Did Nokia fake the still photos in its Lumia 920 ad, too?

Nokia admitted that its Lumia 920 promotional ad contained video recorded by a DSLR and not its PureView camera as claimed in the video. According to a post by Youssef Sarhan, the Finnish company also faked some of the still photos in that video, too.

Sarhan points to the still picture above that allegedly shows the optical image stabilization of the Lumia 920. He notes that the sparkles shown in the background street lights could not have been produced by the Lumia camera, which has a fixed aperture of f/2. This effect is only present in photos captured with camera that’s set to a higher aperture like f/22. It’s a common photography effect that occurs in night shots like the one above.

To further support his claim, Sarhan produces a second photo taken with the Lumia 920 that shows the smooth background lighting you would expect from a f/2 camera. The difference is very noticeable. If that wasn’t enough evidence for you, he also obtained a picture of the Helsinki photo shoot from Hacker News user exDM69 that shows the lens of a DSLR pointed directly at the model. You can view that photo below.

It’s possible that Nokia used the DSLR for other purposes, but the photographic evidence above is pretty convincing. So what do you think, did Nokia fake the still photos, too? Or is there some other explanation for the sparkles in that first photo?

[Via The Loop and Youssef Sarhan]

About The Author

Kelly Hodgkins

Kelly spent the last four years covering mobile technology at places like BGR, Gizmodo and The Unofficial Apple Weblog. Before writing, she spent a few years working with and teaching others how to use Adobe Flash and Macromedia Director. Even earlier than that, she spent several years as a Ph.D student in Microbiology. When she's not writing, she can be found fishing the lakes and hiking the mountains of Western Maine with her husband and tribe of children. You can follow her on Twitter @kellyhodgkins.

Anonymous

if it is true, at least it is not as obvious as those Siri commercials………..
Anonymous

Yes, that’s a no brainier. they faked everything else so of course all the stills are fake too. False advertising If our going to size up a camera, at least make it believable. Come on Nokia. Now i doubt the camera’s true power
- Anonymous
  
  Yes, Miss Wh***. Just after reading your name, no need to tell u anything.
Gregory C Newman

before you say Nokia did it ask Nokia who produced the pictures for them because big companies
frequently hire Advertisement agencies and they may or may not give them photos to work with and if they do the advertisement departments special in house photo processing experts will reprocess the photographs to make them more dramatic to the viewer. It may be that Nokia has hired some very unprofessional advertisement agency to do the photo and Video work for them. If this is the Case Nokia may be able to sue them or at least ask for their money back. I worked in Video Production and know that post processing can make or break a good video Production. and advertisement agencies will without doubt doctor Video or Photos to make it look better to the target viewers. if in house Nokia people did this Mr Elop could have cause to fire them
Anonymous

Kelly Hodgkins

Nokia purposely set out to deceive people with their photo. This was not an issue of just using the wrong photo by mistake. The Camera production was setup for the purpose to deceive the market.
- Anonymous
  
  Yeah, good try to discredit Nokia. Same things were tried when 808 came out. People doubted and tried very hard to downplay the 808 camera. Same is going on now for 920.
  Once the device is released, all your whining will be shut down. Your mouths will be sealed. The tech blogs won’t have any such sensational stories(from Nokia) to write then to attract more traffic to their websites.
Gregory C Newman

The Verge working with Nokia actually tested the lumia 920′s picture taking abilities and found out that it takes good pictures in low light conditions. The Nokia Lumia 920′s camera is working just fine The Crew who made the video’ or produced any faked still did not have fake anything.
sometimes commercial production crews do get Stupid and try to enhance things to make the product look better. Mr Elop could fire these People for their mistakes. maybe he should. wow
what a dumb situation Nokia has gotten itself into their smart phone camera is good and they have to do damage control because People who should have known better screwed up bigtime
Anonymous

Where is the reporting on the Verge’s photo challenge that Nokia did, which showed the prowess of 920 and proved all the skeptics wrong? (in photos so far).
in OIS also very soon too.