An Old one but a good one (Nikon Coolpix 900)

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Product:	Nikon Coolpix 900
Date:	18/05/01 (31 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: great looking, quality pics

Disadvantages: Only 1.3 Megapixels and a 8MB CompactFlash card!

This is a digital camera that came out sometime in 1998, it has been around for a while. It has been replace by the Nikon Coolpix 950, though there are still plenty of new ones out there that range in price from $789 to $999.

For today's standards you might think 1.3 Megapixels isn't much but, this camera will surprise you. It will take up to 1280 x 960 pixels in resolution and the photo quality is beautiful.

It is a different looking digital camera that pivots in the middle for the lens to point at what you want to take a photo of. When using the LCD to take a photo it makes it nice because you can swivel the half with the lens up and down to get the perfect shot. When in a large crowd you can old it up high over the crowd and keep the LCD steady for your viewing while moving the lens to capture the perfect shot.

The Coolpix 900 also has an optical viewfinder with the 2-inch TFT LCD for taking photos. The LCD is also for viewing what you have taken.

It comes with a 3x optical zoom (38mm to 115mm, equivalent to a 35mm format) and a 2x digital zoom for even closer shots. Nikon offers as an option a Wide-angle and Fisheye lens for more creativity.

The Nikon Coolpix 900 is 6.1 inches x 3.0 inches x 1.4 inches and weighs 12.7 ounces without the batteries. This is an easy to carry along camera.

It comes with a 8MB CompactFlash card. The 8MB CompactFlash card takes about 12 photos in the fine mode, 24 photos in the normal mode and 48 photos in the basic mode. Like with all digital cameras, I highly recommend buying a larger CompactFlash card. Photos are stored in the JPEG format.

Also included are a Soft Case, Strap, Lens Cap, 4-LR6 Batteries, Video Cable and 2 Serial Cables.

It is made for Windows 95 or later and Mac OS 7.5.1 or later with a Serial interface.

Continuous Shooting
There are two continuous shooting modes, normal or VGA. In both modes the camera will contin
ue to shoot as long as you hold down the button.

In the VGA mode, the camera clicks off about two frames a second.

In the normal mode, depending on the compression setting chosen, the cycle time varies slightly and gives you around one frame every five seconds.

The Flash
It has a built-in flash with 5-modes, providing all kinds of light capabilities. There is a Multi-flash sync terminal to add an external Nikon flash.

The built-in flash has a cancel or off.

Every time you turn it on it automatically goes to the Auto flash mode.

Red-Eye reduction helps to prevent that red glow in the eyes when you use a flash.

Slow sync is an added feature to give you a slower shutter speed to brighten the background.

Manual mode for some manual settings of your choice.

The LCD
The LCD panel can be turned on or off at any time, every time you turn the camera on the LCD will also turn on. Turning off the LCD and taking photos with the viewfinder will save on battery power.

Display brightness can be adjusted up or down to accommodate different lighting conditions

From the LCD you can view your photos in thumbnails of nine. If you can get use to moving the cursor around you can zoom in on the thumbnails.

You can delete photos from the thumbnails one at a time or by individual photos. You can also delete all at once if you wish to do so.

You can set up a slideshow with the photos you want to show and hide the ones you don't.

Different Languages
There are four different languages that can be displayed in the menu, English, French, German, and Japanese.

You can make a different language selection in the record or play modes.

I had to try the other three languages just to see what they look like, very interesting!

Overall
This is truly a camera ahead of its time, many cameras today do not have the fe
atures in this one.

This is a point and shoot camera or you can make some manual settings.

The picture quality of this camera is great!

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