Nokia have released some “research prototypes” of applications that use the FCam libraries to do fun things with taking photos on their Nokia N900. One of these is called “Lowlight” and is designed to make it easier to get reasonable photos in, well, low light conditions. I tested this out on Tuesday night after the Linux Users of Victoria meeting, taking a photo of the Old Commerce Building on the University of Melbourne campus.

Now given that’s taken hand-held without a flash, I’m pretty impressed, you can even make out the design of the courtyard floor in front of it! If you go and look at the original full size version on Flickr (CC-BY licensed) you can see there is noise around the outside of the building, and there is an almost oil-paint effect on the details of the carvings on the building due to their algorithm, but given the alternative was nothing at all it’s a great little program!