Nikon Coolpix L1 6.2 Megapixel Compact Camera

good camera - value for money

Strengths: Big LCD, Composite mode (for moving pictures), looks great, 5X zoom and 6.1 MP. D-lighthing option

Weakness: No viewfinder (i dont think its big deal), bulky, poor image stabilization

This is a good camera for this price. The pictures are good and even the camera looks damn good. Good grip, nice and bright LCD, easy to navigate.. D-lighting option comes to help for pictures taken with flash. When pictures are taken with flash, the objects looks brighter but the background goes dull. But D-lighting options rectifies the problem to some extend. The main problem I had with this...
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This is a good camera for this price. The pictures are good and even the camera looks damn good.

Good grip, nice and bright LCD, easy to navigate..

D-lighting option comes to help for pictures taken with flash. When pictures are taken with flash, the objects looks brighter but the background goes dull. But D-lighting options rectifies the problem to some extend.


The main problem I had with this is that the images turns out to be blurred if the pictures are taken without flash. And in many mode we can't use flash. If you keep the camera on the table or similar fixed place, the blurred image warning will be still flashing. Even the sports mode (fast shutter) mode doesn't come to much help sometimes for blurred image.

There is a good option called sports composite mode, which takes 16 pictures in one shot, but the picture quality was not much appealing to me.

Another point is length wise the camera is small, but its pretty thicker, which makes it difficult to carry in jeans pockets.

I used Sony NiMH battery, still flash charging takes time.

By Gkm - Aug 28, 2006

Small, but very nice

Strengths: The zoom is very good. good in movies and pics. clear in recording.

Weakness: use a little too much battery

it's a digital camera much better than my last one. Although it's hard to find the exactly right case for it, many cases are O.K since it's so small. The black skin looks wonderful.

By ttcc1980 - Aug 18, 2006

Great Point and Shoot camera - but no manual controls

Strengths: 6MPx5Z, picture quality, battery, size, focus, flash, LCD

Weakness: no manual controls, movie freezes zoom

Nikon L1, released Sept. 2005, purchased November 2005. I have had this for 2 months. This is a great point and shoot DC. What it does, it does well. What it does not do - that is why it is called a point and shoot. No other P&S camera can match its 30 factor = 6MP x 5 optical zoom. Picture quality - pretty good, and up there. I have performed a series of comparative tests with an Olympus C8080...
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Nikon L1, released Sept. 2005, purchased November 2005.

I have had this for 2 months. This is a great point and shoot DC. What it does, it does well. What it does not do - that is why it is called a point and shoot. No other P&S camera can match its 30 factor = 6MP x 5 optical zoom.

Picture quality - pretty good, and up there. I have performed a series of comparative tests with an Olympus C8080 (8 MP), and after compensating for the pixel difference (using zoom on the L1), have found that the L1 comes close to the c8080.

Autofocus - pretty good and fast. Afer focus, shutter lag is negligible. Picture reload time, pretty fast. Flash reload time pretty slow.

Battery - GREAT. You must use NIMH rechargables, because their capacity is 2.5 times higher than alkalines, not to mention the lower cost. With alkalines, you will see them drained pretty fast. Buyers who have complained about power source, must be using alkalines. With 2300 NIMH I had no problems (as good as my c8080 lithium rechargables), and it takes quite a while before you run out of power. Also, make sure you tell the camera what kind of battery you are using.

Flash - better than other point and shoot cameras I have seen. Pretty good.

Size - it is a bit thicker than same size cameras, must be due to the fact that it is a x5 optical zoom.

User interface - passes. The buttons are good. But the software is meant to be "dumb-down". It does not give you any data. Just idiot lights. Doesn't tell you what ISO, speed, aperture it is shooting. The 25 "scene" modes are useless, IMO.

LCD - this has a 2.5" display. Very nice. Except that the number of pixels is the same as the tiny 1.5" displays. So what you gain in image size, you lose in resolution. Don't be fooled that you will have a sharp LCD display image.

Upload time: Takes about 5 seconds per 6MP+ image of 2.5 MB each to upload. This is on USB2. The SD card is a x50. So I have no idea why it should not be faster (such as 1 second per image). I have been using Windows file manager and not the PC software that comes with the camera.

Lack of a viewfinder - was not a problem even in the saharas of Kenya.

Problems:

Does not allow you to manually adjust ISO, speed, or aperture. Now this would have been very simple for Nikon to allow. But no, or focus their marketing people are saying, we can milk the crowd for another $100, if we hide these features from them, even though it will cost us only $1 to offer it. With this kind of attitude they (and others have), aren't you happy that market competition keeps them somewhat honest? Imagine what they would do without market competition.

Lack of data. You cannot tell what speed and ISO a picture has been taken, until you upload the image! I mean the data is in the camera, they are just hiding it to insult your intelligence.

Movie - I have tried it at 320x240x?? and it looks great on a laptop. At this resolutionxframe speed, it is about 30 MB per minute. 1 GB should give you about 35 minutes, and at the 640 resolution should give you 20 minutes. One huge problem is that zooming is disabled during shooting. I am told that this is due to the zooming sound. Well duh, I rather have the noise on temporary he soundtrack, than a frozen zoom. Obvioulsy this is another gimmick to push you "upmarket".

Flash reload time is slow.

I would recommend this camera. Not only it is the only 6x5=30 factor P&S camera out there, but it does its job reasonably well.

BTW the black body looks a lot nicer. Except that here in Canada, they only distribute the silver body.

