The Camera Never Lies (Nikon Coolpix 775)

Member Name: DavidJWest

Product:	Nikon Coolpix 775
Date:	10/09/03 (130 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good quality, Easy to use, Value for money

Disadvantages: Not great at long ranges

I bought my Nikon Coolpix 775 in January of 2003 just after my daughter was born, so I could take plenty of pictures of her as she grows up. Back in those days the camera had a high street price of nearly £300 but by the power of the internet I got it for just under £200. I believe you can now get the same model for even less, around £170 making this one of the cheaper models, especially when you take into account that Nikon is a fairly respected camera manufacturer.

The camera comes with everything you need to go and comprehensive instructions.

Memory card ? It?s an 8MB card which is just about sufficient to start with, you can get 8 pictures in high res mode, 16 in medium and 32 in low res mode. That?s according to the manual but I find in medium res mode I get 20 photos on one card. Medium res mode looks fine to me for everyday use, low res is slightly too poor if you want to print the pictures out.

Battery ? The rechargeable battery which comes with the camera is good for around 2 hours of usage, depending on how often you use the LCD screen on the camera ? this is quite heavy in terms of power consumption. I find generally that the battery lasts long enough for me to fill the 8MB card with pictures and has a bit left over. You will probably want to get a bigger memory card and more powerful battery and for around £50 you can achieve this by shopping around.

Battery charger ? not much I can say, it takes about an hour to recharge the battery.

Strap and case ? The camera comes with a strap which is handy to put around your wrist so you don?t drop it and a leather style case to protect it if you drop it.

Leads ? You get leads to watch your photos on a TV and also a USB connection so you can transfer photos onto your PC. The good thing about a USB connection is that it is dead easy to set up being ?plug and play? technology. You just plug the camera in and the PC knows it is there and what it is (more or
less)!

Software ? You get CD ROMS with software to transfer the photos onto a PC, to edit them and file them on your hard-drive. You can also send them as emails to your friends and even set them up as desktop wallpaper.

Manual ? It?s always good when you get instructions on how to use something. With the Coolpix 775 you get a 170 in depth manual telling you everything about the camera and also a small poster style information sheet telling you the basics so you can be taking photos straight away. So far I have only read small sections of the main manual as I only use the camera for pretty amateurish stuff, baby photos and the like.

First impressions of the camera are very good, it looks nice and has plenty of features, easy to use and small enough to put into your pocket being lightweight as well. It?s quite easy to learn how to use the camera and I was taking pictures like a Japanese tourist within minutes of opening the box (and charging the battery)!

I bought this camera partly to offset the costs of developing photos but I don?t think I have saved any money as I simply take many more pictures than I ever used to. Certainly I have saved money over what it would have cost me but as I have taken several hundred pictures in the past 8 months or so, I have spent a lot on photo quality paper and ink cartridges for the printer. A good tip here is to shop around for consumables on the net as it is much more pricey to buy these things on the High Street, as you probably know.

A good example is ink cartridges, it costs about £25 for an official colour cartridge but I buy mine online (grey imports but just as good) and it only costs me about £10 for a colour one and black one together. But I digress, back to the camera!

It has all the features you could realistically want and if you disagree then you obviously need to spend a lot more money for the quality of camera you need.

You simply point and cli
ck and hey presto the picture is taken, you can look on the LCD screen to see if it?s OK and if not just delete and try again. There are many different presets you can select before taking the picture, for example there is a portrait mode for taking pictures of people (and babies) but you can make up your own settings if you are a bit of a pro. The ?auto? mode is fine for just about all the pictures I take, it even knows when to use the built in flash but it does sometimes over-expose I find, but generally about 90% of pictures I take are fine first time, it really is a good camera for beginners.

There is a built in zoom option as well but this is only 3 times zoom and the quality isn?t very good, I?d advise against this option. This is the only real drawback of the camera, it isn?t very good at distance. I have taken pictures of things in the distance such as aircraft and the quality hasn?t been there. I suspect this is due to the camera ?only? being able to display 2 megapixels, but compared to other 2 megapixels cameras it is quite favourable, I think this must be down to the lens being good quality but I can?t say for sure as I am not an expert.

Some of the options on the menu are slow to perform, for example when you are deleting photos it can take a few seconds more than you would like but that is me being impatient I expect. Other than that and the quality and long range this is a superb camera especially for the money.

I?d highly recommend this camera to anyone other than a professional photographer as it is superb at taking pictures of people and close ups. It is OK for longer range shots such as landscapes too but if you are wanting to take long range photos of particular subject matter such as aircraft etc I?d look around at paying slightly more maybe for one with 4 megapixels or above.

You can see two examples of pictures I have taken if you go to-

http://koti.mbnet.fi/r-league/Gp3cl/images/DSC N0184.JP
G

http://koti.mbnet.fi/r-league/Gp3cl/images/DSC N0188.JPG

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