Search For Nikon Coolpix P100 10 Mp Digital Camera at Amazon
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Affordable point-and-shoot digital cameras like the Nikon Coolpix L20 ordinarily don’t offer very good effigy quality but this 10MP digital camera delivers precisely that along with the capacity to use AA size batteries. Lets take a closer look at this digital camera model. Design: Since the Nikon Coolpix L20 uses two AA sized batteries the camera body is a bit thicker and bulkier equated to other digital cameras that use proprietary li-ion batteries. Thankfully, Nikon have formed the grip around the bulkier battery compartment making the camera requiring little effort to hold even with wet hands. Utilizing a big three inch LCD, minimal controls and a shiny surface finish the camera looks great and feels good in your hands. At 4.8 ounces it is rather lightweight. Specifications: The Nikon Coolpix L20 offers 10 megapixel images with a 3.6x optical zoom and a 38mm-136mm focal length lens (35mm equivalent). This allows it to zoom in a bit further and take somewhat wider than intermediate images. The camera uses SD and SDHC memory cards and two AA sized batteries. This means that you may use normal off-the-shelf alkaline batteries or rechargeable ni-MH batteries. The camera takes JPEG still images and even allows you to use the optical zoom while taking 640×480 movies running at 30fps, something which not numerous digital cameras concede you to do. With digital effigy stabilization the camera is astoundingly rock-steady and lasts a respectable 230 shots on two AA-sized batteries. Features & Performance: If you’re applied to pressing the shutter button half-way to auto-focus basi then the Nikon Coolpix L20 is exceedingly easy to use with pretty fast shutter speed. While the camera does offer respective image-recording modes you can not manually adjust exposure or ISO. Instead the camera mechanically adjusts ISO to suit current lighting conditions. Thankfully, the camera is intellectual sufficient to invent great images which are sharp in detail and have exact exposure. Other automatic features of note include a Blink mode that warns if an individual blinked while the shot was being taken and a guided panorama mode for easy panorama shots. All in all the Nikon Coolpix L20 is a breathtakingly good point-and-shoot digital camera with intellectual automatic functions. It will have to suit any new point-and-shoot user or just the intermediate tourist, thanks to it is ease of use and easy to get AA sized batteries. Most helpful customer reviews 452 of 458 people found the following review helpful. 190 of 190 people found the following review helpful. A 16 Gig SD card (not included, the internal memory is good for 9 pictures) gives you the ability to take over 6,000 shots (enough for that trip to Italy) without worrying about memory cards. While on that subject, this camera essentially becomes free after your first 900 pictures (figuring that film and processing for 24 exposure film ran about $10). On a recent trip to the Tulip Fields in Washington State, I shot over 300 pictures in that one day! So, the camera quickly pays for itself. On the note of cost, this camera almost becomes a throw-away on a trip! Say you are in Italy and have been there for three weeks. You have averaged 100 pictures a day (very easy to do) and on your last day of the trip, you drop your camera from the third floor. You recover the memory card with your 2100 pictures. The camera was paid for after 900, so you are money ahead, have your pictures, and do not sweat the loss of the camera! (Ok, reality is that we will still be upset, but think how you would have felt if it was the Digital SLR with the nice zoom lens that you paid $5000 for!!) The only negative to this camera is that Nikon does NOT make a case for the camera! No one really does. However, the Lowepro case comes very close (a little large) with a belt clip (velcro for easy on and off), a carrying strap (detachable), and a carry handle on top with a front pouch that easily fits two extra batteries and extra memory. Speaking of battery, the included battery lasted for 350 pictures using the zoom extensively. The in camera charging unit works, but makes it a real pain. Purchase the Nikon En-El5 accessory package from Bargaincell (on Amazon) for $14 with shipping. It gives you a spare battery (larger than the original- good for 400 shots), a quick charger, a 12 volt adapter for the charger to allow you to charge from your car, and a European adapter that allows you to plug your charger in many European countries, including Russia. This is one fantastic camera and a great price to go with it!! UPDATE TO REVIEW: I just returned from a trip to Russia (30 days) and I have taken over 13,000 pictures with this camera during this time. I have used the zoom feature extensively in the many churchs that we visited and at all of the other landmarks. The wide angle lens really did an outstanding job getting all of Red Square into the picture! The zoom did a fantastic job (laying on my back on the floor shooting up at the cupala) obtaining the inlaid tile pictures in the dome! I made a comment earlier that a 16 Gig memory card would be adequate for a trip, but I found that I took almost 36 gigabyte of pictures and video on this trip! I had taken a laptop with me so that I could review pictures daily, but had not intended to actually do all of the storage on it. Well, that became my main picture store since I only had two 16 gig memory cards with me. The HD movie feature was fantastic as we were able to record several of the live performances of Russian Dance that we went to. Having the articulated view screen allowed me to shoot great video over the heads of the people in front of us. The only issue with taking movies