Review: Nikon CoolPix 8800 Digital Camera

Don Bradbury gives his view of the latest Prosumer model from Nikon.

Product	CoolPix 8800 Digital Camera
Company	Nikon
Web	www.nikon.co.uk
Price	£699
We like
We don't like
Rating	9/10
Requirements

We were quite impressed with Nikon's 5700 prosumer model when we tested that about two years ago, and again when we updated the review more recently. While that model can now be bought quite cheaply (about £350), the latest in the line, the 8800, currently costs a more substantial £700. Is it easy to justify the extra expense? Let's see.

Several important additions have been made to this range of cameras since the advent of the 5700. A higher resolution CCD has been fitted (eight megapixels, from the original five), many control buttons have been moved out of the way of straying fingers (most of them onto a control dial), an even bigger zoom lens has been fitted (now a 10x optical, 35mm to 350mm equiv), and a Vibration Reduction (VR) feature has been added.

Vibration Reduction

The latter is arguably the most important extra attraction. It works by gyroscopically detecting body movements at the instant of exposure and attempting to cancel them out by means of a floating element in the lens array. Other manufacturers move the CCD instead (eg Konica-Minolta), but the end result is much the same.

Picture blurring due to camera movement at lower shutter speeds, which is exaggerated considerably when the lens is zoomed to long focal lengths, is reduced by the equivalent of two to three stops, according to Nikon. That is, the degree of picture blurring you might otherwise expect to see when using, say, 1/125th sec or even faster, is then given by an actual shutter speed of about 1/30th sec, other things being constant.

Since the camera is hand-held, with all the inherent variability which that implies, it's difficult to quantify the gains of VR accurately, but we have no reason to doubt the manufacturer's claims. Two to three stops advantage seems about right. You have to pause on the shutter button momentarily for the viewfinder image to stabilize before completing the pressure for the shot, but that stabilization, in itself, is worth having as it's far easier to frame zoomed shots when the image is not jittering about in the viewfinder. One notable omission, however, is that among the many variables memorized by the camera for later retrieval, whether VR was switched on or off does not appear on the screen.

An anti-shake system - present on many video cameras for some time now - is especially useful when long focal lengths have to be used in conjunction with slower shutter speeds, as we said. The examples below illustrate the effect, with the lens used at full optical zoom (350mm equiv on 35mm film), the camera hand-held, and user variables (ISO and aperture) adjusted to ensure a shutter speed of about 1/30th sec was in use.

Just a small portion from the center of each of these frames has been cropped out for the illustration, but it's easy to see that a picture that would have been very blurred has been rendered acceptably sharp by using the Vibration Reduction facility.

Scenes

VR alone might justify the extra cost of the 8800 over earlier models, but there's more. Specifically, scenes. Nikon has added to the Func button / command dial a wide range of fifteen scenes from which to select. Portrait, party, night, beach, landscape, sunset, fireworks, sport, close-up etc.

For inexperienced photographers, that's a useful addition to the range of facilities. It means, effectively, that you can forget most of the camera's variables and concentrate on the most important thing, the subject.

The camera's menus are reasonably clear, though still rather less so than some examples on the market. For Nikon to complicate things with sub-menus might save a little on time for the experienced, but they do contribute to the camera's apparent complexity, especially during the learning curve. However, it's all there, and dedicating some time to learning how it all works is worthwhile.

Balance

That big, non-interchangeable lens contributes to a little imbalance, it has to be admitted, with the front of the camera dipping somewhat while suspended around the neck. In all other respects, it's very welcome, especially as it's performance is so good. Excellent focus-find, superb sharpness (as well as the susceptibility to further tweaking under software control), and well subdued aberrations all mean good pictures that many will not feel the need to adjust further in their graphics editor.

Some noise at the higher ISO settings remains, and we did notice the odd shot where some colour fringing was evident at high magnifications, but all-in-all the pictures we got from the 8800 were very good.

Add a focus-find lamp for ranges up to about five feet and the 8800 package looks substantially better than previous Nikon prosumer models. True, the 8800 didn't like our 340MB IBM Microdrive, locking up periodically and demanding a restart, but we have no reason to suspect that other types of memory card, including other recommended Microdrives, would give trouble.

The reduced array of control buttons notwithstanding, we did find a few shots spoiled by inadvertently activating the AF focus mode button in the heat of a wedding shoot (fortunately not as prime photographer), thus switching the camera to infinity focus. The warning icon is there, but it's all too easy to miss such indiscretions when so much information is presented in the viewfinder and you're concentrating on the subject. In addition, the exposure compensation button was depressed on occasions without us noticing, rendering some software correction necessary on the computer for the affected shots.

USB 2.0

The USB 2.0 interface is welcome for faster file transfer, though many, these days, will be using a card reader for its convenience. And Nikon's decision to fit a bigger Li-ion battery is also welcome; this one lasted a decent length of time before it required recharging. When it does expire, though, you'll be lucky to squeeze another urgent shot out of the battery after a restart. A spare is therefore recommended.

All the usual metering modes are there, including Nikon's matrix metering; an aperture-limited top shutter speed of 1/3000th sec (though, again, only f8 as minimum aperture); movie and audio clip modes; manual controls such as sharpness, colour balance, and contrast as well as exposure compensation; image formats that include TIFF and RAW; a macro mode that is quickly available on the AF button; and a flash hot-shoe as well as an automatic pop-up flash unit of decent power.

DPOF and PictBridge support ease of printing, as well as DCF and EXIF 2.2, but you get no flash memory supplied with this camera; you have to provide your own. That would make sense (since many will come armed with their own Microdrives or large capacity flash memory cards) if you felt it had been allowed for in the price. It doesn't, and that's a tad mean of Nikon. The problem is, of course, that any affordable included memory would be insufficient when there's an 8Mp CCD to cope with.

In conclusion

Overall, the Nikon Coolpix 8800 is a very good digital camera. It has its faults, as do most models, but most users will be pleased with the results. It's just a case of 'do I up the stakes a little more and go for a DSLR' (Digital Single Lens Reflex) such as Nikon's D70.

Indeed, these days you may not have to find anything at all extra in order to go for the DSLR, so the decision involves this prosumer's much longer focal length range zoom, easily accessible features, and the overall smaller size and weight (680g), versus the DSLR's larger and generally to be preferred sensor, the option for interchangeable lenses, plus a big, bright optical viewfinder rather than the electronic viewfinder of the 8800, for example, though with a somewhat greater weight. You pays your money and you makes your choice, as they say.

 

Don Bradbury