| Product: |
Nikon Coolpix 7900 |
| Date: |
20/01/06 (217 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Small; convenient; good picture quality
Disadvantages: Difficult to hold steadily; cumbersome menu controls
NOTE: the picture shown by DooYoo is NOT the Coolpix 7900!
I have had this camera for about 3 months, now, and have taken a fair few pictures (many hundreds), having done some practise before 4 weeks travelling in Fiji and New Zealand. I have taken some really nice pictures and some terrible ones!
One great strength of this camera is also a weakness: its size (volume and weight). I have a little belt pouch in which I have been carrying it everywhere, and it's small and light enough to do just that without any trouble. Having a compact camera with you at all times, particularly a digital (rather than film) one means that many otherwise "priceless" images can be captured. However, the lightness of the camera also counts against it in some circumstances, notably when the light is not good. The two-stage shutter button can be squeezed gently and, with practise, I'm sure I'd be able to not have the camera move just as the shutter is triggered, but at present it's a bit hit-and-miss. Admittedly, most of the time I've been finding this a problem is with macro (close-up) shots with the camera just a few inches from the subject, but it is quite frustrating! You can, of course, delete any failed attempts and retake, but this does take several (seemingly long) seconds for each attempt.
I also got a lightweight tripod for the tour which packs down to just over a foot long. The 7900 has a standard threaded tripod fitting, which is very helpful when taking pictures which might otherwise be blurred by camera-shake (long exposures in low light or extreme close-ups, for example) or for panoramic pictures. There is a "scene mode" (more later) which assists you in taking a series of pictures, from left-to-right, to build up a panorama. The images are stitched together digitally on your PC using the (included) software, which allows for tweaking of the stitching to allow, for example, handheld contributions (i.e. without a rigidly maintained camera position) to the picture set.
Whilst using the camera shot on the tripod in windy Wellington for a "self-portrait", the camera's light weight again became a problem as it blew over onto the tarmac of the path! Fortunately, although the case now has a dent at the top of the hand-grip, the camera appears to have survived the experience otherwise perfectly well. The black anodised surface was also slightly damaged, but it now has its own character: it's own "battle scar".
Probably the best picture I have taken so far, however, was on my first day "out": a flower, outside and not sheltered from any breeze, in Kew Gardens in London. The picture is from very close and shows at least some of the potential of this camera. Macro pictures must really be taken using the viewing screen to frame the subject as the viewfinder, useful in most circumstances, will not be able to frame the picture. The viewfinder is good, particularly if you are used to looking through a camera at your subject, and it does zoom with the camera, but it does have a reduced area of view relative to the screen (and the captured images) - apparently about 70%, which can lead to some mis-framing, but with the ample frame size and the 7Mpixel images, cropping is unlikely to be a problem with respect to the resulting image quality unless large prints are to be made from them. I expect practise will help in anticipating such framing quirks, though.
The 7Mpixel results are amply big and accurate enough for most image taking, and I have used the "Copy" "scene mode" to capture, across two shots, a broadsheet page of a newspaper: all the print is clearly legible. The lens distortion towards the corners is noticeable when inspected closely, but the print is still easily clear enough to read.
One thing I believe you should have for such a camera is at least one big, fast SD card. The images at maximum resolution come out at between 1.9 and 2.5MB each, so the internal memory isn't going to hold many. I bought two 2GB cards for the trip and was glad I did! The camera can take fairly good (VGA) quality motion video as well, and at Auckland Zoo the spider monkeys have produced some hundreds of megabytes of video! The speed of the SD card becomes an issue particularly here as unless the card can store the data as fast as the camera is generating it, recording will cease to work properly. The internal memory is used as a buffer to smooth out recoding as much as possible, but a slow card will also make taking snaps time-consuming as well. Taking a sequence or erasing a failed picture can seem to take an AGE between shots, for example.
Battery life is astonishingly good. I managed to take well over a hundred pictures, a fair few with flash, whilst in Fiji on two batteries (I bought a spare, non-Nikon one for the trip) and had ample charge left. A separate charger comes with the camera, incidentally, so a spare battery can be charging while you use the other. The battery power is not well indicated, however, only a warning being shown when you are getting quite low: say a dozen shots from "empty".
The camera has a "normal" shooting mode in which you can toggle the use of macro focussing and alter the use (or not) of the flash, which seems to function very well, if having an understandably short range (around 3-4m or 10-12ft). There are a bewildering variety of other modes (too many to go into here and I haven't explored them all properly yet anyway), but the most useful alternatives are the "video", which is self-explanatory, and the "Scene" mode, where you can choose from a variety of reasonably common basic settings. These include:
"Fireworks", where no flash is used and there's an expected long exposure, similar I guess to the "Night Landscape";
"Museum", which is another non-flash setting;
"Panorama" which is mentioned elsewhere;
"Underwater" which, due to the apparent reluctance of Nikon to make enough of their WP-CP3 waterproof housings for this camera (and distribute them in time, anyway), I didn't get to try out.
There are also a variety of portrait modes, which can superimpose ghost outlines on the viewing screen to help in composition and to aid the internal image processing to tinker with the faces for redeye reduction etc.. This is not an area in which I have dabbled much to date, however, preferring landscapes and "nature" subjects on the whole.
The menu system can be quite time-consuming to navigate for some relatively simple adjustments, although 4 of the most commonly needed adjustments are availale in (I believe) any mode using the 4-way navigation button.
I use my left eye (not the "usual" one) and I like taking portrait-format pictures, and this camera is easy to use and performs well for this relatively unusual approach.
One thing I noticed some time after starting to use the camera is that the relatively large viewing screen (for the size of camera) is not quite square in the case. I was a little disappointed with this, but it functions perfectly well and is not really noticeable.
Images are typically very good to look at in their entirety, but I have noticed that high-contrast edges can be blurred when viewed in fine detail. This may be due to internal "image sharpening", which may be adjusted through the menu system, but I have not played with that aspect of the camera as yet.
I bought my camera (in October 2005) through EBuyer who offered about the lowest price. However, the delivery took longer than expected and, when I investigated the procedures for following up on the order, I discovered that it was only really supported by telephone which is fine for many, but the average turnaround was a loooong time. Other experiences of which I am aware would lead me to probably buy elsewhere in future, although they have not failed to deliver at the end of the day. Waiting times seem to have improved a lot now, however, although the website is still agonisingly slow.
I hope to augment this report as I use the camera more - any comments would be welcome.
Summary: Great, rugged, versatile little camera
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