by hand this wasy is that your arm gets very tired after about 10 minutes of holding the camera! I should have thought to bring a tripod!! We only had one problem in the trip with the camera and it happened after I had been taking extensive pictures in a very hot building (over 100 degrees) using the flash (took about 400 pictures). The camera closed the lens and gave me an error message. Changing the battery did not make any difference. My wife suggested that the camera had gotten too hot, so I waited 10 minutes and then tried the camera again, it worked perfectly! It has not acted up since. This happened in Moscow while the outside temperature was over 100 degrees and the building felt even hotter. As mentioned, I had been using the flash extensively and the camera was quite warm. Over the next two weeks I took over 5,000 pictures and it never acted up again. My recommendation is a very strong buy for a great camera and HD video unit!! 235 of 247 people found the following review helpful. My philosophy of picture taking is that I want to remember vacations, excursions, etc.; my ideal camera would see things the way my eye does except for bionic enhancements like night vision, zoom, etc. But in particular, I love existing light shots (and video) and love the HAD low light sloppy low res color slow shutter option on the Sony camcorders since you can (for example) take video of your wife at dinner in a dim restaurant and have it even if sloppy, at least in color and something like what the experience really was. So I am after memories, and not art, but if you can do art, that would be great. Anyway, I had no idea what to expect out of this thing; based on the tiny size, ultralight construction, low cost, etc. I figured it would be mainly a toy, but I hoped I could take it on vacation as a one thing does all photographic tool. I got the Sandisk “ultra” 16GB SDHC card for it, 15MB/s, figuring for HD you need the fastest card you can get. I had not read any reviews before buying it, but when I read them when I got home with it, I was pretty bummed out.. all the stuff about locking up, hellish noisy zoom, sloppy focus, can’t use the zoom with video, etc. etc. I am happy to say that my experience didn’t confirm any of that. (Of course, it might lock up etc. at some point, I have only had it a few hours but I have a theory about that I’ll mention later.) Anyway, I immediately went around the inside of the house in regular low light condtions shooting stills and video. By low light I mean some rooms only had light coming through the doorways from other rooms, some rooms had a few 13W compact fluorescents, one last room had 5 65W ceiling can lights on. It was lit for atmosphere not reading books. Bottom line is I had no trouble getting very nicely well lit pix and video in any of the rooms with lights on. In a stairwell with no light except a 13W compact fluorescent 6ft outside an archway leading to the stairs the wall and furniture seemed v. dark brown; by eye I could easily see the color. Where the stairs went up to total shadow, the camera cut out to black and white where by eye I could still see color. In comparison to a 5 year old top of the line Sony mini DV one CCD camcorder it was about like the camera on normal setting, not “slow color shutter”. In other words, about as much as I could hope for. The zoom is not as easy to control to get exact magnification as the Sony, BUT (and this is important) while you can hear the zoom motor on playback, it is very subdued and I didn’t find it at all noticeable..when the room is silent, you can hear it, but it is about like a very soft whisper. In normal tourist situations I don’t think you’d notice the zoom noise at all. With a bit of practice, I was able to use the zoom to my satisfaction. Another pleasant surprise to me was that the hand held video when walking around the house from darkness to light was smooth and generally not jerky..the image stabilization must work very well, considering you don’t have any weight to stablize the tremor of your hands, footsteps, etc. The video even handles normal panning (aiming the camera forward while walking around the end of a table, for example) without any major glitches…if you shake your hand beyond a given limit, there is an instant of moderate blurriness, but it handles the panning motion by making the whole scene’s resolution lower; while walking and turning in low light, it is maybe NTSC quality, not HD. But the JVC HD-1 just blew up and went to blocks of “ice” if you panned, so I have no complaints about that. If you hold the camera still (handheld, low light as described) the picture is very sharp and looks like HD to me. So I don’t agree with the review that the video is “crap”. I think it will probably be sufficient to take this on vacation as my only camera, but I want to try it out in better conditions for a longer time first. My wife was blown away by the sound clarity, stereo, etc. She thought it sounded better than the Sony camcorders. It seems to me that the basic operation (load, shoot, zoom, focus, etc.) is very easy and very satisfactory. So, so far I love it. If it had the equivalent of slow color shutter and nightvision it would be pretty well perfect (well, I’d like it to weigh twice as much also, to make it easier to keep steady, but even being light as a feather it competes well with the much heavier camcorders). The display, navigation, menus, etc. seem to me easier to use than the Canon equivalent; having just set up my wife’s new 1300 elph. The comments about the viewfinder being dark, grainy, etc. is true in very low light…until you take a picture. As soon as you depress the shutter button to focus, the viewfinder lights up in crisp bright detail and it’s easy to see what you are going to get…I suppose that is some sort