years ago

Then you 'd have to make the same demands from the whole advertising industry (so Ghandi never used Macs? who knew!)

mtgx3• 14 years ago

Nokia has been very very misleading about pretty much everything their phone can do, from the PureView naming to how the actual photos and videos look like.

vowelless• 14 years ago

Here is an apology from Nokia: http://conversations.nokia.com/2012/09/06/an-apology-is-due/

Here are videos (OIS off and on) shot with a Lumia 920: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6...

mtgx3• 14 years ago

They need to release one for the photos, too, now. It's not just the photos from that video, but others as well. This is turning into a PR disaster for Nokia. Companies should remember that ethics and truth pays out in the end. Nokia has been too close to Microsoft lately, and some of Microsoft's habits must've rubbed off on them.

anonymfus• 14 years ago

>Here are videos (OIS off and on) shot with a Lumia 920

OIS in Lumia 920 can not be turned off, it's different phone. In presentation they showed photo of special device holding both phones for producing comparation videos.

jswanson2• 14 years ago

Even the apology for being vague and somewhat underhanded is somewhat.. underhanded.

  Here is the video shown at the press conference shot using a Lumia 920. On the right is a Lumia 920 prototype with OIS. On the left is a smartphone without OIS. The difference is apparent.

Notice they specify 'a smartphone'. The wording shifts the focus from the camera to OIS, and then they must have used a completely different phone for the comparison. Weird.

manaskarekar3• 14 years ago

It could have been an older Nokia Lumia, but they wouldn't want to admit that publicly.

gvb• 14 years ago

Interesting future tense in the apology: "[W]e produced a video that simulates what we will be able to deliver with OIS." (emphasis mine).

When will they be able to deliver?

Steko• 14 years ago

How to botch your annual device announcement; you know the one the whole company is riding on by Stephen Elop with a special Forward by the guys who ran RIM into the shitter.

ioulian• 14 years ago

Funny that people ignore the fake facetime video's of iphone because it's from apple, and keep bashing microsoft because it's microsoft.

Fake advertisements, it's nothing new, EVERYBODY does that. Think real

chucknelson• 14 years ago

Apple has a disclaimer about "simulated" images in most of their commercials, and if you look at their dedicated facetime ads [1] where they don't have a disclaimer, you'll notice...that is how facetime actually looks and works.

[1] http://youtu.be/RxVzP_OWnDw?hd=1

josefresco• 14 years ago

*Sequences shortened

Ono-Sendai• 14 years ago

A small camera with a small aperture and smaller sensor than a DSLR will produce a greater amount of aperture diffraction than a DSLR, at the same f-value.

leke• 14 years ago

http://yle.fi/uutiset/nokia_apologises_for_misleading_lumia_... Confusion? This is deceit! A video of just OIS? The Video states at the end, "This is Lumia". It seems the once honest Nokia has picked up some bad habits from their partnership with MicroSoft.

antonyme• 14 years ago

What's sad is not only the dishonesty about the material, but what it says about the product.

Do they simply not have enough confidence in their own flagship smartphone, with an apparently world-beating camera, to show an actual unretouched shot? A great way to crap all over the launch.

manaskarekar3• 14 years ago

I think this is more of just a pigheaded move by the advertising team.

Nokia camera's have been good in the past and I have no doubt this is probably a good one.

One ad campaign is short lived, the photos taken by consumers who buy the phone on the other hand will continue to trickle in. It doesn't make too much sense for them to rely on this fact.

What the whole brouhaha is that they probably thought 'It's just an ad, everyone does it, every knows how ice cream in ice cream ads is not real ice cream. And the delicious burger never looks the same in real life either.'

Here's an interesting video from McDonalds on how they make their burgers look great. They admit the shortcomings of a real burger in the looks department and how they make it look so good.

http://youtu.be/oSd0keSj2W8

ajanuary• 14 years ago

In most markets the ice cream in an ice cream ad has to be ice cream. The ice cream in non-ice cream ads, on the other hand, can be anything.

jcr• 14 years ago

In case the HN submission of the following doesn't float to the front page, it seems Nokia has apologized for the fake advertisement:

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19499879

EDIT: The HN submission

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4483817

bradddd2• 14 years ago

So there WAS a reflection to go all CSI on.

