Four new special effects have been added for even greater expression: Zoom exposure, Defocus during exposure, Cross process and Creative monochrome. A lens-shift vibration reduction VR function and two ED lens elements that effectively suppress chromatic aberration have been adopted for the 7. In addition, the lens is equipped with a six-blade electromagnetically controlled iris diaphragm.
This function allows you to easily specify a preset focal length with zoom photography. As zoom can immediately be switched from a wide-angle position to a specified telephoto focal length, capturing images at the intended angle of view is fast and easy. The P is equipped with a built-in neutral density ND filter that reduces the amount of light that passes through the lens, enabling a three-stop decrease in shutter speed.
This allows you to apply slower shutter speeds with shooting in bright surroundings. Up to three focal lengths specified beforehand by the user can be registered with the camera.
Simply rotate the mode dial to quickly apply registered settings and achieve the intended results. The tone level information display allows you to check image exposure with a histogram a graph showing brightness distribution. In addition, when the desired tone brightness level; total of nine available is selected, portions of the image exhibiting that tone blink.
The AV TV button from the P has now been made redundant by the rotary dial on the front, and has now been replaced by the Fn2 button, allowing an even greater degree of customisation.
Next to this and completing the P's top-plate is another clever feature, a dedicated dial for setting exposure compensation - if only it was this easy to change on all cameras. The P has a couple of innovative optical features. It's equipped with a built-in neutral density ND filter which provides a three-stop decrease in the shutter speed, enabling you to use a slower shutter speed in bright surroundings and achieve exactly the creative effect that you want.
The P also offers a number of set focal lengths - 28, 35, 50, 85, , and mm - with the Zoom Memory function quickly switching to one of them, mimicking having a bag full of prime lenses.
Nikon have also included their VR Vibration Reduction image stabilisation system to help prevent camera-shake, an increasingly de-facto feature on a lot of high-end compact cameras. Annoyingly there isn't a dedicated button to turn it on and off it's somewhat buried in the Setup menu. In practice we found that the VR system makes a noticeable difference to the sharpness of the images, as shown in the examples on the Image Quality page. You don't notice that the camera is actually doing anything different when anti-shake is turned on, just that you can use slower shutter speeds than normal and still take sharp photos.
It didn't seem to adversely affect the battery life either, so we'd advise you to turn it on and then forget about it.
The key benefit of this approach is to allow the operating system to decode the RAW files, rather than third-party software, but this does open Nikon up to charges of ignoring MAC users and generally being in cahoots with Microsoft. One of our biggest issues with the P was its slow response time when shooting and saving RAW files, something that has thankfully been completely rectified on the new P model.
Nikon have obviously been listening, because where the P locked up for around 5 seconds until the RAW file was written to memory, there's now only a 1. This is enough of an improvement to encourage most users to shoot RAW files, something that we simply couldn't recommend for the P's predecessor.
Continuous shooting has sadly not been similarly improved. It can only capture 1. If you select the RAW file format, the camera shoots at 1. The rear of the P has a button for popping up the built-in flash, a small window for the aforementioned optical viewfinder up top and dead centre with a welcome diopter adjustment control alongside it, and tiny flash and auto focus lamps.
Below is a 3-inch LCD screen with an impressively high ,dot resolution, providing more than enough detail for you to be able to determine whether you have a sufficiently crisp image.
You can also turn on the Virtual Horizon feature to help ensure that your horizons are perfectly level. The P's screen now tilts 81 degrees downwards and degrees upwards, useful when holding the camera over your head or down at waist level. Although not as versatile as a side-mounted LCD, it is nevertheless a very welcome addition that makes the camera more useful in a wider variety of situations.
Positioned top-right of the LCD screen is the button for controlling the screen display — either displaying all settings, providing a 'clean' screen or switching it off entirely, but irritatingly still no live histogram although this button does call one up in playback mode.
Alongside is an unmarked control dial that's slightly larger than on the P Immediately lending the camera a proper 'grown up' feel, this falls readily under the thumb, and allows you to quickly set the shutter speed or browse through a sequence of images in playback, amongst other functions. In conjunction with the new front rotary control wheel, this dial provides a neat solution that is great to use, especially if you are a regular DSLR user.
Underneath is the self-explanatory playback button. Next is the familiar four-way navigation pad, which allows you to set the flash, focusing, macro and self-timer options, in addition to moving through menus and selecting options, with an 'OK' button at its centre being the means via which changes can be implemented.
Surrounding this is a circular wheel, which performs the more mundane tasks of moving through menus and selecting options. The familiar Menu button underneath the navigation pad accesses the Nikon P's menu system, which is clear and easy to navigate.