of power saving feature. If you are walking around looking through the viewfinder, it may look worse than the Sony camcorder (or the Canon S2) until you press a button to shoot, then it is bright. I can live with that OK. In decent light (moderately well lit room at night) I don’t notice it. In general, no complaints about the viewfinder. The diopter control worked like a champ and I will use the viewfinder not the display for shooting..only use the display for playback. I like the flash being folded down, so you can suppress it if you wish (which I usually do), and it is easy to pop up if you want it. The flash comes on instantly..unlike the S2..no waiting period on the first use of it. The Canons Sxx series is better in that you can have the display rotated out of the way (plastic out instead of display out) to keep it clean when you are using the viewfinder. In short, I just tested it every way I could think of under the worst lighting and shooting (all hand held, low light) conditions and it did very well. I displayed the pictures and movies on a 44 inch top of the line Sony 1080p TV with mini HDMI/HDMI connection cable, and even handheld, you could zoom in (easy, from the camera) before you could see pixelation on the stills so I presume they are better than a couple of MP of usable info even under these lousy conditions. Just a word of encouragement for its capabilities as a hybrid camera/camcorder…it well exceeded my expectations. With a tripod or decent technique it should be excellent indeed..and very usable without it. I am very pleased with it. When it’s daylight, will do some more rigorous tests of image quality outside in decent light. By the way, it takes (handheld, so very blurry) time exposures up to at least several seconds of exposure …so I would expect that like the OM-2, which was great for taking full color pictures of my parents’ backyard in the country by starlight, one should be able to take pictures in very dim light with a tripod. If anything negative turns up, I will post a followup. Otherwise, very happy. I do notice it dies quickly when its buttons are not being pushed…I wonder if this is the “lock up” some talked about. I didn’t find it a problem, just hit the power button and you’re good to go. A bit disconceting vs. the Canon or Sony which stay inactive a lot longer before hibernating, but you may be able to change the setting on that if you want to. —-Update after more testing—– I took it around outside in bright sun to see how it does in high light levels, also took some mroe interior shots & video trying some other situations, such as flash with high zoom level in the dark, etc. It did very well. You can point it at something that is so dark you can’t see it, and get a perfect flash picture. You can focus perfectly for time exposures (tripod) through moderately dirty glass at things outside. Focus seems fast and reliable under all conditions except when you are shooting video and move to something that is significantly further away. In that case, it is slow to refocus and the focusing makes sharp clicks on the video sound track (you’re supposed to turn the AF feature to focus only at the start of the video, and not make that sort of move anyway according to the manual.) For battery life, it told me battery depleted when I had taken about 130 still images and 35 video clips, maybe half the stills with flash. Probably had erased 10-15 stills and 5-10 videos. Had about 30 minutes of video on the camera, probably. Computer said card had 2.5 GB of files. I had watched all the stills and video at least once on the camera display, and at least once on the TV. So if you were just shooting, it should last significantly longer on one charge. So all in all, I give it an excellent rating. My only real complaint is the jerking of the zoom when the retraction drive is kicked in when you are shooting video. So I have learned to shut off the video and retract the zoom ratio before starting up the video again at the new zoom ratio if operating at high zoom ratios. Otherwise, it pretty well exceeds every expectation. I am delighted with it. It’s hard to imagine you can do so much photography so easily with such a tiny camera. PS: It has not “locked up” on me, but thanks to N Jaeger for pointing out my first night speculation about that was completely off base.. totally separate issue from the hibernation time (which you can change). As others have said, apparently need to do a hard reboot by pulling the battery out if it does lock up. One other thing is the manual gives the data transfer rates under various uses, and the fastest is 14MB/sec for HD video, so the choice of the “ultra” Sandisk card (15MB/s)was probably good. I haven’t ever seen a delay in saving, processing, or shooting. The camera indicates about 29 minutes of shooting time when you bring it up in 1080p record mode, but I can’t imagine that being a limitation. But if you wanted to set it up on a tripod and just shoot your life for the full 2 to 4 hours a big card would allow, I guess you couldn’t do it. When you play a low light video back through the HDMI cable to the tv, it seems to come out enhanced and bright vs. what you see by just pulling the card and viewing it with Windows on an HP dv6 entertainment pc. The stills and brightly lit videos look the same both ways, but apparently the camera will do some processing on data it considers suboptimal. I assume the Nikon software would do the same in the computer but haven’t tried it. I remain really tickled with the camera. Good luck.
Four exposure modes P, S, A and M Innovative Active D-Lighting function Nikon Coolpix P100 Other Features
What’s in the Box
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Tons of performance in a very modest package
Functionality of an SLR without the cost or expense
