The Nikon Coolpix 990 is o very good digital camera. Image quality from the 3.1 megapixel CCD, using the f 2.5 zoom lens, was truly impressive. Terrific resolution (even at 250% magnification), smooth tones and precise detail, make this a quality unit. Admittedly, detail tends to tail off slightly in the deeper shadow areas, but that’s being rather picky.
The Coolpix 990 looks a bit like a grown-up 800, and has a swivelling lens and flash head on the left side of the body. This area also contains the viewfinder, the autofocus mechanism and the exposure sensors. The main body holds the LCD viewer, the controls and the shutter grip. The power comes from four AA alkalines. and a 16M CompactFlash card slots into the case under the USB and TV-out sockets. The mode thumbwheel is virtually the same as on the Coolpix 800, and the back panel and basic option buttons around the edge of the LCD viewer are also similar.
Extras include a four-way menu-sensitive toggle control, and a rotating wheel for setting custom variables. Using the camera is easy if you don’t want to delve into the high-level controls. The
top-panel readout LCD gives excellent status feedback, and you can just set everything to auto and shoot.
If you like tinkering, there Is plenty to tinker with: aperture, speed, zoom action, metering mode, burst mode, program, aperture or shutter priority, auto best shot selector, focus mode,
sharpness, auto exposure bracketing and more can all be quickly and easily adjusted using the thumbwheel.
Its startup speed was reasonable at three seconds, and the refresh between shots was fair at 5.5 seconds at the ‘fine’ image setting. The pre-production CD APC received included a USB version of Nikon-View 3.0, but this didn’t recognise the camera, so we used serial instead and got download times of about one minute and 50 seconds for a IM file. USB would obviously be faster.
Indoor shots were very good, and the non-flashed images had almost as good
n’t getting ready to shoot, but that did-n’t stop it being a battery hog. The Coolpix 990 is an excellent piece of equipment. It’s good for snapping, but it’s just as adjustable as a semi-professional SLR.

Article Tags:
Nikon Coolpix 990Article Categories:
Digital Camera