Nikon Compact Digital Cameras

The Nikon Coolpix P90 is one of the new breed of super zoom digital cameras. In addition to 24x zoom the lens has wide angle capabilities. Not so long ago the maximum amount of zoom available with a compact digital camera was 12x, so the Coolpix P90 offers twice this amount of zoom. A wide angle lens helps you to squeeze more of a scene into a picture. This can make a significant difference if you like to photograph sweeping landscapes or takes shots of groups of people.

It is more or less impossible to create a small lens that offers the flexibility that the Coolpix P90 does. Therefore it is no surprise to see the larger physical size of this camera. This tends to lead to better overall picture quality. One area where this is noticeable is with close up photography. If you enjoy taking macro shots, but do not want to step up to a Digital SLR then this type of camera tends to be a good bet.

The one downside in terms of picture quality is purple fringing. Purple fringing is where a thin purple line is added to the edge of a brightly coloured object, where the object is caught by a light source such as the sun. I found purple fringing to be quite a problem with the Coolpix P90. This crops up when the lens is fully extended or near to full extension, when the light is bright and there are light coloured objects in the shot. For example I often see this around window frames on sunny days. With most digital cameras with long lenses it is only really noticeable with larger sized prints. This time around I could see the problem with any print size above snapshot size. Although this can be cleaned up quite quickly in Photoshop or something similar, this is certainly a negative mark against the camera.

The purple fringing issue is a shame because that point aside I was impressed with the test shots I produced with the Coolpix P90. As with other Nikon digital cameras I like the colours the camera produces. I am not sure how they manage to do it, but pictures taken with Nikon compact digital cameras tend to be brighter than other brands. I find this gives the photos a vivid look and helps to bring them to life.

When it comes to features there are plenty of advanced options available to you. As is the norm on this type of camera there are manual exposure modes including aperture priority and shutter priority available to you, letting you choose the aperture size and shutter speed to suit the photo opportunity. Image stabilisation is available to help combat any camera shake. Another feature worth a mention is the 3 inch LCD screen. The screen pulls out from the camera body and you can adjust its angle for shooting.

Recently Canon and Sony have introduced similar cameras, but with an upgraded sensor. The main attraction of the change in sensor is it gives a camera the ability to reel off a series of shots very quickly. The Coolpix P90 is able to fire off up to 15 frames per second, but the issue is you have to drop the resolution down to 3 megapixels before the camera is able to reach that speed. High frame per second speeds are great for sports and wildlife. It can be quite an attraction with this type of camera as the length of the lens helps to bring distant subjects into range.