Just so easy to use (Nikon Coolpix 775)

Member Name: aandy

Product:	Nikon Coolpix 775
Date:	12/08/02 (278 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Quality in auto mode, size, brand name

Disadvantages: battery low warning, has a photo been taken?

I needed a reasonable quality digital camera for family photos and one that all my family could use straight away. I was a bit surprised to find the little Nikon at around the same price as cameras that were manufactured by computer companies and the like. Being renowned for quality optics I choose the Nikon, hoping that their computer buffs had produced good software to rival the excellent lens.

The coolpix 775 is modelled in a shiny silver coat with some pleasant detailing on all sides, the front has a thin red strip set into a stainless steel coloured strip, the rear has the monitor set out proud by about 3mm besides which is are for buttons fashioned in a circle.

The coolpix size would surprise many; it is just a bit bigger than two 20?s cigarette packets put face to face. Its size proves very handy when taking on walks or in the car. I am extra careful when transporting it, using a good bum bag with a soft cloth as precaution to protect the jutty out lens. Using the bum bag though is excellent and better than any other method of transporting a camera that I have tried.

The lens has a 3x manual zoom that is equivalent to 38mm-115mm in a 35mm-filmed camera. In layman's terms this means you can take a close up of someone's face or zoom in on mountain without losing any optical quality. It also has a digital zoom which I haven?t found a use for yet, what's the point when you can mess about with the same quality picture on the computer later - you do not get a better image with digital zoom-why have it?

Buttons. On top of the 775 there is a round cog type switch positioned near the centre, it operates the function of the camera and has 10 settings, 7 for different types of manual photos, one for the basic video one for playback of pictures on its screen and the one I use most, Auto, which lets you take great pictures without doing nothing more than pressing the shutter
button. The shutter button is situated in the top right position that would be familiar to most, and there is a toggle switch around it, which turns the camera either on, or off. On the rear of the camera are nine buttons as well as the viewfinder (to use if you want to preserve battery power), the 1.5 inch LCD colour screen and lights for flash and auto focus. The buttons are clearly marked and the camera has a fail-safe system that makes you double check any choice you make.

Screen. The 1.5-inch screen is adequate and you can view what the current photo will be like i.e. Live or replay old photos. It is also used for the menus, which allow you to change the functions of the camera. The bonus Nikon give you with the screen is when replaying photos you can enlarge to nine segments, and move around the photo seeing one of the nine segments at a time, quite fun and useful and makes up for it's size. Another benefit of a smaller screen is more battery time.

Photos. Outstanding for its sector. Their clarity, quality and in particular colour depiction (a grave problem with a lot of Digitals) are first class, I am always surprised to see the results later on the computer or tv screen, giving detail I missed quite often myself. I take photos in low quality mode mostly as their quality is more than enough for me and it means I can fit 90 photos on one card. The card is small at 8mb, (the card is a memory bank used in a lot of cameras to store the photos, and is like a roll of film except you can use it about 1000 times after deleting the images) but you can buy 16 Mb ones for about £30.


Battery. Supplied with Nikon?s own lithium ion battery thats rechargeable and lasts for about 1month or 60ish photos. You can also use a dl245 standard battery.

Ease of use. Simple, if you can make a call on a mobile phone you can work out how to use the Nikon. Ease of use could be its best feature, even my
dad could use it first time and he had not seen a digital camera before.

Drawbacks. You dont always know if you have taken a photo, which is annoying and is because of its two stage process, first you hold the shutter button until the green go-ahead light appears then the same green light appears when a photo is taken, so you just dont know unless you check the screen. The software provided to process the images onto the computer is not as good as what it could be and I often end up transferring images to a better programme to manipulate. Battery out warning appears far too late so you definitely need two batteries.

Advantages. Easy to use, easy to carry, great results in auto mode, good image depiction, good colour contrasts and depiction, clarity of photos. The Internet album which enables you to share your photos with family & friends.

Comparison. Casio QV2900 UX is £100 more expensive yet does offer a swivel lens that means you can take pix of yourself & see them while you take and also offers a 8x optical zoom! Also in the running is fuji's finepix 2600 which offers a 2" lcd screen and 16 mb memory card and the Kodak DX3700/dx3600 which have an easy docking system for connection to your pc. I tested these before I purchased the Nikon at comet, yet bought the nikon from argos because they are so good at refunding if you don't like the product. I liked the Nikon and kept it. I paid £270 for the Nikon as Argos had an undisplyed offer on at the time, normally it is around £300.


Conclusion. Many digital cameras claim to have the equivalent number of pixels, Nikon coolpix 775 does have over 2m. I have found with cameras that claim to have a number of pixels show poor results and have learnt that many claiming to have 2m pixels have less than 1m and enlarge the photo in much the same way as a digital zoom does, not the optical depiction enhancement that would bear out the nu
mber of pixels. The 775 is a good buy if you want a point and shoot with quality.

Summary: