Best Digital Cameras, Customer Reviews

Review by A. White:

I bought this camera after reading all the + reviews on several web sites. This is a very good camera for the price.

Pro’s: price, simple to use, slips right into you shirt pocket or purse, very good pictures, bright LCD (sorry Kodak), uses AA batteries, good video.

Con’s: none! I highly recommend this camera.

Review by Artrina:

Hubby and I were on vacation when our camera started to act up on us. We went to a chain store we trust and bought this camera based on the Nikon reputation, the fact that it takes AA batteries and uses the same storage media as the one we currently have. That night I checked out the different settings until I became comfortable changing them. While using it both hubby and I found we switched to pix review with our thumbs often. When we got home I downloaded the pix. We’re happy with the ones taken close and on land, but, the ones taken on boats (we went on a couple of sailboats on vacation) and the ones taken at a distance I’m disappointed with. It seems like most of the boat pix are blurry; the seas weren’t choppy. I don’t think this will take good pix at our grandsons ball games, either.

I’m now in the process of researching a camera with some type of stabilization feature and one with a longer optical zoom.

Review by K. Hall:

I was in desperate need of a new digital camera! I have an OLD version of Nikon coolpix 4800 but I love the 8x optical zoom. My friends all made fun of the giant size of it! After I saw the S630 coolpix advertised I really wanted to try it out. I went to the store and played around with it then purchased it through Amazon and got a great deal! I am VERY pleased with this camera! I took it to the Lake with me and played around with it and got some good shots! I was even able to record video of my friends innertubing at full zoom and the clarity is great! I have the settings on auto mode and the camera does a great job! All I can say is some of these negative reviews must be due to user error or they are professional photographers expecting TOO much! If you are interested in this camera, I must say I am VERY happy with my purchase. If I could figure it out, I’d share some of the great pics and videos I took! Good luck with your purchase!

Review by Integrity Trainer:

I purchased a Nikon Coolpix S630 just before I went to Europe five weeks ago. After 1000 pictures of mountain tops, people, dark museums and action shots, I am done testing it and am very pleased. For years I wanted a hassle-free camera with a high amount of optical zoom yet small in size and shoots well without a lot of light. I hoped to spend less money but was afraid a cheaper camera would frustrate me due to lack of features, poor quality or confusing operation. The S630 gives me all I want in a camera for a reasonable price.

My cousin was a professional photographer and he is impressed with how well this camera performs. Closeups of flowers are great. Pictures displayed on a 42″ TV have great resolution and color accuracy. Photos of poorly lit rooms have bright colors. Video and audio quality also are impressive.

Reading reviews critical of this camera made me a little nervous about deciding to buy this camera but I am glad that I figured out they are overly critical except for the zoom speed. The zoom motor is too fast and you often overshoot where you want it to stop. All too often it will not stop where you want it to and you have to step forward or backward to frame the shot. No camera will always produce a perfect shot on the automatic setting. Photography is a learned skill. The large screen lets you see if the shot did not come out right. You learn and try one of the other settings available. Battery life was roughly 125? pics. Time between pics is a little slow, but OK.

PROS: Quality pictures, video and audio; 7x optical zoom in a small body; logical hassle-free operation; reasonable price; low light pics are outstanding; has many other nice features.

CONS: 1) Zoom speed as described above. 2) The Nikon S630 does not use common batteries, so you need to pay for a special spare battery that you need to keep charged at all times. 3) The software included has no editing capability just viewing and transferring. 4) The optional Leather Case (Nikon #5811) is too small to carry a spare battery or extra memory card. I bought a case at Wal-Mart that works perfectly. It was a little tight at first, but it stretched out after a couple days.

Review by Savvy shopper:

I recently purchase the Nikon Coolpix L20 after lots of shopping.

I have used only Olympus cameras only up to now.

This time I wanted a smaller pocket sized camera, that still took the AA batteries, and that still gave great photos with all the features I was used to.

This camera fit the bill!

It takes 2 AA batteries, inexpensive SD memory cards and yet still delivers fantastic photos.

I have already tried all the features, and was completly happy.

I love using the different scene settings, and could not live without the video feature.

Both still and video capture worked well in both bright light and low light.

The sound playback via the camera is hard to distinquish (live music), but fine once uploaded.

I didn’t really require the smile feature, but tried it out on my 3 year old, and was blown away….it really works!

The blink feature is also quite ingenious. The camera actually asks you if your subject blinked when they do, but not when they don’t. This is particularly handy when taking photos of children. I would have loved this feature when I was still my daughter’s yearbook photographer.

What can I say, fabulous price and awesome quality!!!

Definately worth the money.

Comparibly priced camera’s that we have used, produce grainy shots…..but have not found this with this camera at all.

I would recommend this camera to anyone!

Review by C. Scanlon:

This is a professional camera capable of crystal clear prints worthy of publication or gallery display, up to 16×20.

And it is incredibly inexpensive for a camera of such value.

Ok, so its 3.6 optical zoom won’t pick sand off an eagle’s beak at a thousand yards. Okay, so it won’t blow up to billboard size without loss of definition. In the real world however and everyday use this is a fine and professional level camera that will do a far better job than you expected. Better than a cell-phone.

Disguised as a point and shoot. That’s what makes it very effective; people are not intimidated by it. You can get right up to them, and it looks like any other camera. Yet, it is more.

In fact, the generous three inch LCD screen means you do not have to hold it to your face. There is no optical viewfinder in any case. So you can hold it at your hip and glance down at it to compose, and snap shots while engaging the subject in small talk comfortably. I have done this effectively with Tarahumara Indian children in northern Chihuahua who normally run quickly from any camera. It works, and came out great. And that large LCD screen has a high-contrast, anti-reflection coating which keeps it clear even in strong sunlight.

This camera is an improvement over the earlier, wonderful Coolpix, such as the great 8 megapix Nikon Coolpix L18 8MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom (Ruby Red) mainly because it has ten megapix capability. The earlier accessories such as the AC adapter, the Nikon EH-65A AC Adapter, are transferable if you have a long shoot to do in one place (like a schoolful of children, which I have done) or other reason to go off-battery. Nevertheless, a pair of Energizer® e2® “AA” Lithium Batteries For digital cameras, portable audio players, and more last in here last forever.

Your old Coolpix camera pouch also still fits; use it and protect your investment. I like the Rokinon Compact Digital Camera Padded Carrying Case for Canon Powershot, Casio Exilim, Fuji Finepix, (GE) General Electric, Kodak EasyShare, Nikon Coolpix, Olympus FE Stylus, Panasonic Lumix, Pentax Optio, Sony CyberShot and Samsung Digital Cameras.

