Nokia's imaging chief makes surprise exit

Dinning looking to develop other options

By Iain Thomson in San Francisco, 23rd November 2012

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Nokia's head of imaging, and the man behind a lot of the features the Finns are hoping will make its Lumia smartphones popular, has left the firm unexpectedly.

"Following the relocation of key strategic roles to Finland, and with great reluctance, Damian Dinning has made a personal decision to leave the company effective 30 November 2012," Nokia UK told Amateur Photographer in a statement.

Dinning has had eight years at Nokia, and prior to that spells working for Nikon, Kodak, and Minolta, largely in multimedia. In the last year he has been focusing on the camera and imaging systems for the Lumia and other Windows Phone 8 handsets, which makes his sudden departure more of an issue for Nokia.

From the get-go, Nokia has been selling the Lumia in part based on its imaging systems. The Lumia 920, for example, uses a spring-mounted 808 PureView camera to reduce the effect of image shake. In El Reg's extensive review of the handset, our reviewer suggested it was almost worth buying the smartphone just for the camera.

Nokia is touting its optical image stabilization software as the best in the business, despite being forced to admit that it had faked its adverts showing it in action. Dinning has been key in getting this working, but now has other things on his mind, at least according to his Twitter feed.

I'm incredibly excited about the 10th Dec, can't say more than that right now other than to say it's nothing to do with Nokia directly...
— Damian Dinning (@PhoneDaz) November 21, 2012