The only reason the N97 overexposes is because it has a problem with the plastic that covers the lens (I'm not talking about the lens cover) and has a tendency to meter incorrectly. When fixed using a sharppy The iPhone is no threat in the day, at night, with flash or without.

The n97 seems to have a much better camera.

how if iphone 3gs was 5mp??

totaly iphone 3gs will win over n97..

haha..iphone is da best!!!

WWWWWWWOw , The Nokia N97 Have won!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes!

now you can see the diference of carl zeiss and LED

LED?? on these wide shot is useless

N97 is way out better than Iphone when it comes to camera!

iPhone camera is better in what I expected.

true color for iPhone but the point is it lacks better sensors compare to n97 for some non-clear-photos..its 3.2mp and its awesome..

n97 gives you a damn TOO exposed and over adjust brightness level giving you a GREENy particles...

Mike, thanks a lot for your pictures, here’s my comments

White Balance: N97 is substantially more accurate
- You can clearly see the red vs white colours in the “Brooklyn Bridge”. While I wasn’t there to see the actual scene, I’m pretty sure the night sky wasn’t red, unless we’re living in Mars. This is not a big deal as you can post-process the photo to correct the white balance, and can be tweaked by firmware updates, but the white balance for the 3GS is well off.

Noise & Noise Reduction: N97 … Hands down! There is absolutely no comparison here.
- In “Red lights” and referring to the wall on the bottom right, notice the large red and black noise, that’s splattered all over for the 3GS. While both are camera phones, and one would not expect much from either, both the N97 and 3GS exhibit extreme use of noise reduction technologies, but the difference is that for the N97, colors are relatively preserved and details are preserved somewhat. For the 3GS, the photo are simply terrible as it reflects a problem with the hardware, that is it’s got a terrible sensor and no noise reduction technology can fix that.

Details & Dynamic Range: N97 wins hands down again, here you can see how the bright and dark details a much better preserved in the N97.
- Just looking at the “Brookyln Brige” and notice the bright light on the bottom right. Notice how the light is a lot bigger in the 3GS than the N97? Even though the field of view is wider in the N97, trust me the light isn’t bigger. This means that the bright light had bled and obscured all details.
- Also, in “Red lights’ notice the red signs and the light bleeding in the picture. Both the N97 and 3GS have shown unacceptable levels of light bleeding here, but the 3GS is about 10x worse, in that you can’t even see what the sign says anymore.
- Finally, try reading the black sign in the bottom right of “red lights” in the 3GS. I say try because in the N97 photo you can actually read “Paradise Under the stars.” Note this is NOT a resolution issue.

Exposure: N97 with a slight advantage.
- Interestingly, last time when we looked at the bright daylight photos, the 3GS had always used the wrong exposures and frequently under exposed photos. Here, we’ve seen the exposures to be brighter in the 3GS than the N97. The differences aren’t too significant and therefore the weak exposure algorithm of the 3GS as mentioned before is less apparent here.
- It’s useful to see Mike has captured the exposure details as well, i.e ISO, shutter speed etc here as well. Note in dark scenes, the 3GS’ minimum shutter speed is 1/10 while for the N97 it is 1/15. Both are too long a shutter speed to take photos on a hand held and will very likely result in motion blur of the photos. Furthermore, with the 3GS’ slightly narrower field of view (kinda like its zoomed in a little more) it would be harder to get a sharp shot with the 3GS.
- Also don’t get me started with the ergonomics with the 3GS not having a dedicated camera button this makes taking a sharp night photo to be very difficult indeed

Overall, the N97 wins without question, but please note the quality presented here is still inferior to dedicated cameras so take a real camera with you if you need to take important pictures. Otherwise the N97 will do for online postings and remember to take a few shots, otherwise you'd be dissapointed many of yours are very blurry due to your hands shaking.

Cool, Thanks.!

I'm really impressed with your observations. It made me take out my dSLR and start shooting again. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks appreciate the feedback. I'm a big Canon user so great to inspire you taking out your DSLR again.

Just read a blog that said 97 things I did with N97 (which admittedly was quite rubbish), maybe you can put a list of the "97" features of N97? There are so many things with Symbian OS that people only find out after they've played with it after a long time. It's also the fact that there ARE practical parts of using it too!

Like...
1) Filmed my friend's wedding on 30fps 640x 480 w/ my N97, it was a great event and I knew some of my friends couldn't make it!
2) On the way back in the plane I spent an hr editing the wedding video adding text etc, background music using some classic bossa nova I store in my phone
3) Uploaded the wedding video on Facebook via Shozu
4) Friend really appreciated the quick turnaround and shared it with all who weren't there!

Also glad to share w/ you the video so you can see it can do a "acceptable" job.

Cool! Do you have a link to the video?

I'm also a Canon fan and use the 450D. Very interested in getting the 5D Mark2 to play with video and its crazy photo performance.

Now that's what you call a sound thrashing! The N97 is *much* more capable in low light.

Will we be seeing a video shoot out too?

That would be nice,the iphone 3gs will be smoother and less pixelated., but again from my experience suffers the same fate as pictures,always seems a bit darker like its always cloudy outside.