Also new here, aside from the greater megapixels, is the new Expeed image processing system specially fine-tuned for the Coolpix series “to render natural-looking pictures of incredible quality and quick response” as if the earlier system of digital processing was not fine enough! Amateur enthusiasts will find their photos reaching a new magnitude of quality; even the professional will leave his camera bag and lenses at home (okay, so she might miss her long lens, but macro here gets in to two inches).

The ISO settings are phenomenal, stretching from 64 ISO all the way out to 1600. Over twenty years ago when I was doing photo-journalism in Nicaragua, we used 64 for our slide film and 1600 was just coming on the horizon, very grainy but with a special charm for low light situations, like oil lamp, etc. Here you can do very low light and candlelight (if you do not mind some grain effect), and in fact there are special pre-sets which employ the faster ISO’s effectively.

This is another expansion over the prior Coolpix L series. You can choose instead of Auto (with own its user-selected options) to use the pre-set “Scene” selections quickly and efficiently. The Scene modes now include: Portrait, Night Portrait, Sports, Landscape, Party, Beach/Snow, Sunset, Dusk/Dawn, Night Landscape, Museum, Fireworks Show, Close Up, Copy, Back Light, Panorama Assist, Food. Food is one of the new ones, and you food photo-journalists might want to try it very inexpensively yet quite well here. The rest of the modes you can figure how they are set from the title and how you might apply their settings to similar situations; know that the Nikon impression of party might be much more sedate and candle-lit than the Animal House idea. This is not cheating, to use pre-sets; this is using the tool that you have in the way it was designed. Cheating would be setting this to its auto-scene setting in which it selects the Scene mode according to

prevailing conditions, automatically. Yes, this can do it.

The panorama assist is great. You can take a series of photos in a row in either of four directions (left to right, up and down, etc.) overlapping by one third (I really appreciate the rule of thirds grid which you can bring up on the LCD, keeping the camera straight and well composed), and then unite them with the included software into one long (or tall) file. I had reason to do this the other day at a long new school. Things do not build vertical out here in the desert, but there is plenty of room for horizontal, and a special Cinerama style long photo framing. In fact you could line up your whole town along the sidewalk standing and take one long photo of everyone in town. Just find printer and paper!

With the built in macro mode you can jump right into that cactus blossom from two inches away and have perfect focus. Take a photo of that baby’s toes and blow them up to 16×20. Come in close to that ant stealing cracker crumbs on your picnic. This strength of macro was recently unimaginable, and yet here you have this power within a humble, tiny and inexpensive package.

What I really love and appreciate is the SDHC compliancy. I can use as standard memory card a regular Sandisk 4GB Secure Digital SD HC Memory Card (SDSDB-4096, BULK, No Reader) and have room for 500 shots at maximum resolution. You can truly, as we used to say a quarter century ago “shoot a roll; keep a shot.” Take all of the shots you can, and then pick one out to use and delete the rest. For someone who used to burn through boxes of film (at 36 shots each max) and then do the darkroom processing all night, and then find a free way to get more, this is like living in another, finer dimension. Of course, you can put even larger SD HC memory cards in here and if you ever do fill one up and have nothing more to put in there and no time to delete, this camera comes with a generous 20MB internal memory on hand.

You can hook it up to the USB port of a computer directly and use the included software, or simply pop out the SD card and plug it into a reader and into the computer. Whatever works for you, although I do not like opening and closing the battery/card hatch too much. It is very strong and durable, but in the olden days I had a habit of snapping such things and putting them back together with duct tape. This one looks remarkably resilient nevertheless and has stood up to me.

Speaking of shooting a roll to get the one picture, have you ever taken a shot to discover your subject blinked? This camera lets you know. Yes, this camera sees when your subject blinks, and lets you know, using the Smart Portrait system. It also automatically fixes your red-eye special. You’ll never see red eye again. It finds faces, and automatically focuses on them, up to a dozen at a time. It can also snap the shutter automatically when someone finally dares to smile. And the D-lighting will save those details otherwise lost in darkness.

As you can see, this camera does everything for you but serve as photo agency selling your work to Vogue or GQ. A great camera at a small price. What can go wrong?

The most amazing thing for me, of course, an old still shooter, is that this tiny camera is also a video camera, with built in mike, and a built in speaker for playback. You can make movies with this at two different resolutions, either for television playback at 640×480 or laptop at 320×240 (good for e-mailing). These home movies are truly sharp, with the same excellent back to front focus as the photos, and surprisingly high quality sound. The length of the movie is limited only to the size of your SDHC card; you could easily go for feature length! Using .AVI files, it can easily be edited as well.

Of course, this camera comes with the standard sized screw input for mounting on a tripod. I have used it on my Targus 66-inch heavy-duty tripod. Looks a little small up there, but it works great. You will really appreciate the steadiness a tripod always brings, and the freedom, no less with this great camera, which so thoughtfully has a tripod screw-in.

Hey, for the same price, this is way better than a cell phone!

Too bad this one is so, well, red!

Review by M. Erb:

I have two types of cameras that I generally use, small point & shoots, like the Canon Canon PowerShot SD600 6MP Digital Elph Camera with 3x Optical Zoom for “take anywhere” convenience and DSLR’s which for me currently is the Nikon D300 DX 12.3MP Digital SLR Camera (Body Only)

If you have any questions about the camera, leave a comment and I’ll do my best to answer you. Please note that I have updated my review with some additional observations on 3/29/2010 based on my continued experiences with the camera.

I wanted to get a camera that was SDHC compatible (the SD600 is not SDHC compatible, while the D300 uses CF cards) so that I could use the Eye-Fi wireless card Eye-Fi 4GB Share Video SDHC Wireless Flash Memory Card EYE-FI-4SV with it. I’ve had excellent results with small Canon point & shoot cameras over the years but the Nikon L110 caught my eye and I decided to buy it. It is substantially larger than the svelte Canon SD600, yet much smaller and lighter than my D300. It’s called a “bridge” camera by some people since it has some qualities reminiscent of a DSLR at the expense of being as small and pocketable as a typical “point & shoot” camera. Consequently, depending on where you are on the scale of novice to professional photographer and how pocketable you need your camera to be, this camera may either thrill you or leave you wanting something else. I’m somewhere in the middle.

There is a lot to like about this camera. It has a very nice feel in the hand and the rubberized grip makes you feel secure holding the camera. The large 3″ LCD display is gorgeous… it is bright, sharp and has excellent dpi not normally found in a camera of this price range. It also works quite well outdoors due to the fact that it has an anti-reflective coating on it. However the camera lacks an optical viewfinder which I do miss as I am more accustomed to using a viewfinder than not. The lack of a viewfinder is not a deal-breaker for me though. 12.1 megapixels gives you ample file size to make huge enlargements or lots of room for cropping. And the awesome zoom, from the 35mm equivalent of 28mm-420mm gives you an amazing range. It’s not normally even possible to hand-hold a camera and expect a very sharp image if you are zoomed to 420mm, or even 300mm, but with the great VR and Motion Detection incorporated into the camera, you can actually hand-hold at that extreme and get usable images. I was impressed with that. If you use a tripod at those extremes, then be sure to turn off the VR or you will get poor pictures. This is always the case with electronic VR… you never want to use it when also using a tripod since it is intended to compensate for your hand shake and when you’re on a tripod, there is no hand shake to correct so it is not necessary or desirable to have VR on.

