7 out of 7 people found this review helpful.
Great point and shoot
Date of Review: Oct 30, 2006
The Bottom Line: Good photos without fuss. Compact and easy to take along. Choice of scene modes, choose natural color or vivid as well as black and white or sephia.
I just got this camera a few days ago. I wanted a point and shoot that gave me manual white balance control. Many digital cameras tend to make skin either red or yellow-orange with auto or preset white balance. The first thing I did was take a portrait shot on auto and the skin tone and other colors were natural looking.
I have used an Olympus c-2000 and a Nikon Coolpix 4500 in the past. While I liked both I had to manually set the white balance (by focusing on a grey or white area) before taking any shots if I wanted the colors to be true.
I also appreciate the vibration reduction (VR) feature. When you are taking a camera along with you, you don't necessarily want to drag a tripod along as well.
The camera has a 5x optical zoom, when combined with the vibration reduction feature it is possible to get close without getting fuzzy as a result.
Another useful feature is Nikon's D-lighting. It will make a copy of the selected photo and enhance the brightness and contrast while leaving the original in place as well.
The camera uses 2 AA batteries. I suggest getting rechargeable batteries as soon as possible. I was looking for a camera that took AA batteries rather than proprietary ones to make the camera easier to take along without having to purchase an extra proprietary battery which would be more expensive than the rechargeable AAs that I generally have on hand anyway.
I have only one minor complaint about the camera:
There is no optical viewfinder. While I have not had any trouble with the LCD for photo framing, I have not yet taken outdoor daylight photos with the camera. In bright light, I would prefer to be able to use an optical viewfinder. I would also prefer to have one when I felt a need to conserve my batteries.
