Eat your heart out David Bailey (Nikon Coolpix 700)

Member Name: MichelleScott

Product:	Nikon Coolpix 700
Date:	03/06/01 (241 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to use, Excellent quality photos, Good range of features

Disadvantages: Breaks when you drop it (!)

We have had our Nikon Coolpix 700 for over a year. In that time we have taken hundreds and hundreds of photos. In the previous few years of using old-fashioned cameras, we had taken only 48 pictures! So the first advantage of a digital camera is that you do use it.

We had heard that one of the drawbacks of digital cameras is that they eat batteries. We made sure that the Coolpix 700 used ordinary batteries rather than specialist camera batteries. Camera batteries are much more expensive and harder to get hold of on a day out when your batteries run out. This uses simple AA batteries that can be purchased anywhere. We actually use rechargeable ones in ours most of the time and they are fine.

The zoom is good - up to 2.5 times. It zooms quickly and noiselessly, which is a bonus if you are trying to capture wildlife.

The screen at the back of the camera is excellent for viewing the photos and setting them up. You can work with this off, to save battery life, but we always leave it on.

We transfer our photos onto our computer quickly and easily using a Swift Cardport which we purchased separately. This was £50, but well worth the money. It is like using a floppy disc drive and makes transferring photos very simple and, importantly with a digital camera, quick.

The camera comes with good software for your PC and a cable for viewing on a television set. This is simple to do, just plug in and go through the photos. We tend to go back to MGI Photosuite usually. It is so simple to use and has all the basic facilities. I really don't like more complicated photo editing software as I don't know any packages well enough to get the best out of them.

We have a CD writer, so put our photos on CD. If we didn't have that our harddrive would be pretty full by now. We only print out really excellent or memorable photos now. We prefer to view them onscreen most of the time, using MGI Photosuite's 'Gallery&#
39; feature. Photo quality paper is expensive. Fortunately, we live in a market town that has a regular market trader who sells computer bits cheaply - and we can pick up photo paper much cheaper than in the shops. It is worth shopping around as the likes of PC World and Dixons' prices can be beaten very easily.

One drawback we have found is that the camera turns itself off to save battery life. This is only a problem if you are like me and take ages to set a photo up.

The only other drawback is that children tend to be fascinated by digital cameras and want to have a go. This results in a finger-marked screen, occasional fights and sometimes a dropped camera. Ours was dropped on concrete once and survived, so this is made of strong stuff.

We took out the extra insurance with it. We don't normally bother with insurance, but with an item like this, which is easily dropped, we thought it would be worthwhile. We are glad we did, as I dropped it last week and it broke. It is now in for repair and we MISS IT!

All in all, we are delighted with our Coolpix 700 and have recommended it to friends.

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