The L110 has a minimal number of buttons and control pads which makes it a very approachable camera to use. Of course, the downside to that is you need to delve into the menu to get to some other features or controls that you may want to fiddle with. Again, coming from the D300, I found this a bit frustrating but someone more used to a point & shoot might not mind or even think about that as much.

What I like specifically about the camera is that I can take stunning photographs with little thought. Using the default “easy auto mode” lets you get started taking photos with little to worry about. Just frame your subject and press the shutter button. But you may not want to keep the camera in that mode all the time because it does come with some limitations that you need to be aware of. Easy Auto Mode automatically determines what you are trying to accomplish then sets the “scene” to what the camera thinks is the appropriate setting… it may not always be correct. And I noticed that auto-focus may not always work correctly especially when trying to shoot closeup images in easy auto mode. So in those cases you can switch to “auto mode” or manually select the “scene” to the mode you specifically want, such as “close-up, portrait, landscape, backlight, etc”

The macro mode on this camera is excellent. You can get as close as .4 inches from your subject and this is fantastic if you are into macro photography. I will post some sample photos in the customers images area for you to see.

I like that the camera can be turned on directly in playback mode simply by pressing the playback button instead of the on/off button. The advantage to doing this is that if you just want to view photos/videos on the camera, the lens remains retracted. Otherwise if you turn the camera on using the on/off button, then press the playback button, the lens first extends then goes into playback mode.

The flash does not automatically flip up when needed like some cameras of this style. That’s not a bad thing, just something you need to know. If the camera determines that flash is necessary, it does display a message on the LCD screen informing you to “Raise The Flash.”

The buttons on the back of the camera only require a very light touch. At first this annoyed me a little bit as they felt overly “touchy”. But I quickly grew accustomed to the lighter touch and now must say I like it.

Video quality is very very good, especially in outdoors and well-lit situations. Low light results in more grain than I would like to see, but since this is not a dedicated video camera, nor expensive, it is acceptable. The audio recorded in video mode (stereo by the way) is very good too.

UPDATE: I’ve been using the movie mode more extensively since my original review and have changed my opinion of the audio and video quality. The low light performance of video recording is not very good at all and results in -very- noisy (grainy) video. I’ve also noticed a significant muffled quality to the sound that is especially noticeable when just a persons voice is recorded. Recording where the ambient noise levels are high, such as when outside, masks this somewhat. But when recording video in more quiet surroundings, a single sound source such as voice will present the distortion, hiss or whatever you want to call it, at much more noticeable levels and is not what I would call good quality at all. On a scale of 1-10 I’d have to rate the audio quality about a 4. There is no capability to attach an external mic, nor would I expect that for a camera in this price range. The audio quality is quite disappointing to me now though, especially when compared to my Canon SD600 that has extremely clear, distortion free (mono) audio. Finally, I also heard some zoom induced mechanism noise while zooming and recording video.

One feature that really appeals to me is the “small picture” option. If you take a lot of photos that eventually end up on the web, you can have the camera make a smaller sized copy of any photo that you have taken… either 640×480, 320×240 or 160×120. I find this really helpful because if you take your original photo at a lower resolution, then that’s what you’re stuck with forever. But with this feature you can take your photos at the highest resolution then have the camera make a re-sized copy of the photo at the resolution you specify. I build websites so this is very helpful for me as I don’t have to spend as much time in Photoshop resizing photos destined for the web.

There are a slew of other features, such as “blink warning”, automatic red-eye fixing, smart-portrait mode, sport continuous mode (pretty cool feature that will take up to 20 continuous photos at 11.1 fps) and even more. Regarding the Sports Continuous Mode; this mode reduces the image quality/size to a maximum of 3Megapixels and is not going to give you razor sharp images that you would get in other modes. But consider it’s purpose… to get a shot that would otherwise be nearly impossible using this level of camera. It takes a burst of photos to enable you to hopefully get a decent action shot out of a series of shots taken at a moment in time. The ISO is also increased to 640 in this mode which does inject more noise into the final image. This is common to small sensor cameras such as this. You really want to keep the ISO at as low a value as possible to reduce “noise” in the photo. Increasing the ISO increases the sensitivity of the sensor and this is what causes the increased noise… think of it as distortion when you turn the volume up to high.

I’d have to write a book to cover all the features in detail. But one more feature that I’ll mention is Panorama Assist which is handy when composing a series of shots intended to be a panorama. It provides a ghost image of the previous shot to help you align the next shot you want to take in your series of photos destined to be a panorama.

Nikon includes several software titles including Panorama Maker Pro by ArcSoft. I was happy with the results that Panorama Maker Pro produced; it was easy to use and flexible in what you can do with it.

Battery life is quite good. The camera uses 4-AA batteries, either alkaline, Ni-MH, or lithium. That makes it convenient if you have dead batteries since AA batteries can be purchased anywhere. Proprietary batteries often provide longer life, but once they’re dead, so are you if you don’t have a charger or second charged battery with you.

A few issues for me with the camera is that I am frequently wanting to manually focus the camera and that is not possible. Another issue is that other than setting ISO and exposure compensation, there is little else you can manually do to control the camera. You cannot manually set the shutter speed or aperture. Concerning ISO, when it is set to 3200 or 6400 the image mode settings are limited to 3 megapixels 2048×1536, PC 1024,768 or VGA 640×480.

Overall I like the Nikon L110 quite a bit. The photos are excellent and HD video is a nice extra although you won’t be too happy with lower light video quality and the audio capabilities are not the best. It strikes a nice balance between a simple point & shoot camera and a larger and substantially more expensive DSLR. It’s a product that because of it’s price point, will not meet everyone’s expectations. If you desire excellent video from this camera, you’d be better off spending more and getting something that is video-centric. If you view this as predominantly a camera that also has the ability to take video, then you’ll probably be OK with this. If you are expecting this under 0 camera to also excel at taking movies with awesome audio, you will not be happy. Concessions will have to made at this price point.

UPDATE: 4/4/2010- Just a brief update regarding battery life using plain old Alkaline batteries. I took over 300 photos plus 20-30 movies of varying length and did quite a bit of viewing before the batteries died. That’s not bad for regular Alkaline batteries. Consider also that I am also using the Eye-Fi wireless SDHC card in the camera that automatically uploads any photos or movies through my wireless network so that is also putting a drain on the batteries. Without the card, I would expect even better battery life than what I’ve reported. You’d get much longer life with Lithium and of course rechargeable NiMH batteries would probably be the best long-term bang for the buck.

