12, Jan, 2025
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Nikon Coolpix 800

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Nikon’s Coolpix 800 might look like a kiddie camera, but it is a very capable two megapixel zoom camera, with lots of decent features and a well-designed control system.
A black plastic case holds the 38 to 76mm f 3.5 zoom lens, a coupled viewfinder and built-in flash, a simple mode dial and LCD on the top panel, along with a set of four one-touch shooting control buttons. The slightly fiddly menu system (you use the zoom buttons to page up or down the options) allow you to adjust metering, exposure and other functions. The camera automatically drops into file exchange mode when the serial connector cord is plugged In. Four AA alkalines sit in the chunky hand grip, and an 8M CompactFlash card hides in a slot on the bottom.
Like most other cameras, the viewing screen can be switched on for picture composition. This is useful, because the viewfinder is irritatingly small and awkwardly placed. Likewise, the zoom buttons are too small and hard to access. All of the other controls are logical and well laid out, and very similar to any compact film camera.
The viewing screen isn’t as bright as some, but it has more detail. The camera whirred when switched on, and was ready for use in 3.5 seconds. Unusually, the autofocus system works constantly, even when a finger isn’t on the shutter. This speeds up the photo-taking process, but it drains the batteries. Perhaps to make up for this, the autosleep function cuts in after only 30 seconds with the LCD viewer switched on.
Provision is made for manual focus, white balance, exposure, metering and other adjustments. Three quality levels and raw data format are available, with a five-second refresh at best compressed quality. The unit APC reviewed came with the NikonVIew download utility, which accesses the camera as a disk drive within Windows Explorer.
The lack of USB showed in the connection times, it took one minute and 22 seconds for a 700K image to grind across the supplied cable. Surprisingly, the high-quality image was almost twice the size of a similar Kodak DC5000 shot, but the detail wasn’t noticeably better. The tones were smoother, but the difference was hard to spot and the colour had less depth.
excellent colouration and detail.
Overall, the Coolpix 800 is a good-value and effective unit, but Nikon needs to work on the design to make it look like it’s worth the money.

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