Press this when in Auto capture mode and there's just two menus, Playback and Settings. Turn the dial to Program or one of the advanced shooting modes and press again and you also get the Shooting menu, which offers 13 different additional settings.
The Picture Control option allows you to tweak the look and feel of your images, with 4 presets and a Custom option on offer. The contrast, saturation and sharpening level of each preset can be individually adjusted too, so you should be able to find a setting that suits you.
Distortion control automatically corrects barrel distortion, useful for all those 28mm shots of close-up architecture with converging verticals, but it does have to be turned on before you take a picture. D-Lighting is a long-standing Nikon technology that brightens the shadow areas of an image, with three different strengths available.
In playback mode, pressing the same menu button affords access to rudimentary image editing, including Nikon's exposure adjusting D-Lighting function, Skin Softening and Miniature Effect, image slide shows, plus the ability process a RAW file in-camera if required. The Tone Level function displays a brightness histogram in an unusual vertical orientation, to the right of which is a tone scale.
A button to the right features the familiar trashcan icon for deleting images on the fly completes the rear of the P On the left hand flank is an identical means of threading on the strap, plus the MIC port which accepts an optional external microphone. The built-in speaker is on the bottom of the camera, alongside the centrally positioned, metal tripod mount. The P is powered by a 7. All of the sample images in this Review were taken using the 10 megapixel Fine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 4Mb.
The Nikon Coolpix P's image quality is excellent for a compact camera with a small image sensor. The noise, colour desaturation and loss of detail gets progressively worse as you go from ISO to ISO and finally and the unusable setting. The Nikon Coolpix P handled chromatic aberrations excellently with limited purple fringing effects appearing only in high contrast situations. The The Nikon Coolpix P's maximum shutter speed is 60 seconds, which is excellent news for night photography enthusiasts, and the quality of the after-dark images is very good.
Macro performance is one of the stand-out highlights, allowing you to focus as close as 2cms away from the subject, although there is a lot of lens distortion and shadowing at such a close distance.
Vibration reduction is a very useful feature that works very well when hand-holding the camera in low-light conditions or using the telephoto end of the zoom range. The built-in flash worked well indoors, with no red-eye and good overall exposure. Internally, the P is very much the same. Resolution remains at The P does, however, offer a range of digital filter effects — something the P lacked.
Processing times, as we will discuss in more depth later on, have been speeded up too. This chip offers an effective resolution of NRW file format.
Adobe and Apple have now patched their respective Lightroom 3 and Aperture 3 editing suites to cater for this file type so digital darkroom enthusiasts are well catered for. JPEG shooters, meanwhile, can choose from three levels of quality — Fine, Normal and Basic — with a range of resolution options available, from the maximum By default the P shoots in aspect, although , and options are also available, albeit at lower resolutions.
The P gets a 7. Also helping out is a built-in neutral density filter that offers the equivalent of three stops, allowing you to shoot at slower speeds in brighter conditions — useful for adding motion blur to running water when used with a tripod and suchlike.
These are supported by 18 individual Scene modes, an Automatic mode, the aforementioned Low Noise Night Mode and, new for the P, an Effects mode that offers a small selection of digital filters. There are also three slots on the main shooting dial given over to user-defined custom modes. Each of these allows you to set up and store your own preferred shooting mode, focal length and Autofocus mode presets among others , which you can then instantly call upon using the main shooting mode dial.
Should you want to tinker with your images in-camera, a wide selection of editing controls are offered including Raw image processing, which can be used to turn Raw image files into more computer-friendly JPEGs. For a camera of this type and price this is pretty disappointing to say the least. Eyelets on each shoulder allow for a neck strap to be attached should you wish to carry it this way too.
The sculpted finger grip has been restyled from the more block-like grip of the P Big enough to accommodate two fingers, the asymmetric shape encourages them to sit at an angle across the camera body, resulting in a more comfortable holding position. The grip further benefits from a rubberised finish. In keeping with the needs of its target user, the P sports a wide range of physical controls that allow for on-the-fly adjustments without the need to wade through the in-camera menu system.
Rounding things off are two Function buttons one on the front, one on the top plate , both of which can be set to control or activate a function of your choosing. Overall, we have to say that the P is a very well laid-out camera. Yes, there are a lot of buttons and, at least initially, this could make the P look a bit daunting to casual photographers. The buttons are well spaced and easy to reach too, while the in-camera menu is easy enough to navigate.
A 3in, k-dot, backlit LCD monitor adorns the back of the camera. Better still, the screen can be angled up by just over degrees or down by around degrees to facilitate easier low-level or overhead photography.
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