[Nexus 5 General] Oli1122:
Right, so with a bold statement like "the nexus 5 is the best camera you have ever owned" you probably think i'm completely crazy. But I would like to try and see if I can explain why I made such a statement in the first place. With many of you mentioning how the camera doesn't measure up to other phones on the market and comments discrediting it all over the forum I though I needed to point out a few things.

1) The image stabilization is amazing. Literally stunning. Having recently been to see Bring me the horizon I decided to use the phone to take a few photos and some video of the gig. Now while the nexus 5 may not be the only phone on the market with good OIS it is most definitely one of the best. Have a look at some of the videos below, all were filmed completely hand held, and while the audio may be poor (ill get to this later) it is still a very good image considering the conditions.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/evPUs6pIeW0

http://www.youtube.com/embed/K2u-gR-XLVc

2) Low light performance is amazing too. Many people have compared this to the photos from the HTC One, and iPhone 5 saying that the Nexus 5 doesn't bring out enough light in certain areas and that the colours are off, but if you look at it properly and check the colours you find that the Nexus 5 produces much sharper, less over saturated and less hazy night time shots. Some people like the over-saturated look but honestly from the point of view of a photographer, your better to take a 'flat' image from the phone and edit it than try and edit a poor image from the HTC One. Of course I will admit the Lumia 1020 blows any other phone out of the water, but its hardly a fair fight..

Although the G2 appears brighter in this image, the nexus 5 still wins on colour accuracy, that is however subject to opinion.

3) The Nexus 5 is aimed with amateur photographers in mind. The little ring around the back camera, yep that glass bit. Its magnetic which makes for very easy mounting of mobile extension lenses, this coupled with the very powerful new image editing tool in the gallery seems to hint that Google want to help you get more out of your photos. More importantly the editor is now non destructive, meaning you can undo all changes and get your original image back very easily. :good:

4) Nexus 5 images are a editors dream (when it comes to smartphones anyway). As mentioned above the Nexus 5 creates almost reference style images it makes editing, colour correction, exposure correction amazing and camera software updates on the way and a few improved camera apps in the play store, it can out put some very detailed near RAW quality images which a a joy to edit, not some of the over processed rubbish the iphone 5 and HTC output.

5) The aperture, while only being f2.4 it is still a reasonably wide aperture which means that it can do lovely close ups and in good lighting conditions its better than most point and shoot cameras. The camera is very sharp when compared to many other and while some people may say that the videos and photos in low light can get a little grainy but I think its at an acceptable level.

Sound quality, now although above I said the sound quality was poor, under normal conditions it performs very well, the problem in my videos was that I was at Brixton O2 and they have a 9000w audio system (for comparison your average disco is around 2500w) and this is made worse by me being stood three meters away from the subs.

Shutter lag, something I forgot when first writing this, is completely software based, many of the free camera apps on the play store fix this issue and I am sure goggle will fix this with an update soon!

So what im really trying to say is...

The Nexus 5 is the phone Google are branding as a way to keep memories, right from the first ad its has been sold as the phone to document life with and I think it really does a good job of that, yes the photos aren't DSLR standard but thats not what its about, its about making sure you get the shot, that memory captured to keep with you. I think the real ethos of the nexus 5 is the phone for life, and in that sense I think it does an amazing job.

But really the most important thing to remember is that

The best camera in the world is the one that you have on you at the time!​