UPDATE: 4/22/2010- I’ve uploaded a few video snippets from the L110 on YouTube. Just search for “Nikon L110 Video Sample”. They will not win any Academy Awards for cinematography but just a really quick indication of video quality. Sorry for the wind noise, but it was quite breezy outside.

Review by Alexandru Mazilu:

I bought the L110 for the main purpose of taking pictures of my two kids. They are not still subjects and the L110 is doing a great job in keeping up the pace with them. It pops-up in like 2 seconds and is shooting rounds of pictures at max resolution (12.1). That’s for speed.

Wide angle and super-zoom are in the manual. What is impressive is that at max zoom (digital zoom included) – with no tripod – I get to take sharp pictures. That’s for image stabilization.

After ~500 pics and ~30 min of HD video, the original AA Energizer Ultimate Lithium batteries are still fully functional. No warning yet.

—-

Later edit. I took around

- 1100 pictures with the original AA Energizer Ultimate Lithium (L91-FR6) batteries ([...]).

- 400 pictures with some alcaline AA Energizer (LR6-E91-AM3) batteries ([...])

- 500 pictures / recharge with some rechargeable Energizer AA 2450 mAh.

All pictures were taken at maximum resolution and the flash fired for about 80% of those pics.

—-

The stereo HD video recording under the same hood is a treat. The maximum length for one video session is 30 minute (regardless of SD capacity) which is decent for birthday parties and similar.

Unfortunately, this is no camera phone that you can slip into a pocket until you need it. The only draw back I can see.

I test drove both Nikon Coolpix L110 and Canon SX200IS before I decided on Nikon. Size is the only advantage of the compact vs bridge, although price is higher for that particular Canon.

L110 is a stylish piece of equipment and an ergonomic one: I can easily operate it with only one hand.

The menu is really simple and intuitive… even for the feminine intuition…

All in all, a great camera and some well spent money.

Review by Busy Executive:

I owned the very good Sony DSC-W350 (which I liked very much), but I managed to leave it in a rental car. Between the time I bought my Sony and now, Nikon released a new line, so I figured I’d give one of their best compact point and shoot cameras a try. I use a lot of Nikon’s DSLR equipment, but their point-and-shoots have been a bit disappointing to me over the years. But I liked the S8000 and decided to give it a try – and I’m glad I did…it’s a wonderful point-and-shoot, even better than the Sony in every way.

First, I place a lot of emphasis on the size and shape of the camera and whether it just feels natural in my hands. The S8000 is very small and light, and sometimes really petite cameras just feel awkward to me. I’m happy to say that the S8000 gets it about perfect – it’s easy to hold, the controls feel like they’re where you expect them, and I never accidentally hit say, the power button when I’m looking for something else. I also tend to like designs that put the lens in the middle of the camera, as opposed to some designs (like the otherwise very good Panasonics) that tend to put the lens off-center. With very little practice, I feel like I can work the Nikon with my eyes closed, and I never feel awkward with it.

The built-in LCD monitor is also very good and easy to read under most conditions, except maybe in very bright direct sunlight. Still, my eyes aren’t fantastic, but I have no trouble navigating the menus or reviewing shots after I’ve taken them. As an added plus, the menus are structured in a way that’s similar to Nikon’s DSLR cameras, so if you’re familiar with Nikon’s other products, you’ll feel right at home here.

It’s also a fast camera. I don’t find the start-up time to be particularly quick, but once you have it on, focus, zooming, shutter lag, flash recycle and so on are very, very fast indeed. The autofocus system seems to be about as fast as the system in my Nikon D3 most of the time, which is really impressive to say the least. With some of the older point and shoots I’ve owned, I felt like I’d miss shots because of shutter lag or how long it took to focus…not so with the S8000.

As for image quality, I have to say that I was skeptical that a 10x lens could perform as well as I want. Honestly, I’d rather have a super sharp 4x than a mediocre 10x, and this was my biggest concern with the Nikon. Well, I’m happy to say that I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the wide zoom range in the Nikon – this is one really high performance lens, at least when you look at it in combination with all the other features the camera offers. It does great close-ups, letting you focus up to about half an inch from your subject. It seems to have a great optical anti-shake capability, permitting you to hand-hold the camera in fairly dark situations without resorting to a flash. The wide-angle end of the spectrum looks natural without some of the distortions you sometimes see on this type of camera. The worst thing I can say about the lens is that it has some purple fringing at the long end of the range – nothing that can’t be fixed in Photoshop, but it is noticeable.

Overall, I don’t see much difference in the 10x lens on the Nikon versus the excellent 4x lens on my former Sony in terms of image quality. The Nikon seems to produce slightly warmer colors with more saturation and just a generally more vivid appearance. The Sony was more natural looking, but not a lot of difference otherwise. I do notice that Nikon seems to apply slightly less digital sharpening than Sony, but this again is easily corrected in whatever editing software you use if you want to. Frankly, some cameras tend to push the sharpening a bit too far, and portraits tend to come out looking a bit harsh as a result. The Nikon gives you a more natural look that most people will find pleasing – plus you can always add sharpening after the fact if you need to.

If you’re a novice, one thing to keep in mind is that at the telephoto end of the zoom range, the S8000 is equivalent to a 300mm on a 35mm camera. This offers quite some magnification – but it also amplifies your tendency to get blurry pictures by inadvertently shaking the camera (for instance, as you press the shutter release). Nikon’s vibration reduction system helps a lot, but you really need bright lighting (hence, high shutter speeds) to get consistently sharp pictures with this end of the zoom range. I’m sure we’ll see subsequent reviewers complaining about fuzzy images at the long end of the zoom range, and no doubt this will be why. As a side note, the camera includes a tripod socket, so it’s possible to get perfect pictures in low light, even at the 300mm end of the range – but I rarely see people carrying around a five pound tripod for their six ounce camera.

The camera goes out to ISO 3200, but in my use so far, I’d only recommend up to ISO 400 for images you intend to print, maybe 800 for email/web images. Higher ISO than 800 get to look pretty poor, in my opinion. Of course, this is the nature of the beast – these compact cameras have compact image sensors, and that means you just can’t boost the sensitivity without introducing lots of noise.

The built-in flash is okay, but not super powerful. It does offer uniform lighting over the frame, even when using wide angle views – a pet peeve of mine on other cameras. The S8000 also has automatic red-eye reduction built in, so you rarely see people pictures having lots of red-eye. Of course, I’d rather have great noise-free performance out to ISO 3200 so I don’t need the flash in the first place, but absent that, the flash is a reasonable compromise.

