As a vintage digital camera, you might want to consider using, there is really nothing much to shout or talk about the Nokia Asha 300. When it was launched in 2011, the Nokia Asha 300 was just a cell phone for the day, it came with a 2.4-inch touch screen, 5 MP camera, Radio FM, MP3 support, a microSD memory card slot, 128MB of RAM, a battery with a claimed longish standby time, measures 300 measures 112.80 x 49.50 x 12.70mm (height x width x thickness), and weighs 85.00 grams.
Not many references and images from the Nokia Asha 300 are available on the net either, with reviewers that were none too excited about the product, as can be seen with the following quotes:
"A very pleasant surprise is a 5-megapixel camera residing around the back of the Asha 300. We'd be surprised if this snapper was able to grab prize-winning shots, but for simply snapping a few piccies when you're out with your friends, it should get the job done."
and,
"The camera maybe a 5MP shooter, but the quality of the sensor is quite appalling. It’s bad enough that it’s a fixed focus camera; the sensor isn’t able to pick up any detail or colours accurately. The picture appears fine on the viewfinder, but the final captured image is quite bad."
Having used the cell phone as well, before putting it in storage as I upgraded to a newer mobile, I went through tidings. It was not until much later, when I began to use the camera function of the cell phone again to compare images with a newly acquired smartphone that I realized that there is a lot more to what I have experienced earlier.
One item that was not too obvious with the Asha 300 when I was using it earlier was that it came fitted with a USB port I was oblivious to. The port eases the transfer of images from the phone to my desktop image editing and post-processing facility which I have been using quite extensively for editing and post-processing my film negative scans and RAW files development.
Image transfer using the USB port was seamless and instantaneous, the edited and post-processed images, tweaked partially with Auto Tone Correction, Crop, Tilt Adjustment, Tone Curve, Brightness & Contrast, and Unsharp Mask, are crisp and sharp and stood out well.
The images, of course, may not be on par with what can be produced with scanned film negative images, but within the ever-spiraling cost of film and its associated development charges, and the equally high cost of modern digitals, this can be a very effective alternative to keep the passion going.
The Nokia Asha 300 has the capacity, within its 128 MB of memory, to store up to 112 JPEG images, which is enough for a fair bit of shots when going for an outing or simple photo shoots. Images have a maximum resolution of 2592 x 1999 pixels, good enough for the maximum 1500px recommended size for blog post images, or better still, posted or cropped to a maximum of 800px wide as done on this site.
Using the Nokia Asha 300 for its camera function alone might not be as exciting as using the latest crop of smartphone cameras. The phone is a good size for a magician's sleight of hand trick, with images on the screen that you can hardly see when shooting on bright sunny days (when the images are best), with the images taking ages to save.
Holding the camera steady at arm's length, while aiming generally toward the scene I want to capture, is the only way I captured these (great and gorgeous) images. It was fun and exciting taking the camera out on my outings, challenging, costing me next to nothing to get it up and going, and after all these years, it is still a digital camera, a vintage one at this, worth talking about.
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