Review on Nikon Coolpix 990 Digital Optical by Christopher Cortez

The Nikon Coolpix 990 has turned out to be a great camera - I'm very happy with it. This is a good choice for the experienced or ambitious amateur photographer. Much of my previous experience has been with the Panasonic, which cost a little over half the cost of this one. Compared to this camera, Nikon has better color saturation, draws faster and, of course, has more features. I was delighted that the 990 lets you control shutter speed as well as aperture, color balance, focus and metering points, and a few other obscure settings. All digital cameras run on batteries and this one is no exception. A good optical viewfinder (including zoom support) is important for such a camera for two reasons. First, the color screen is useless in bright sunlight, and second, you can turn off the monitor to save battery power. The LCD screen on top of the camera shows the most common settings (aperture, shutter speed, resolution and quality, memory, ISO, flash settings, manual focus distance). Japanese electronics tend to have many functions that can be accessed via obscure keyboard shortcuts. While I would hardly describe this camera as "completely intuitive", most functions are fairly easy to use. Advanced settings can be accessed via a tabbed menu on the monitor, which is fairly easy to use. I also found the monitor to be very accurate in both brightness and tone. The monitor has several different modes: when left on, Standard mode superimposes some of the most commonly used camera settings over the image. This is similar to the top LCD display but is not a full replica. You can also keep the menu activated by dropping it on an image. Although this covers part of the image, it also makes the menu options available for immediate use. What you see on the monitor after taking the picture is what you will get unless you are in very bright light. I've never been disappointed that the picture didn't turn out the way it did on the monitor (brightness and tint are adjustable). . Although the monitor is small, the preview function allows you to zoom in and scroll through the saved images for a closer look. The camera configuration is unusual, with the viewfinder, lens and flash separated from the other half of the screen. cameras and allows them to rotate separately. I don't usually rotate the lens, but sometimes it's handy so you can shoot overhead or around corners. I bought a small mini pod and found that the articulating lens assembly gave me extra flexibility to mount the camera anywhere I could. The built-in flash is fine, but the red-eye reduction doesn't work very well. If you don't use an external flash, you're still living with poor lighting, but other built-in flashes have better red-eye reduction systems. how good it looks when it doesn't take acceptable pictures. I was very pleased with the camera's performance in a variety of lighting conditions. I had a lot of fun photographing the Christmas lights in Zurich and my best shot was a foggy autumn scene on Mount Pilatus with yellow and red leaves. It took me 6 tries to get the exposure right (that's why you buy a camera like this) but it captured this dreamy, backlit scene and its fall colors perfectly. Images don't always come out as rich as negative film, but they're not bad, and when they're good, they can be very good. I found the close-up works well and the macro mode is a treat. I've even used my 990 to copy characters or even pages in a book. This is a quick way to capture text that you will need later. After taking a photo of a chart or text, review it and use the zoom feature to make sure what you just captured is legible on your monitor. The camera has more continuous shooting options than I know of. . With the Multi-Shot 16 function, you can create a collage of 16 images. It's a kind of trick you can't pull off very often without exhausting your audience's patience. However, if you want to create a short film, you can do that too. Speaking of night shots, the self-timer was awfully hard for me to figure out. When you activate the self-timer mode, the close-up icon (flower) and the red-eye icon light up. It turns out you're stuck with this configuration, which isn't exactly optimal for night scenes. . Given the multi-second shutter speeds and sensitivity setting that delivers an effective ISO 400 sensitivity, some owners will no doubt pay for the MC-EU1 trigger, and manual exposure setting is next to useless without it. I like the USB cable. . Once you've downloaded Nikon View to your computer, plugging the camera into the USB port and turning it on automatically makes the camera accessible as if it were a removable drive. I've only traveled with a USB cable and I find it a very convenient way to upload photos to a laptop and delete them from a memory card. When the USB cable is connected, the color monitor turns off automatically and the subsequent battery charge appears to be low. I think most Nikon owners would appreciate a more detailed text than this, but it's comprehensive and has helped me better operate my camera. In summary, the automatic performance is very good and if desired, this camera offers the ability to control every aspect of the shot. photographic process. It has less latency than many other digital cameras I've used, is relatively easy to use, and takes good pictures. This is the winner!