Nikon Coolpix L100 Camera Review

Digicam — By Ricky on June 14, 2009 at 1:32 pm

Nikon Cool Pix L100 – Is the perfect bridge camera

The Nikon cool pix L100 camera is perfect digital camera for all those users who just want a camera that they can point and click, and be assured of getting a good picture in most situations, without having to fiddle around selecting the right shooting mode or worrying about the ISO setting. This super zoom camera is also known as bridge cameras because traditionally they have occupied a position between the everyday consumer territory of compact cameras and the more exotic land of the digital SLRs. The super zoom cameras generally have optional manual exposure, multiple metering and auto focus options and other advanced features, which can make them a bit of a daunting prospect for anyone who doesn’t know the difference between aperture and shutter speed.

The Nikon cool pix is a zoom camera with the simple controls of a point and click compact and does not many rivals either. There are other baby zoom cameras which include a range of manual options and advanced controls and are a lot cheaper like the Fuji Fine Pix S2000HD and even the cheaper Kodak Z8612 IS.

This Nikon model is compact but would not fit in any pockets however, it s very comfortable to carry with big handgrips and straight forward layout and large lens barrel. The grip is quite wide, to accommodate the batteries, but due to the size of the camera it is rather short, and there’s not a huge amount of room between the grip and the lens barrel. This model is equipped with the rubber coating on the grip and the textured thumb grip on the back makes it secure and easy to hold steady with one hand.

A power button and shutter release, with the zoom rocker wrapped around it is at the top of the camera. The standard four-way directional pad with Shooting mode and Playback buttons above it and Menu and Delete buttons below are all at the back of the camera. The menu button is very basic and settings can be accessed with one press of the menu button the screen. The menu has a tab for mode-specific shooting options and another tab for system settings.

The coolpix L100 faces a problem with the cameras design and cannot be used with rechargeable batteries; they are designed to use only alkaline or lithium batteries.

This model does not feature view finder and you have to depend on the LCD for framing shots which we found was bright enough to use in bright sunlight. For using the flash you need to manually adjust the flash lights.

The Nikon L100 ideally suited for those who intend to leave everything in auto mode. The auto mode assists you in adjusting the white balance and light metering, and there is the capability to shoot using different color effects. Nikon L100 features easy auto which is scene recognition mode, which makes settings based on what’s being shot. You have the option to drop into Scene mode and pick the one that’s best suited for your subject.

We found the lens quality very good, with excellent edge-to-edge sharpness at all focal lengths, and what little barrel distortion it does produce is corrected automatically in camera. This model is better than the others even though it suffer from a bit of chromatic aberration towards the edges of the frame. We found the image quality very good in all circumstances. The image quality is quite identical to the Cool pix L20, which means that exposure and focusing are pretty much perfect all the time. It can be easily concluded that color rendition in standard mode is distinctly over-saturated, and Vivid mode is eye-searingly lurid. We found the bright red and yellow appeared as featureless blobs of color with no detail

On testing the L100 we found that the start up was good at 1.9 seconds and shutter lag is on par with others in its class at 0.7 seconds in well-lit conditions and a full second in low light. The L100 is well equipped with full resolution burst shooting. This model has two burst modes. The first mode is the one with high speed mode capable of up to 13 frames per second for up to 30 frames, but the resolution is only 3 mega pixels or less while the second mode permits full-resolution continuous shooting for up to seven photos which comes at a dreadfully slow 0.4fps.

You can notice that photos look very soft and colors are not accurate and appear to be blown out with the exception of orange and red which looked vibrant. Detail was good up to ISO 200 with little to no color noise. We found the best results were delivered outdoors in bright lighting, which kept the sensitivity below ISO 200. Between ISO 200 and 400 will cost you detail as the noise reduction make pictures even softer and photos take on a painterly appearance. This point needs consideration if you are looking at making prints larger than 8×10 inches. When the camera selected sensitivities above ISO 400, off-color specks start showing up on top of everything else. You can not see them unless you are viewing photos at 100 percent, but they do affect color consistency.

The Nikon model has a movie mode but the optical zoom does not function while recording. The movie mode is limited to 640 x480 pixel resolutions.

Overall you can conclude that the Nikon Cool pix L100 is a virtually unique digital camera combining the simplicity of a fully automatic point and shoot compact with the big wide-angle 15x zoom lens and image stabilization of an advanced super-zoom camera. The model is very small to be easily portable and can take good snapshot pictures in any circumstances. It has its problems such as no ISO adjustment, having trouble with macro and you need to adjust the flash when forced flash is selected or some good pictures could potentially be ruined It is a bit expensive compared to some possible rivals but if you are looking at a bridge camera then this could be your ideal choice.