Hasta La Gadget!

Like a pint of delicious spring-water submerged in Nikon’s salty, eight-camera press tsunami today, the little gem that is the P300 was almost diluted entirely out of recognition. Thanks to some quick work, the pocket-friendly compact has made it, sodden but still alive, to these pages.

The P300 is best thought of as Nikon’s answer to the Canon S95, a pro-friendly pocket-camera full of manual controls and topped off with a large sensor, great low-light sensitivity and a fast lans.

ISO runs up to 3200, which is pretty good for a smallish sensor compact. And speaking of sensors, it’s a little smaller than that in the S95 – 1/2.3-inch vs. 1/1.7-inch – and fits 12.3MP onto a backlit CMS plate. The lens offers a 24-100mm (35mm equivalent) zoom, and a super-wide ƒ1.8 maximum aperture (the S95 lens only opens to ƒ2).

Manual control is available for all exposure functions, controlled by a thumb-wheel on the top-plate, and you get image stabilization and a big three-inch, 921,000-dot LCD panel thrown in, along with 1080p video and a stereo mic.

It looks pretty compelling, and even has a weird night-mode which combines separate ambient-light exposures of the background with a flash-exposure of the subject. One warning, though. Nikon may have excluded itself from the race by leaving out RAW capture.

With compacts, you’re not tied to a brand as you are with SLRs that rely on lens compatibility, so you can shop around. If Nikon had added in remote flash control for its iTTL system, then this would be killer. As it is you’ll need to visit a store and try this out against the Canon S95 and the Lumix LX5. They all look very capable, so it will really come down to feel (and also that lack of RAW shooting). Available March for $400.

Coolpix P300 press release [Nikon]

See Also:

• Canon S95 – Wired.com
• Olympus XZ1, a Pro-Level Compact Camera with Knobs On
• Canon G12: G-Series Regains High-Def Video at Last
• Nikon's Stages Compact Comeback with Flash-Friendly P7000
• Panasonic Launches LX5 and a Zillion Other Compact Cameras …

Last we heard from Nikon on the topic of high-end point-and-shoot cameras, it was touting Full HD video and a backside-illuminated 12.1 megapixel CMOS sensor on its S8100. Well, here comes the S9100, still possessing those goodies, but now it’s attaching them to a lens capable of 18x optical zoom — a feature you’d usually expect to find on shooters far bulkier than this pocket-friendly portable. ISO sensitivity can stretch up to 3200 (only 800 in automatic mode), there’s a 1050mAh battery helping power the 3-inch, 920k-dot rear-mounted display, and you’ll also probably want to know that the 1080p movie mode records sound in stereo and ticks along at a healthy 30fps. Our brief time with the S9100 revealed it to be a typically well built little shooter, although we did notice zooming it backwards and forwards is a fairly slow affair — which can grow into something of a nuisance when you’ve got such a massive zoom range — while the tripod mount is way off to the left of center. We’re sure Nikon has thought that decision through and balanced the camera’s weight appropriately, however. Sales around the world begin on March 17th, with local pricing set at $330, €348 and £300 in the major markets.

Continue reading Nikon Coolpix S9100 extends an 18x zoom from a compact body capable of 1080p video

Nikon Coolpix S9100 extends an 18x zoom from a compact body capable of 1080p video originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 Feb 2011 20:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nikon’s done the projector-in-a-camera thing before, but the S1100pj was aimed at the compact digital camera crowd. In what appears to be an effort to take its game to the next level, the company has obtained a Japanese patent for a way to give a DSLR those same mythical projector capabilities. Though the patent’s english detailed description states that images are “projected on the screen of the photographing instrument exterior via the eyepiece of an electronic view finder,” something may have been lost in translation — the drawings show the projection coming out of the camera’s lens, and our hopes and dreams won’t let us see anything else. Regardless of how the thing works, we hope that Nikon puts it into production soon, as we — proud members of the “serious” photo-snapping crowd — would like to share our pics at parties, too. Hit up the source link for the translated patent documents, but be aware that the link won’t work in Chrome (IE or Firefox only) and you’ll need to put in “A” for the Kind code and “2011-10098” in the Number field to get them. What, you thought surfing the world wide web was easy?

Nikon patents DSLR camera / projector, high-end photographers may get to join the projection party originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Jan 2011 07:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There are approximately 4 bazillion point-and-shoot camera models on the market. Mostly, borderline disposable—yet the $400 S95 was Amazon’s best-selling camera ’til they ran out. Clearly, people want a better camera. These three are the best. More »

Hot on the heels of its P7000 firmware update, Nikon has just released one for its D7000 DSLR as well. The update was created for the sole purpose of fixing the hot pixel issue that pops up when taking videos in low light. While this doesn’t completely eliminate the problem, the “bright spots” effect has been “reduced” according to Nikon USA. Unfortunately, this means you no longer have an excuse to not record your child’s rendition of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. Hit up the source link for the download.

Nikon D7000 firmware update released, cools down ‘hot pixels’ originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Dec 2010 21:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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