Fantastic Camera

I bought this as my first camera and I was blown away at its macro capabilities. I would say that general picture taking is on par with other cameras in the price range.

The auto focus can be tricky on closer shots, as I assume happens with many compact digital cameras. Some of the shots taken when fully zoomed in aren't always the best quality, (a little soft, but not exactly blurry), but this is pretty rare. I mostly have it in auto mode, though the sixteen modes from beach, to sunset, to panorama assist offer many different options. The panorama assist shows you a ghost-like image on 1/3 of the LCD so you can line it up perfectly and with the software that comes with the camera, you can easily make 360 degree panoramas that you can move around on your own. The only downside is that this meters the same exposure so you can risk pictures that are too dark or too light if shooting in bright sunlight.

As for general shooting in bright sunlight toward the sun, you'll definitely get washed out pictures. Taking pictures of trees in front of the sun will make the sky bright white and there's pretty much guaranteed purple fringing (purple, ghosty outlines usually appearing on the edges of subjects in bright sunlight).

But when you're shooting under the right conditions, you'll get pretty consistent true to life colors. Because of the occasional misreading of light and focus, you should be able to keep 80-85% of your pictures. (This relates to just the camera's ability and it would reduce taking into consideration human error like movement or accidentally being zoomed in when taking self portraits).

In darker situations with the flash on, it shines a red light to not only help for it to autofocus, but it dilates the subject's pupils to reduce red eye. Flash modes range from Auto, On, Off, and Red Eye.

When in auto shooting mode (green camera) hitting Menu will let you adjust picture quality (7,5,3, and 1 megapixel, which is great). You'll also find white balance, exposure compensation (+/-2), continuous shooting, as well as color options (Standard, Vivid, B&W, Sepia, and Cyanotype).

Pressing Menu while the mode dial is on Scene brings up: Party/Indoor, Beach/Snow, Sunset (Makes picture more orange), Dusk/Dawn (Makes picture more blue/purple), Night Landscape, Close Up, Museum (Flash turns off), Firework (longer exposure, which works great with tripod), Document Copy, Backlight (Flash turns on), Panorama Assist (My favorite), and Voice Recording. I hardly use any of these except panorama or Dusk/Dawn, but they're all good. You can also access Macro mode by pressing the flower icon in auto camera mode to use the same settings like exposure compensation and B&W.

Portrait mode gives you six framing icons to "place" your subject into, e.g. One person to the left, right, or center, or two people.

Landscape mode on the dial will divide the screen into thirds as well as lay down diagonal lines to line up architecture.

Sports mode apparently focuses quickly, but I just use auto mode. The nice thing is that you can take 16 really quick pictures that take up 1/16 of the screen. You'll get a small view, but in sunlight it's super fast. (About 8 frames per second.) Otherwise, you can do full size pictures at about four every three seconds (Not very fast). I recommend reducing picture quality to 5MP to be able to take more. Continuous shooting should let you hold the shutter release for around 50 continuous pictures, depending on your SD card.

Video mode looks really good at it's highest setting 620x480 at 30 frames per second. It's decent, but choppy at the next lowest setting of 15 f.p.s. You definitely need a card that reads/writes at at least 10mb/second. I bought a 2GB 150x SD card by Transcend from Newegg for under $40.00. It works just as well as SanDisk for much cheaper. At 7MP High, it holds 581 and it goes above 999 when you bring it down to 7MP regular (Can't tell difference). Expect video to take up 1MB for every second on the highest setting. (About half that on the 15 f.p.s.)

Like I said, I've had a lot of success with the macro feature. I've definitely had some professional looking flower pictures and other close-ups. You do have to be right on top of the subject if you want detail. A tripod is a must in overcast conditions, as would be the same with a DSLR. My macro shots are usually taken from five inches away to under an inch away from the subject.

I'd recommend looking up sample pictures on forums like flickr.com and see what people can do. I don't think that people should compare this to any SLR for general use, as it's around $200. I think it's expected that there will be blurry pictures, that many will find with similar cameras. But overall, I've had incredible success with this Nikon and would recommend it to any beginning photographers or anyone looking for good picture taking capabilities.

Definitely get a battery recharger because in the past six months I would have gone through the equivalent of around 100 alkaline batteries, which would soon exceed the cost of the camera. An Energizer 15 minute charger and eight batteries cost me around $50.00. I can say I get around 150-200 shots without flash per pair of AA batteries, but it goes down fast with flash and it takes about six seconds to recover on low battery.