Nikon includes their venerable D-lighting system, which is essentially a way to bring detail back into the picture when there’s a huge contrast variation. It works well, for instance, with many flash shots, or when you have a person standing in the shade against a sunny background. Since you can also add these effects post-processing, I tend to turn the feature off in my cameras, but it does work well overall.

There are a few other included features I don’t get much use out of. One is the video mode. I suppose if I want to take videos, I’d use a video camera, not a tiny point-and-shoot. Nikon doesn’t seem to have put a lot of thought into the video mode anyway…it’s “only” 720p, and in what seems like a poor design choice, you can’t zoom the lens while filming. Another included feature I just don’t find myself using is the burst mode that lets you take up to 16 lower quality (3MP) images in a very rapid sequence…generally, if I’m doing high-speed action photography, I’m doing it with my DSLR, not the point-and-shoot. Compared to the Sony I recently owned, there are also no panorama or HDR modes, but honestly, I don’t miss either of these.

Overall, I think Nikon has a winner here and I absolutely recommend it for anyone wanting a compact but capable point-and-shoot.

Review by F. Morrissey:

I bought this camera because I wanted a camera that could both take high quality pictures of objects from a far away distance and took HD video. The Quality of the pictures of this camera are good from a far distance. I could easily read signs when zoomed in that I could not read from looking at them. I am a structural engineer so I needed something that I could read the structure types and be able to idetify the structures from a distance, in this it did its job.

Now the down side of the camera. The video quality of the video was excellent as well as the sound. The HUGE overlooked flaw is that recording indoors or out there is a high pitched squealing noise in the backround of every video no matter if it was played on lcd, computer, tube tv, or the camera itself. I tried the camera instore and it did the same thing (after I had taken it home and tested in depth). I have also seen example videos online where you can here the distinctive squeel.

If you are getting this camera for the picture quality only, look no further; but if like me you wanted HD video as well I would suggest looking at another camera.

Update***

I just purchased the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3, and wow. When comparing the photos I had saved with the Nikon and now the new photos I have taken of the exact same objects, the Panasonic clearly wins big. Along with my complaint of the Nikon’s video the Panasonic also has a clearer HD video and stereo sound with no annoying whine in the background. And now the best part. I purchased it off amazon at 5, which is less than the Nikon. I would highly recommend checking out the Panasonic Lumix first.

Review by Tom North:

This is a very versatile camera and responsive to most needs. It has a good macro range to go along with a super zoom range. It compares well to a Panasonic DMC-GH1 which has a much larger sensor and more expensive optics (the lens alone is twice the price of this Nikon). The Panasonic also produced higher saturation and contrast shots in default mode and this gives the appearance of higher resolution. The Nikon gave a truer auto outdoor color balance and more natural contrast. Even at ISO 800 it was very sharp. You can enlarge a few test shots at the DPReview forums by searching for “Nikon P100 test shots”. or if this works: [...]

The two highlights that amazed me were the Nikon’s focusing indicator system. It is so cool that when you shoot a bouquet of flowers the display shows you each blossom chosen by the matrix focusing system. You click the shutter with the knowledge that it is choosing what you want. Wonderful. The second highlight is the range of the optics from good macro, nice wide angle, and amazing telephoto. Please see the photos I uploaded showing how well this camera compares. What the Nikon lacks mostly comes down to smooth tones and fine detail at high ISOs; and this is only because it is being compared to a large sensor camera. The images would easily pass a fairly critical viewer on an 8×10 print and seem to be better than previous cameras with this size sensor.

Pros (so far):

Great focus indicator system, Display shows small green squares over selected objects for focus = ready to shoot, red square = not ready

Light, easy to hold good fit to my medium sized hands.

Articulated screen seems more natural than the swing out to the side screens (aligned with lens)

Quick access to shoot videos, focus tracking option, slow motion (lower res 240 fps),

Hugh zoom range and quite fast action, 1½ ++ second end to end

Outdoor sunlight colors quite natural

Very good resolution lens for this price range and favorably compares to much more expensive lenses (see above photos, several are pieces of 16 x 20 prints)

Very good macro versatility (see blowup of portion of terry towel above)

Adequate viewfinder but very contrasty, necessary info in viewfinder.

Cons (so far):

When shooting a video the focus is not able to keep up with the zoom (I reduced my rating because of this).

No RAW image option (less important with tools like Corel Image Adjustment Lab that gives me color temperature correction on jpg)

Lens cap rather than auto protect system, must remember to take it off before turning on camera (your notified when you forget)

Must use the menu system for several settings (ISO, color balance), slower but OK (hats off to the Canon G11, Panasonic)

Fast zoom over big range means it is tricky to accurately crop a shot (same with others though) Would love to see a ‘nudge’ feature for small changes.

Color balance with my photo fluorescent lights was tricky to dial in

Quick shutter in most situations but not all

No hot shoe for accessories and external flash

Only an adequate viewfinder

Minimum aperture of f8 (standard for cameras in this class, but would love to see it improved)

Screen does not ’self protect’

Must manually switch viewfinder verses LCD, simple one push button though

Review by S-F TV addict:

Just got home tonight with the camera; went to the store with the idea of buying the Canon SX20IS after reading all the reviews of the Nikon p90 and the Canon; previously I had gotten the JVC HD-1 00 HD camcorder and several Sony mini DV camcorders, and a Canon S2 (10x zoom) 5MP digital camera. Before that I had the OM-2 (film) SLR, for which I have a zillion lenses. We also have a Panasonic point and shoot and a new Canon 1300 elph. I notice that a lot of people griped about the Canon SX20 focusing and low light, and even more griped about the Nikon p90. At the store, they had the Canon and the Nikon p100. I thought both of them performed very well at high zoom, during zoom, good focus quickly, etc. Color looked good on the displays. I really like the Canon S2 as a point and shoot (early or first with the high zoom); can’t stand the low zoom point and shoot idea, since I want to be able to bring out things I can’t actually reach (architectural details, wildlife, etc.). I finally decided to try the Nikon (first one I’ve ever had) on the basis of the CMOS chip, 26 instead of 20:1 zoom, 1080p vs 720p, Li-ion battery vs. AA, and mainly the fact that in the (well lit, but not blinding) store, the image on the display was much brighter on the Nikon than the Canon. However, the actual pictures on the Canon were bright and nice, but it was easier for me to see to compose the shot on the display with the Nikon. It was so easy to use I was able to record video or stills and play them back in the store; and it turned out the Nikon was on sale and cheaper than the Canon.

