Nokia Refocus in detail

The Finnish company Nokia presented in the past Nokia World 2013 a new and interesting photographic functionality that it named Nokia Refocus. Thanks to this, the user could choose the focus point of the image after capturing the image.

In this way we would avoid, to a large extent, photos with a bad focus in which the background is very clear and what we want to photograph is completely blurred. This is possible because we can obtain a well-focused image in the entire range or make a selective focus in real time, all after taking the photograph, from your own Lumia with camera PureView or share it from the Internet.

ReFocus Demo: Click on different areas of the image / icon=all in focus

Shoot first, focus later

Nokia Refocus comes as one more Nokia application, and you can download it from Windows Phone Store free, as long as you have one of the compatible smartphones: Lumia 920, Lumia 925, Lumia 928 and Lumia 1020 (at least upgraded to Nokia Amber).

The next generation of Lumia smartphones with PureView, which we already saw at Nokia World 2013, will be factory compatible with this curious application. Actually, we have already seen a technology that promises the same thing, read Lytro, MEMS cameras that allow the image to be captured as a sum of light rays and not in a specific way as pixels. This way you can change the focus later.

"Nokia, thanks to the technologies behind the PureView brand, has been able to replicate this functionality and becomes the first mobile company to offer it on smartphones.As you can see below, the result is very good, you just have to click on the area you want to focus on and you will have the image refocused in that area, or press the All focused button and enjoy the entire image sharp and focused. "

Nokia Refocus interface and usage

Nokia has created an application with a very simple interface where the user can simply point and shoot to take his photograph and keeping the mobile still for about two seconds results in an image like this:

Once captured we can see it from the smartphone, choose which area to focus on or see the entire scene focused in a similar way to how we would get a photograph if we used a very small aperture in traditional photography, for example f/ 16. However, this type of photography would require a long capture time and a tripod would be needed to be able to take a clear photograph, so Nokia proposes a solution structured in parts.

Another of the functionalities that we can use afterwards is a small creative tool that Nokia has introduced and that allows us to create a color filter, resulting in impressive images. Surely many of you have seen images of London in B/W with the buses in their original red, or of New York with the typical yellow of its taxis standing out on the B/W of the streets.

We are talking about the Colour Pop functionality that was already integrated into previous Nokia apps such as Nokia Creative Suite. With Color Pop we can select which color to highlight in the image and the rest will be converted into a pseudo black and white image.

The effect that can be created can border on the professional and, most interestingly, if this type of effect previously required the use of a computer and an hour or so of retouching, now we can do it in a matter of seconds with a Lumia mobile.

How does Nokia Refocus work?

Nokia Refocus is an application that makes use of the which is known as computational photography or what is the same, working with several images simultaneously to create a final image. This concept will sound familiar to many users if we focus on what is known as bracketing in traditional photography or HDR photography.

In this case that we are discussing, HDR photography, several captures are used in a short period of time with different exposures (EV ) to end up obtaining a series of 2 - 5 photographs that will be merged and that will allow us to observe an image much richer in detail in high contrast situations: backlighting, dark areas such as shadows in very bright situations and even in the skies, usually burned in photographs in full sunlight.

Nokia Refocus aims to achieve shooting scenes with a great difference in depth of field (DoF), that is, objects very close to the camera and very far away, being able to focus clearly on one and the other because they are in different planes of focus. It is something that is highly noticeable in macro photography, you take a photograph of a very close object and it comes out in focus while the rest of the image, the background, appears blurry / out of focus.

Nokia's approach to solving this problem is similar to that taken with HDR in traditional photography, it captures a series of images, from 2 to 8 images (depending on the objects in the scene) of 5 Mpx in a short period of time, less than two seconds. And on this occasion what varies in the captures is not EV as in HDR but rather a focus sweep at different distances depending on the scene to be photographed.

Once captured Nokia Refocus performs the assembly, which is known as focus stacking , of the final image that we can see fully focused or choose which area to focus on (each of the captured images) from the mobile. Video sample of the focus stacking technique .

You can also share your photo on SkyDrive, Facebook or by email and most interestingly, not only share a photo with other Lumia users with PureView, but you can also share the Refocus image over the Internet with any Internet user so you can play with the focus in real time thanks to the portal refocus.nokia.com.

ReFocus Demo: Click on different areas of the image / icon=all in focus

Without a doubt, it is another of the differential characteristics compared to the rest of the competition in smartphones. Nokia has stepped up its paces when it comes to photographic features and who are we kidding? Smartphones are replacing compact cameras in the most cases.

Nokia RefocusVersion 1.0.1.1

• Developer: Nokia Corporation
• Download it at: Windows Phone Store
• Price: Free
• Category: Photography

Nokia Refocus is an application that promises the possibility of taking pictures directly and being able to focus later. The result is very good and from Xataka Windows we invite you to try it.