Also, terrible that their response is simply that they should have "posted a disclaimer."

RKearney• 14 years ago

They're not sorry for the lies and intentional deceit. They're just sorry they got caught.

exDM693• 14 years ago

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/578446_101510870...

A friend of mine shot this in Helsinki. Low lighting conditions, Nokia style.

agscala• 14 years ago

Well there you go, case closed.

youssefsarhan• 14 years ago

Thanks. Updated. I'd like to credit him, if he has a preferred link.

exDM693• 14 years ago

His request: please add copyright johaee (at) gmail.com. Don't remove the watermark in the image.

alzy• 14 years ago

The internet is amazing.

fardolui2• 14 years ago

Site www.standard.at uses photo with almost completely removed watermark - just wanted to let you know (full link http://derstandard.at/1345166647161/Nokias-PR-Desaster-Auch-...).

exDM693• 14 years ago

I can't see the photo in there, have they changed it? All I can see is a link to this thread.

brudgers2• 14 years ago

Faking images for a product rollout appears to be common mobile-electronics industry practice. Apple faked a video still from Star Trek and made a fake video of the New York Times for their iPad introduction.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Apple-Exposed-As-Liars-in-Fak...

http://www.macrumors.com/2010/02/22/apples-ipad-nytimes-prom...

I wonder if Nokia cross-licensed Apple's patent.

wklauss• 14 years ago

Id argue that there is a difference of intent in these two cases. Nokia is deceiving customers about a specific function or capability (camera) while Apple is just showing a promotional video of the device as a whole. Both cases are reprehensible, no doubt, but maybe I'm the only one who think that Nokia has gone a little too far.

Lets think of these in terms of food. Its not the same to show a "perfect Big Mac" in and ad than it is to show a Big Mac thats made with completely different ingredients of the ones you'll find when you order one.

Splines• 14 years ago

I'd give Nokia a pass if they took pictures in a very optimal conditions to show their products in the best possible light. Heck, I'd be probably ok if they didn't even use a real phone but some sort of prototype that was very, very similar. But using a completely different camera to show "this is what it could look like, maybe" seems like just outright lying.

The unfortunate thing for Nokia is that unless their product actually can perform like this they are going to have many disappointed customers.

For all we know, the new Nokia phone is actually a potato.

brudgers2• 14 years ago

Apple showed the iPad displaying Flash content as a way of showcasing the browsing experience consumers could expect. In addition they manipulated a still image to sell the iPad as a device for watching movies. The choice of a still image was based upon an intent to deceive potential customers about the shortcomings of the 4:3 format of the iPad.

In the case of the iPad watching feature films is probably about equivalent to using the camera on a smartphone. On the other hand, browsing the web is a primary function of the device, and there was no way the iPad was getting Flash.

Dylan168072• 14 years ago

That's not faking device capabilities. It's just faking what a particular movie looks like. Nokia's doing something on an entirely different level.

tripzilch• 14 years ago

So the final photo in that article is actually shot with the real Nokia phone camera?

Because it looks really good. They didn't need to have faked anything.

esolyt• 14 years ago

I don't understand why they need this.

They made a gorgeous and great device. It probably has one of the best smartphone cameras ever. Because of what they did, now everyone is talking about how they faked the photos instead of talking about the phone. A friend of mine even emailed Nokia and asked "Will the Lumia 920 also have the built-in CIV (cameraman in van) feature?"

Apologizing isn't going to change anything. People are going to keep making fun of Nokia for a long time about this.

muratmutlu• 14 years ago

Nokia N97 promo video was also riddled with fakeness http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1231464

Lightfoot2• 14 years ago

When I have a look on the photo, I think that the depth has to be remarkably long. That is because the sign "RESTAURANT" looks very clear. In other words small aperture and short exposure time. This is not taken by Lumia camera shot.

Lightfoot2• 14 years ago

Kirjoitin jo englanniksi. Katuvalojen lisäksi kiinnitän huomiota kylttiin "RAVINTOLA". Pitkällä valotusajalla se "Neonvalo" tms puuroutuisi. Nyt se näkyy selkeästi eli kyseessä on pieni aukko ja lyhyt valotusaika.

Nokia faked the still photos too

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