My philosophy of picture taking is that I want to remember vacations, excursions, etc.; my ideal camera would see things the way my eye does except for bionic enhancements like night vision, zoom, etc. But in particular, I love existing light shots (and video) and love the HAD low light sloppy low res color slow shutter option on the Sony camcorders since you can (for example) take video of your wife at dinner in a dim restaurant and have it even if sloppy, at least in color and something like what the experience really was. So I am after memories, and not art, but if you can do art, that would be great. Anyway, I had no idea what to expect out of this thing; based on the tiny size, ultralight construction, low cost, etc. I figured it would be mainly a toy, but I hoped I could take it on vacation as a one thing does all photographic tool. I got the Sandisk “ultra” 16GB SDHC card for it, 15MB/s, figuring for HD you need the fastest card you can get.

I had not read any reviews before buying it, but when I read them when I got home with it, I was pretty bummed out.. all the stuff about locking up, hellish noisy zoom, sloppy focus, can’t use the zoom with video, etc. etc.

I am happy to say that my experience didn’t confirm any of that. (Of course, it might lock up etc. at some point, I have only had it a few hours but I have a theory about that I’ll mention later.)

Anyway, I immediately went around the inside of the house in regular low light condtions shooting stills and video. By low light I mean some rooms only had light coming through the doorways from other rooms, some rooms had a few 13W compact fluorescents, one last room had 5 65W ceiling can lights on. It was lit for atmosphere not reading books. Bottom line is I had no trouble getting very nicely well lit pix and video in any of the rooms with lights on. In a stairwell with no light except a 13W compact fluorescent 6ft outside an archway leading to the stairs the wall and furniture seemed v. dark brown; by eye I could easily see the color. Where the stairs went up to total shadow, the camera cut out to black and white where by eye I could still see color. In comparison to a 5 year old top of the line Sony mini DV one CCD camcorder it was about like the camera on normal setting, not “slow color shutter”. In other words, about as much as I could hope for.

The zoom is not as easy to control to get exact magnification as the Sony, BUT (and this is important) while you can hear the zoom motor on playback, it is very subdued and I didn’t find it at all noticeable..when the room is silent, you can hear it, but it is about like a very soft whisper. In normal tourist situations I don’t think you’d notice the zoom noise at all. With a bit of practice, I was able to use the zoom to my satisfaction.

Another pleasant surprise to me was that the hand held video when walking around the house from darkness to light was smooth and generally not jerky..the image stabilization must work very well, considering you don’t have any weight to stablize the tremor of your hands, footsteps, etc. The video even handles normal panning (aiming the camera forward while walking around the end of a table, for example) without any major glitches…if you shake your hand beyond a given limit, there is an instant of moderate blurriness, but it handles the panning motion by making the whole scene’s resolution lower; while walking and turning in low light, it is maybe NTSC quality, not HD. But the JVC HD-1 just blew up and went to blocks of “ice” if you panned, so I have no complaints about that. If you hold the camera still (handheld, low light as described) the picture is very sharp and looks like HD to me. So I don’t agree with the review that the video is “crap”. I think it will probably be sufficient to take this on vacation as my only camera, but I want to try it out in better conditions for a longer time first. My wife was blown away by the sound clarity, stereo, etc. She thought it sounded better than the Sony camcorders.

It seems to me that the basic operation (load, shoot, zoom, focus, etc.) is very easy and very satisfactory. So, so far I love it. If it had the equivalent of slow color shutter and nightvision it would be pretty well perfect (well, I’d like it to weigh twice as much also, to make it easier to keep steady, but even being light as a feather it competes well with the much heavier camcorders).

The display, navigation, menus, etc. seem to me easier to use than the Canon equivalent; having just set up my wife’s new 1300 elph.

The comments about the viewfinder being dark, grainy, etc. is true in very low light…until you take a picture. As soon as you depress the shutter button to focus, the viewfinder lights up in crisp bright detail and it’s easy to see what you are going to get…I suppose that is some sort of power saving feature. If you are walking around looking through the viewfinder, it may look worse than the Sony camcorder (or the Canon S2) until you press a button to shoot, then it is bright. I can live with that OK. In decent light (moderately well lit room at night) I don’t notice it. In general, no complaints about the viewfinder. The diopter control worked like a champ and I will use the viewfinder not the display for shooting..only use the display for playback.

I like the flash being folded down, so you can suppress it if you wish (which I usually do), and it is easy to pop up if you want it. The flash comes on instantly..unlike the S2..no waiting period on the first use of it.

The Canons Sxx series is better in that you can have the display rotated out of the way (plastic out instead of display out) to keep it clean when you are using the viewfinder.

In short, I just tested it every way I could think of under the worst lighting and shooting (all hand held, low light) conditions and it did very well. I displayed the pictures and movies on a 44 inch top of the line Sony 1080p TV with mini HDMI/HDMI connection cable, and even handheld, you could zoom in (easy, from the camera) before you could see pixelation on the stills so I presume they are better than a couple of MP of usable info even under these lousy conditions.

Just a word of encouragement for its capabilities as a hybrid camera/camcorder…it well exceeded my expectations. With a tripod or decent technique it should be excellent indeed..and very usable without it.

I am very pleased with it. When it’s daylight, will do some more rigorous tests of image quality outside in decent light. By the way, it takes (handheld, so very blurry) time exposures up to at least several seconds of exposure …so I would expect that like the OM-2, which was great for taking full color pictures of my parents’ backyard in the country by starlight, one should be able to take pictures in very dim light with a tripod.

If anything negative turns up, I will post a followup. Otherwise, very happy. I do notice it dies quickly when its buttons are not being pushed…I wonder if this is the “lock up” some talked about. I didn’t find it a problem, just hit the power button and you’re good to go. A bit disconceting vs. the Canon or Sony which stay inactive a lot longer before hibernating, but you may be able to change the setting on that if you want to.

—-Update after more testing—–

I took it around outside in bright sun to see how it does in high light levels, also took some mroe interior shots & video trying some other situations, such as flash with high zoom level in the dark, etc. It did very well. You can point it at something that is so dark you can’t see it, and get a perfect flash picture. You can focus perfectly for time exposures (tripod) through moderately dirty glass at things outside. Focus seems fast and reliable under all conditions except when you are shooting video and move to something that is significantly further away. In that case, it is slow to refocus and the focusing makes sharp clicks on the video sound track (you’re supposed to turn the AF feature to focus only at the start of the video, and not make that sort of move anyway according to the manual.)

