Hands on with Nikon's New Camera Range

Nikon today announced eight (count 'em) new Coolpix cameras, from a cheap-as-chips $110 (L19) up to the $400 Coolpix P90. The range is, of course, confusing. Nikon gave me a sneak peek of all the new models at CES this year and even my head is spinning sifting the press releases. We'll concentrate on a few key models, and point out the truly useful new features hidden amongst all the usual marketing bunk.

The first surprise is the price of each camera. They're cheap, but they certainly don't feel it. The biggest bargain of the range is the S220, above. It costs $150, but feels like it costs twice that thanks to the small size and sold metal shell.

The camera doesn't have all the fancy new gizmos found on its brethren, but you do get some truly useful features -- 10 megapixels, image stabilization, a decent 3x zoom (35-105 equivalent) and a big-for-the-price 2.5mm LCD screen. Not essential but nice to have features include a "blink-proof" mode. This would be great for me -- any shot I take of the Lady seems to catch her with her eyes firmly shut.

Next up is the $270 S630, notable for its 3" touch screen and lens that is 28mm at the wide end. The screen is used to control the usual functions but Nikon, in a fit of retro-fever, decided to include a stylus which "brings an element of personalization and expression". With it you can scrawl on your pictures. This is actually pretty neat, meaning you can annotate snaps and use your camera as a digital notebook. Combine with the online notebook Evernote and an Eye-Fi card and you're golden.

Further up the range is the top-end of Coolpix compacts, the S630. Despite being hobbled by too many pixels – 12 million of them – the camera has pretty much everything you need. In addition to the "four-way image stabilization" (which is just normal stabilization with some software tweaks to select higher shutter speeds, along with a burst mode that captures ten shots and picks the sharpest), you get a 2.7" display, a 7x optical zoom, all the auto electronic crap you'd expect (red-eye reduction, motion detection) and one truly amazing feature. The ISO goes up to 6400.

This last is proving to be a trend at Nikon. The D3 and D700 SLRs are famed for their low light capabilities and its now trickling down into the consumer range. I tried a few shots at ISO 6400 and while it isn't exactly clean and sparkling, its easily "good enough" -- way better than what I get at just ISO 1600 on my Canon G9 for example.

Finally, we'll visit the top end P90, at a reasonable $400. You get everything mentioned above (except the gimmicky touch screen) along with enough extras to keep you playing for weeks. First, the lens. This uses Nikon's ED (Extra-low Dispersion) glass, found in the company's pro-level SLR lenses and crams in a massive 24x zoom – an optical zoom – which starts at 26mm and ends up at a ridiculous 624mm at the far end. Make sure you have the image stabilization switched on.

Nikon sensibly decided to keep the pixel count at "just" 12MP, allowing the above mentioned 6400 ISO mode. The LCD screen is a 3" monster and can be flipped out and twisted, and when you hit the shutter release you can let the camera scream away at 15 frames per second for up to 45 frames.

Playing with it, I remember that the screen is tough feeling and also very very sharp, similar to the high-res LCD found on the D700 and D3. This is a good thing, because Nikon left out a proper viewfinder and instead put in an electronic one. I hate these, but honestly, with an LCD like this you won't ever need to use the viewfinder anyway.

The Nikon folks told me that they're sick of chasing megapixels, and have started to do something about it. Sure, the public still swoons with ever higher dot-densities, but enthusiasts are starting to appreciate other things like low light sensitivity (not to mention the hard drive space saved by not shooting at 24MP).

This, along with Casio's excellent 1000fps Exilim FC100 and Canon's high-def video shooting 5D MKII, is marking a real change in the digicam market. We've caught up with film already. Now it's time to start doing things that film cameras never could.

Product range [Nikon]