Nokia to look into Lumia 920 promo video fiasco

The Nokia Lumia 920 is one of the hottest handsets to be recently unveiled and many fans of the brand the world over are waiting for the handset to be officially launched. The handset, though great and apparently does indeed sport really good camera capabilities, has been marred by controversy due to the fact that the promotional video and sample images were shot by a professional video camera and not the Lumia 920, as the brand intended viewers to believe. Nokia had issued an apology regarding the same and now as per a report by Bloomberg, it appears that Nokia will now conduct an ethics review into this promotional video for the handset.

As per the post on Bloomberg, the author, Adam Ewing states, “Nokia Oyj the smartphone maker trying to revive sales with new devices unveiled last week, said an ethics officer will conduct a review into why the company published misleading marketing materials for the products. The ethics and compliance officer is working on an independent report “to understand what happened,” Susan Sheehan, a Nokia spokeswoman, said today in an interview. Nokia said last week it was sorry for not making clear that a promotional video and still photos within that clip weren’t captured with its new Lumia 920 smartphone.”

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The evidence that possibly closes the case (DSLR circled in red)

If you’re in the dark as to what transpired, here is the background of the fiasco that led Nokia to launch an investigation into the ad for the promotional video. After Nokia recently announced its flagship smartphone, the Lumia 920, the brand released a trailer portraying the advancements in its PureView technology used in the phone. This video was found to be fake and misleading. It appears that makers of the clip used a professional camera to shoot the video and not a Lumia 920. Nokia later apologised for the same and said that it was done only to show the optical image stabilisation (OIS) features of the camera, and that Nokia should have put up a disclaimer stating that it was for representational purposes only.

Later, a blogger called Youssef Sarhan found out that the sample images too may have been captured by a professional camera. Sarhan explained that he had lived in Helsinki and that he understands the lighting on the roads. He said the lighting is ambient diffused and not spot lighting. He said, “Going by these still images it’s hard to tell what device really took the photos. We don’t have the EXIF data because these are part of a video, and there’s no cheeky reflections we can zoom in and enhance. However, there is one thing, that once seen can’t be unseen. Diffractions are the sparkle affect generated around the bright lights in the background.”
 
Sarhan explains how Nokia got it wrong: “It’s impossible for a camera with a fixed aperture of f/2 to generate so many spikes from a light source. These kind of diffractions are typical of a DLSR camera with a smaller aperture like f/22. So, it makes perfect sense that if Nokia were to fake the video, they would also fake the stills; which they almost certainly have.”

Later, an image surfaced online, which showed the set of the photoshoot. In the image, the whole setup, including the lighting equipment, is visible.