Nexus 5 camera quality – front and rear video

Nexus devices are not generally known for that wow factor whether it be point and shoot or video quality when it comes to their cameras.  The Google Nexus 5 has definitely given the Nexus brand a little more credibility in the camera department.  Before I go any further I’m going to put this little disclaimer up. I am in no way a professional photographer or claim to know much of anything about cameras except I do know when I see decent picture or video quality from a phone or tablet. With that out of the way let’s take a look at the rear facing camera video.

Pretty nice right?  It’s not a Nikon or Cannon, but I’m certainly impressed for an 8.0MP with OIS  phone camera. It does a fine job for a cellphone camera. Better than fine. Other Android blogs like the verge have dissed the Nexus 5 camera. The Verge’s Joshua Topolsky, for instance, who said, “The Nexus 5 takes photos and video with too little contrast, too little saturation, and too little color (or inconsistent color) — when you can get the camera to focus at all. Low light performance isn’t exactly poor, but getting it to snap the picture you want at the moment you want will drive you absolutely nuts.”   Now I’m a fan of the verge but, I have to disagree with Josh’s comment. Again this is coming from an everyday camera user and no expert, but just the above video I posted is proof enough that the Nexus 5 does a pretty darn good job at video duties. There is a time or two when the camera loses focus, but it grabs it right back almost instantly. I think the colors, clarity, sound and overall flow of the above video taken by the Nexus 5 is not just good but really good for a cellphone camera.

Now the pure hansdomeness of the guy in the video above may distract you from what this video is actually about. The above video is shot with the 1.3MP HD front facing camera. Once again I was pretty dam impressed with the quality of the video even for it being the FFC. Sure the sun played a villain in parts of the video and the wind made it hard to hear at times, but the overall quality for a 1.3MP front facing camera was good enough to impress me. We have weekly meetings here at AFN (or try to) and I could see that front facing 1.3MP camera doing a fine job with video and audio for everyone in the meeting to see and hear me just fine.

So there ya have it. I’m impressed with the camera on the Nexus 5. I knew when I bought the Nexus 5 it wasn’t going to have the camera capabilities the Nokia Lumia 1020 has, but I also wasn’t expecting the camera to have this nice of a video and picture quality. All in all, the Nexus 5 has a pretty dam good camera and I give it 2 thumbs up.