To that effect, Nokia has put together this video showing how its own camera expert Ari Partinen managed to pull off a real studio portrait shoot using only the Lumia 1020 and some synced external flashes.
The point of the video is twofold: showing how well the photos turned out, and explaining how one can sync a flash with the 1020 for professional work. Admittedly, the video itself doesn’t get into the technical details of the latter, but Partinen was kind enough to do that for us on Nokia’s Conversations blog:
The flash on the Lumia 1020 has two short pulses. So we used a small external flash as a medium to disable the first pre-flash pulse coming from the Lumia 1020, and then fired the main external flashes only on the second pulse. This made sure the main flashes were synchronized perfectly with the moment we pressed the shutter key on the Lumia 1020
Basically, they used a cheap external flash as a “middleman,” because most of these flashes have a setting that will allow them to only trigger on the second optical pulse.
The debate over mobile phone cameras and an SLR may always be around. But for this round, the Lumia 1020 shows it's....let's call it professional, studio, sophisticated side. Using external flashes, that were synced up to the Lumia 1020, shows a side that we can be proud of...that is, us mobile camera users.