By farhada - Jan 6, 2006

pretty decent little camera

Strengths: lots of megapixels, sharp photos, big lcd screen

Weakness: eats up batteries, not very detailed instructions

I bought this camera to take out on my kayak with me to take pictures of the scenery and fish I catch, and also to use when I didn't want to take my film SLR with me. I knew I was taking a chance by buying this immediately after it came out since there were hardly any reviews of it. After one month here are the things I've noticed: It takes very nice photos. The image detail is really good. And...
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I bought this camera to take out on my kayak with me to take pictures of the scenery and fish I catch, and also to use when I didn't want to take my film SLR with me. I knew I was taking a chance by buying this immediately after it came out since there were hardly any reviews of it. After one month here are the things I've noticed:

It takes very nice photos. The image detail is really good. And with 6+ megapixels you can blow up the pictures pretty big to have printed out. I mostly transfer stuff online so this wasn't a big priority to me but it's good to have the option. The controls on the camera itself are designed very well and intuitively and it's very easy to pick up the camera and figure out how to use it without reading the manual, which is good because the manual doesn't explain much of anything than the basics. It has a lot of scene modes which I haven't explored too much mostly because the instructions don't really tell you how to get the most out of them. Some of them even seem redundant. It has a macro mode which took me a long time to figure out how to get to work right (if I even have) because the instructions do not explain how to use it (for example, it can't seem to get focus on something with the zoom lens extended in macro mode). One mode that is really cool is the panoramic assist mode which helps you take (surprise) panoramic pictures. It also comes with software to help you form the pictures together. I haven't really used the pictureproject software that comes with it because the basic windows XP built in camera stuff works fine. (by the way, I've had no problems at all hooking this camera up to my computer and getting the pictures off)

I have a 512 MB SD card which is pretty much overkill. At the second highest setting I can take almost 600 pictures or 15 minutes of video. I think the batteries would probably fail before I ran out of memory. I have a really fast one and have not had any delays really with it writing to the card. The only delays have been while the flash is recharging (about 4 seconds)

Speaking of batteries, get some rechargeable ones because it uses them up quickly. The crappy alkaline batteries that come with it ran out after about 30 photos. I get quite a few more photos than that with my rechargeable ones however. They are AA sized batteries so what you lose in size you make up for in being able to find them cheaply. It'd be nice if it came with rechargeable batteries to begin with or an AC adapter like some of their other digital cameras. You have to buy those yourself unfortunately.

The autofocus isn't that great. Sometimes it won't be able to automatically focus on something even though you see the photo in focus while it's trying. It has a "blur warning" which you have to turn off since basically anytime you take a picture without the flash it says "Photo is blurred, discard?" It has an option to leave a voice memo with each picture which is nice if you're taking a lot of photos and need to remember details about them. It does take pretty decent pictures in low light without the flash if you can keep the camera still enough.

So to sum it up it's a pretty good little camera if you want something relatively small and relatively cheap (they've come down about $40 - $50 in a month it seems). I really wish it had more manual controls, specifically with focusing and aperture and shutter speeds, but I might be expecting too much from a little point and shoot. I'll update this once I use the scene modes a bit more and if I end up having any major problems with it. It's hard to go wrong with Nikon, though.

By sbeacher - Nov 10, 2005

Great Bang 4 the BUCK...

Strengths: Affordable, easy to use, 5x zoom, 2.5" screen, excellant flash, quality encasement

Weakness: too many "scene" selections, no view finder, slow to record each picture to memory card

I know my time with this camera is minimal but so far I have taken over 150 pictures (mostly work related) and have been quite pleased with the picture quality. Excluding my 35mm SLR's, this is my 4th nikon and once again they have continued their superior quality product. I own a coolpix 950 (paid over $850 for a 2 MP camera) which was my first digital camera and this L1 has very similiar...
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I know my time with this camera is minimal but so far I have taken over 150 pictures (mostly work related) and have been quite pleased with the picture quality. Excluding my 35mm SLR's, this is my 4th nikon and once again they have continued their superior quality product. I own a coolpix 950 (paid over $850 for a 2 MP camera) which was my first digital camera and this L1 has very similiar controls and menu style. The menu is simple to grasp and easy to navigate. After my nikon coolpix 950 I bought a Canon PowerShot SD100 and was as pleased with it. I liked the size and sturdyness of the camera and the 950 was large and weak. These days I use a Digital SLR (Nikon D50) and love it immensly but needed a smaller camera for other things rather than lug around my D50 with multiple lenses. I bought a SONY T7 and returned it because of a weak lense. I bought a Lumix DMC-LZ2 and the case was cheap and flimsy. Thank god for easy return policies at BrandsMart and CompUSA. Finally I purchased a L1 and I am pleased after 3 constand days of use. The case is a durable solid plastic but not that crappy flimsy stuff like the Fuji cameras. The picture quality is good, I wouldn't say the best but I am used to a SLR with superior lenses and picture quality. At a price of only $221 dollars, 5x optical zoom, very large dislay (2.5") and strong flash... you can't go wrong. I love the scene selector and how easy it is to use compared to other cameras. The Sony had some options but was work to locate and change them each time. This camera simply flip one switch and to adjust from one to another, just hit menu. The downside to it though is there have a lot of scenes so it may be a decision making dilema. I should mention the weight is great and very compact too (not as thin as the casio and sony lines but then again the picture quality and weak flashes are a major trade-off for those super compact cameras. I would highly recommend buying a set of rechargeable batteries as the large screen does drain them. And be sure to purchase a large SD card (preferable a ULTRA II card but I am using a standard Sandisk 512 MB and it does write a bit slow so the ULTRA II card "should" improve that. Overall I am quite pleased. (Thank you PriceGrabber for the assistance finder a vendor to buy my L1, large capacity ULTRA II SD card, camera case and batteries with charger.....)

By mutt55 - Feb 23, 2006