I found the focus worked fine outdoors when you were recording video and panning from far off to close up objects, also no noticeable noise. Another defect for video is that the zoom (as others have commented) is very quick, but you can slow it down by using lighter pressure on the lever; I found the rate of zoom could be controlled to be comparable to a camcorder. However, it has one glitch that is completely understandable for a still camera but requires some work-around for video, which is that when you have zoomed out to high levels (say 20+) and are filming, when you try to zoom back in, there is a wibble and jerk in the image as the drive connects with the lens, making the picture shake all over for a second or so. That is about the only unexpected issue I was able to find. There is a lot of wind noise in high wind; there is a wind noise suppression feature I didn’t try. I expect you could put a fuzz pad over the mics also if it bothered you. All in all, I still love it and figure to take it as my sole camera on trips. I haven’t tried all the fancy scene and specialty stuff, and haven’t yet loaded the Nikon software on the laptop. I find the playback on the HDTV to be an absolute delight, and all the contols to be very intuitive and every day discover new things I like…for example, it remembers what you’ve been doing, and comes up with the video screen if you were shooting video, still for stills, etc. Of course if you push the other trigger button it immediately switches. Etc. A million little convenient things like that. For vacations, a neat feature is that when you have your clips displayed on the TV, as you move the zoom lever to the left it puts more and more clip thumbnails (up to 16) on the screen, and then goes to a calendar with the days for which you took shots highlighted, so it would be easy to go back after a trip and find a given subject.

For battery life, it told me battery depleted when I had taken about 130 still images and 35 video clips, maybe half the stills with flash. Probably had erased 10-15 stills and 5-10 videos. Had about 30 minutes of video on the camera, probably. Computer said card had 2.5 GB of files. I had watched all the stills and video at least once on the camera display, and at least once on the TV. So if you were just shooting, it should last significantly longer on one charge.

So all in all, I give it an excellent rating. My only real complaint is the jerking of the zoom when the retraction drive is kicked in when you are shooting video. So I have learned to shut off the video and retract the zoom ratio before starting up the video again at the new zoom ratio if operating at high zoom ratios. Otherwise, it pretty well exceeds every expectation. I am delighted with it. It’s hard to imagine you can do so much photography so easily with such a tiny camera.

PS: It has not “locked up” on me, but thanks to N Jaeger for pointing out my first night speculation about that was completely off base.. totally separate issue from the hibernation time (which you can change). As others have said, apparently need to do a hard reboot by pulling the battery out if it does lock up.

One other thing is the manual gives the data transfer rates under various uses, and the fastest is 14MB/sec for HD video, so the choice of the “ultra” Sandisk card (15MB/s)was probably good. I haven’t ever seen a delay in saving, processing, or shooting. The camera indicates about 29 minutes of shooting time when you bring it up in 1080p record mode, but I can’t imagine that being a limitation. But if you wanted to set it up on a tripod and just shoot your life for the full 2 to 4 hours a big card would allow, I guess you couldn’t do it.

When you play a low light video back through the HDMI cable to the tv, it seems to come out enhanced and bright vs. what you see by just pulling the card and viewing it with Windows on an HP dv6 entertainment pc. The stills and brightly lit videos look the same both ways, but apparently the camera will do some processing on data it considers suboptimal. I assume the Nikon software would do the same in the computer but haven’t tried it.

I remain really tickled with the camera. Good luck.

Review by E. Sumner:

Great Camera. If you are new to the DSLR game (like myself) or you are upgrading and you can fork up the cash, it is definitely worth it. It has a very concise, simple, and easy to use interface, the buttons are very well placed, and the swivel LCD is very nice and useful in certain situations (I really like how it folds inwards to protect the screen). My main purpose for this camera is still photos so the video is a cool bonus and is surprisingly better than I thought (though if you are looking to do serious HD video, I’d go for an HD camcorder or something else instead).

The D5000 is essentially a D90 squeezed into a smaller lighter body (of course it lacks the internal AF motor, doesn’t have as good a grip, and has a slightly smaller pentamirror viewfinder instead of the pentaprism in the D90 – all of this amongst a few other things, but hey it’s cheaper for a reason – also it is mentionable that the D5000 has an additional live view mode, a few more in camera editing tools, and more scene modes compared to the D90 – all useful for someone new to the DSLR in the sense that you can learn from them or just use them to make your life easier and your photos look great).

So far I love it. It is simple to use and great for those new to the DSLR realm, but it also packs enough punch for those looking to upgrade and will give newcomers much room to learn and grow with it.

Review by Todd:

I bought a D5000 with the 18-55 VR lens from Amazon last Friday (Black Friday). I paid about 0 less than a friend who bought the same camera a few months ago. AND… It is NOT part of the recall! My biggest initial concern was getting caught up in the recall. I am very happy to say that Amazon seems to be beyond those serial numbers – at least with the kit (camera and 18-55 VR lens).

I’m upgrading from a D50 I bought 4 or more years ago. There are a number of reasons why I chose THIS camera. First, I like Nikon over other brands because they are easier to use/better menus for those of us who aren’t experts. I also think that Nikon makes the best lenses. Even their cheapest kit lenses have great optics and take great pictures. Not all manufacturers can say that.

The second thing I want to address is this camera’s lack of an internal motor to auto focus a lens. In other words, you need Nikon’s AF-S lenses with this camera. (Note: almost all of Nikon’s lenses work with this camera and auto focus.) I would only think it is a concern for someone who has really old lenses, a non-Nikon lens like Sigma or Tamron without an auto focus motor built-in, or possibly some specialty lens that won’t auto focus on its own. For me, I have purchased 4 different lenses over the last 4-5 years. They all work just fine. While it is something to be aware of, I think most people who are looking at this camera will be fine too. The lack of an internal motor means the D5000 is slightly smaller and lighter than the next step up – cheaper too. This makes the D5000 easier to hang around your neck and carry around all day. This camera is not targeted at a pro, though it is very capable of taking pro pictures. Pros are more likely to opt for the D90 or above.

Third – My D50, the D40, D60, D70 and D80 are all Generation 1 cameras. (Actually the D40 & D60, may be called Generation 2, but are more Generation 1.5) Nikon’s current lineup, the D3000, D5000, D90 and D300s, are all Generation 2 cameras. What the reviews say is that the Generation 2 cameras take better pictures. They see things more the way the human eye sees things. I am at that point where I am trying to learn more about photography and take better pictures. I did my research. The D3000 is a light camera that you can carry around all day without getting neck cramp. The problem with the D3000 for me was that all the reviews said how much noise (little purple dots that look like film grain) showed up in photos at the higher ISOs. The D90 is a great camera with numerous features that appeal to someone who has some idea what ISO and F stops mean and how they affect the quality of the photo. The D5000’s problem, until recently, has been that it was too closely priced to the D90. There was just no reason not to take the extra step up to the D90. Now that Nikon and Amazon have dropped the price of the D5000, it is a much better value. The D90 with the same 18-55 VR lens is about 0 more expensive than the D5000 as of this writing. The D5000 uses the same sensor (and some other parts) as the much more expensive D90 and D300s. It is a newer camera than the D90. I would think, but don’t have actual knowledge, that this would have a positive effect on some of the advanced features in the D5000. I say this because the software in the D5000 is newer. It does NOT have the noise problems of the D3000. If you cannot afford the D5000, I suggest you consider the D40 (while supplies last) over the D3000. The D40 takes better pictures and costs less.

