Digital Trends

 

The Nikon Coolpix P4 starts up quickly (less than two seconds)—about the time of every quality point-and-shoot 2006 digicam. I initially began in Auto and moved to the many, many options available. Although this camera is targeted to the snap-it and forget-it crowd (about 90 percent of the picture takers out there), it offers the owner a lot of nooks and crannies to explore once you get familiar with the camera. Although you can’t adjust manually adjust the focus or shutter speeds, there is aperture priority and exposure compensation with a histogram. The menu system is easy-to-follow and read but not nearly as sophisticated as those offered by HP, Kodak or Casio.

 

I took a lot of shots indoors and out. The camera is fairly responsive and there’s not too much lag even as it saved large 8MP files (3264 x 2448 pixels). It definitely slowed down when using the AF Assist since the pre-flash has to do its thing then the actual flash itself fires. If you need to take a number of flash shots in a row, turn it off. In burst (Continuous) mode, the P4 labors to save up to five frames at 1.8 fps (flash off, of course). Speaking of multiple images, the P4 has a Best Shot Selector option. When you turn it on, the camera will shoot up to five shots and save the one with the sharpest focus.

 

The camera did grab for focus with subjects that didn’t have sharp edges, especially indoors with available light (flash off). I changed focus to Center and that helped a bit.

 

One of the neat tricks Nikon has incorporated into many of its Coolpix cameras is called D-Lighting. Once you taken a shot, while in playback mode, you hit the menu key and activate it. What the camera does is to adjust the overall brightness of the image. Say if you taken a group shot and one of the family is in shadows, D-Lighting will brighten that area. Just hit the D-Lighting option and a separate file is saved with the original. This type of fix is found in most image editing programs but it’s nice to have it in-camera. Nikon gets a plus-mark for this feature. The camera also has Auto Red Eye Fix to eliminate devil eyes. It did a good job on my cat, a tough test for any red-eye system.

 

After trying my best to load up the two-gig card, it was time to make some 8.5 x 11 prints (with no editing tweaks) on the trusty Canon six-ink Pixma MP780. The end results were mixed. Colors for the most part were dead-on. They didn’t have much pop but EV and sharpness/contrast tweaks made similar shots more vivid. This is really a taste issue but you can adjust this camera in myriad ways which is a very good thing. There were some definite focusing problems in available light—even with the VR set to Active. Rather than blur, the camera had problems choosing the right section to focus on (this was in flower/macro setting). 

 

Portraits came out nicely, especially when using Portrait Face Priority AF. When you put the camera into this Scene mode, a smiley face (no kidding) appears on screen. The camera will search for a face in the field of view and focus on it. There are two additional settings (or effects) to adjust skin tones.

 

And not to sound like a scratched CD, the Coolpix P4 has problems with digital noise when you move to 200 (400 is the max). Yet this is far from unusual since almost every compact point-and-shoot digicam has these issues (other than some newer Fujis). If you really want to eliminate noise at higher ISOs, a D-SLR with a larger APS-sized imaging device is the solution.

 
Image Courtesy of Nikon