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| Sunday, March 05, 2006 |
| Nikon Coolpix 950 Digital Camera Review |
Nikon Coolpix 950 2MP Digital Camera w/ 3x Optical Zoom
The new CoolPix 950 has proven itself to be a worthy successor to the most popular digital camera ever built, the Nikon CoolPix 900. The enhancements in picture quality, features, and construction make the 950 even better than its excellent predecessor. It's hard to believe the camera has all these 'bells & whistles', and I can still slip it into my pocket!
The first thing I noticed when I turned the camera on was the actual (real time) f-stop and shutter speed values displayed in the lower left hand corner of the LCD screen, much like what you'd see through the viewfinder of a high quality 35mm SLR camera... Yes!!!
The camera starts up fast, switches modes fast, and processes fast - all characteristics you need when time is of the essence for grabbing a candid shot opportunity.
The pictures are a bit sharper and the colors a bit more saturated than the CoolPix 900. Color tones appear to be "right on". Basically, nothing was lost in the already excellent picture quality with the new model, and significant gains were made in areas that often required some "tweaking" with the original CoolPix 900.
And for low light shooting, the easily adjustable ISO puts the shutter and aperture balance into a comfortable range.
Conclusion - Pros
- Overall excellent image quality (detail, balance and colour saturation)
- Higher resolution (1600 x 1200)
- Great optics (bright and sharp)
- Little or no need for post-processing correction / sharpening of images
- Solid construction (metal case, improved controls, improved swivel)
- Swivelling lens barrel
- Excellent matrix metering
- The continual focusing (4700+ focus points) makes for fast focus and fast shots
- Much improved built-in flash
- External flash sync connector
- Fast processing, short delays, short lag times
- Well thought-out onboard software (logical menus, quick navigation)
- Amazing feature set (manual white balance, BSS, user settings etc.)
- Custom settings (plus "remembering" settings after power-off)
- Clear, smooth, sharp and fast updating LCD
- Best macro ability in its price range
- Variable sensitivity with little addition of noise
- Excellent manual controls (aperture & shutter priority, manual focus)
- Quick and easy to use menus (thanks to the new command wheel)
- More "portable" than some of its competitors (this is a BIG plus)
- Great value for money (compared to similarily priced digital cameras)
Conclusion - Cons - Barrel distortion
- Colour fringing on high contrast areas
- Zooming from wide to tele could be faster (3.5s)
- Sometimes poor low light focusing (really could have done with an assist light)
- Inability to use Shutter Priority in anything but ISO 80
- Poorly positioned tripod mount (cannot access CF or batteries without removing the camera from the tripod)
- No support for CF type II cards
- Serial port (what's wrong with USB, Nikon?)
- Small bundled CF card (8MB on a 2 megapixel camera??)
- Bad choice of uncompressed TIFF (CCD RAW would have produced much smaller files)
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posted by Admin @ Nikon Coolpix 950 Digital Camera Review  |
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