Video – Do NOT buy a DSLR to shoot videos. NO DSLR from any manufacturer does this really well. The technology is too new. Video on a DSLR is a goof, something neat/fun to play with and not something to take too seriously. DSLRs are designed to take really good photographs. If you need good video, buy a camcorder!

In my opinion, the D5000 is THE camera for folks new to DSLRs who need something simple, but with great capabilities and those, like me, who want to take a step up in features/capabilities without having to spend over 0 dollars for the D90 and a lens. While Live View has its limitations, the articulating screen (it swivels – very cool feature) on the D5000 will make it easier for me to take those occasional hard to get photos.

I really think I made the right choice and got what I feel is a heck of a deal! I hope this information is useful to those of you who are still trying to decide which camera is best for you.

One last thought… Nikons seem to hold their value. I plan to sell my D50 – AND – there seems to be a market for it. Once I learn what ISO and F stops are (I have some idea, but am still learning.), I will likely sell my D5000 and buy whatever the next step up is. I think this is a great added value to buying a good name brand camera like Nikon. All the best…

**Update 1/3/10** Well, I’ve had a chance to shoot a few hundred photos with my new D5000. I did a direct comparison with about 150 photos between my old D50 and the new D5000. The output of my old D50 and the new D5000 are remarkably close. These side by side comparisons were shot with the same lens (Nikkor 16-85mm VR and Nikon NC filter), the built in flash and the Nikon SB 800 flash. I took some shots in “Auto” and many shots in “P”. I used every ISO and color controll the D5000 had and tried to tweak them up and down (sharpness, saturation and hue). I’ve decided to return the D5000, and then decided to keep it, and here’s why.

The added megapixels of the D5000 seem to have very little effect in the amount of detail in the photos as compared to my D50. The D50 has a 6 megapixel sensor. (I DID tweak the settings of my D50 to get better output. I will tweak the settings of the D5000 too.) And, the D50 seemed to have a slightly more reliable/consistent meter when shooting in auto white balance. All this really surprised me. I guess I was expecting more of a difference between the two cameras. The D50 probably has one of the most accurate meters in any Nikon digital camera – better than the D40 and D60. In the thousands of photos I took over 4-5 years, it got the white balance spot on every time.

In defense of the D5000, it does have features far beyond those of the D50. It is these features that have made me decide to keep the D5000. The software in the D5000 allows you to adjust many more aspects of how the camera operates and takes pictures than what my D50 had. This allowed me to tweak any settings that I was not completely happy with. It also has numerous preset scene modes for those who want to treat the D5000 more as a really good point and shoot. I guess this camera gives the user enough features where even prosumers could be happy with the creative flexibility the controls give.

The D5000 has a number of other advantages over the D50. The first is a time saver for me. Its auto distortion controll seems to handle lens distortion “in camera” when the pictures are taken. Having the camera address lens distortion saves me from having to fix it after the photos are taken. I shoot quite a bit with a 12-24mm lens that tends to twist things some. I also took several test photos of a very square surface with a 70-300mm lens at different focal lengths. You could see the lens distortion through the view finder. Big bonus… The auto distortion control really seems to work! Additional features include much better low light performance (The D50 and many other cameras will never touch the D5000’s low light performance.), ADR (it will capture detail inside shadows rather than just turning the shadow black.), a larger-articulating screen that is much easier to see and read (the D5000 displays the camera settings on the rear screen instead of an LCD on top of the camera.), live view (I recommend using this only for those hard to get photos when you just can’t use the view finder. It can take 3 to 8 seconds to focus in live view.) auto focus with 3D tracking for photographing subjects that are moving, and a smaller and lighter form factor than the D50.

The bottom line for me was that my old D50 took really good photos in good conditions. The D5000 takes only slightly better pictures than my D50 in good conditions. In less than perfect conditions, the D5000 seems to take much better photos than my D50. If you’re upgrading like me and none of these added features mean anything to you, keep your current camera. Otherwise, while not completely perfect, the D5000 can be a good upgrade or a very capable first dslr that is easy to use AND will give you the room and controls to expand your skills and your creativity as you learn.

I did play with a variety of settings in my new D5000. The “One Change” that seemed to make the biggest improvement in the quality of the photos was to adjust the sharpness settings in the Picture Controls menu. I have turned the sharpness settings way up over the factory defaults. The factory settings ranged from 2 to 4 (on a scale of 1 to 9). I greatly prefer setting the sharpness more in the 5 to 8 range. You can adjust the sharpness for the different modes – 5 for images you want to be softer like portraits, and 6, 7 or 8 for everything else. If you shoot in “auto mode”, these changes won’t work. You will need to move to “P” or some other setting to take advantage of this. If you try it, I think you will be pleased at how much sharper and how much more detail you get in your photos over the factory settings.

The information I share comes in part from personal experience and in part from reading reviews and information all over the web – not because I’m some pro photographer. For anyone who cares to read more, I recommend checking out Ken Rockwell. You can Google him. He rates ALL of these cameras and provides useful information like tips on how to setup your D5000 once you buy it. Note: The guide to setting up the D5000 is burried in the site. If you click the “Nikon” link, then go down to “Plain English User Guides”, you will find it. His guide to setting the camera up is separate from the review of the D5000 on his site. If you follow his suggestions when adjusting the saturation levels (color), you should know that you CAN really get some wild colors – colors that are not natural. I didn’t get this the first time and got some really crazy output from the camera. I decided to leave most of the color settings set at the factory defaults. I saved two custom settings with the saturation level turned up one notch for pictures taken outside and in good sunlight. If you screw up the settings on the camera, it is easy to restore the factory default settings. So, don’t be affraid to try different things. Ken recommends setting the sharpness settings to 5. As I said before, I prefer to go even sharper and use settings that range from 5 to 8. Ken’s only beef with the D5000 was that Nikon started with it too closely priced to the D90. The D5000 shares the same sensor and A LOT of other parts from the more expensive D90. This makes the D5000 a fantastic camera and a great value at its current price point. Amazon lists the link to the DPReview review on the D5000 page or you can Google it. People may want to read the DPReview of the D5000 before reading Ken Rockwells Guide to setting up the D5000. DPReview tells you whats wrong with the factory default settings on the D5000. Ken Rockwell tells you how to adjust the factory settings to get even better photos! I know I’m rambling a bit here. I’m going to so much effort here only because the reviews on Amazon have provided me so much helpful information in the past. I am just trying to give something back. Oh, I DID sell my D50 for 0! I was very happy to get this kind of money for a camera that was 4 or 5 years old. All the best…**End of Update**