Nikon Coolpix 4100

Opinion: Horrible circle time* when using flash. When the camera was new, the circle time with flash was about 11 seconds. Unbelievable! Now that the camera is 18 months old, the circle time is about 20 seconds. So, these's not much indoor use for this camera. Outdoors it works fine.

*circle time: the shortest possible time between two shots.

Opinion: I bought the coolpix because of it's size and effective 4 megapixels. Over 10,000 pictures and a year and a half later I wished I had done more research. I do like the fact with the internal memory you can save pictures from your card or someone elses and still have many options. The battery meter is pretty effective and does help and give warning before your battery gives out.

Opinion: I have had the 4100 for 9 mothns and have shot over 2000 photos under a range of conditions. It is my third digital camera. I have been a keen photgrapher with 35mm for over 40 years and I just cannot see myself going back to film.

Under good lighting this camera will take great photos. Indoors with a flash and close up, photos are good. If you like taking photos with ambient light indoors, or in poor light out of doors, there are better cameras available (but there is a cheat mode you can use on the Nikon to boost the ISO to 200 for these situations)

Construction of the camera is excellent with thoughtfull design. The rounded corners ensure that it will easily slip into a shirt pocket and also provide increased strength to the plastic construction.

The menu system is intuative and direct.

Battery life is excellent. When my camera indicates that the batteries are low they are infact only around 60% used, so there is plenty more shooting before the batteries drop dead.

Exposure is excellent and I have taken many difficult shots directly into the sun and the Nikon handles it beautifully. Colour rendition is also very good.

White balance for fluoro and incandescent lights work a treat and provide excellent colour reproduction. The sunset mode provides real life colours.

The Nikon 4100 does not like low light conditions. While is will eventually boost the ISO rating to up to 200, it really needs exceptionally poor light before it will do this. In poor lighty it will stay at ISO 50, and drop the shutter speed to as low as O.5 seconds. You can cause the 4100 to boost straight to 200 ISO by selecting the party mode (and then I turn off the flash light to use the ambient light). However, noise is clearly present at ISO 200, and perhaps this is why Nikon are reluctant to move off the ISO 50 mark.

The images look soft on the computer screen, but the photos print up beautifully sharp.

All in all, an exellent, well made point and shoot camera, but needs good lighting where it will produce excellent photos. A very easy and pleasant camera to use. While this model is now discontinued, if you can pick up a second hand model at a good price, you will have a very nice point and shoot digital camera.

Opinion: I don't say for any cameras excellent. I used rating score sometimes good. I really like the colour of the pictures. Also pc program really good and easy. to save to memory (taking photo) may be little slow but you know it's not a pro camera. I don't care!

I really like my camera and I recommend it.

note: I test the camera;
I took all photo from all resulotions. I printed them and I saw, in 10x15 format only lowest 540x680(?) format photo have the quality problem .

Opinion: SLOW! SLOW! SLOW! I returned it.

Opinion: Witam.Miałem ten aparat jakis czas temu.Teraz posiadam canona A510 i musze stwierdzic ze zdjęcia z Canona są znacznie lepsze.Uważam że nie ma sensu kupowac aparatu z 4 mpx gdy wraz z tym nie zostaje powiekszona matryca a tak własnie jest w tym przypadku.Szumy duże,wyswietlacz słaby.Ogólnie srednio i tak tez oceniam.

Opinion: A truly stunning little camera for next to no money! Now available to UK buyers for £95 including VAT (Dec 2005). So presumably much cheaper everywhere else.

It can easily produce near photo quality 10” x 8” prints using the high quality, max. res (4M*) image mode. Some say it can handle 11” x 14” but I think that’s pushing it a bit too far for a 4Mpx camera. Not bad video recordings either - providing the CF (continuous focus) mode is switched off otherwise you hear the autofocus on the sound track.

To get the best from this camera you need to sit down and read through the manual very carefully, and then sit down and read it through again and then visit Steve’s Digicams to discover all the bits that you missed. There are lots and lots of hidden benefits and abilities that are not intuitive when in use.

Clean crisp images with virtually undetectable purple fringing except where over-exposed sky meets dark twigs, very good sharpness at all settings and an especially good macro ability. The Best Shot Selector while not as good as image stabilisation is pretty handy in low light environments.

Have used this camera for 8 months now and fired off over 7,000 shots. It's never let me down and most images are excellent. Those that fail are usually my fualt for pushing this little camera beyond its design limits.

It can be frustrating to get the AF to focus on the right part of macro shots, it has a tendency to go for the “big bits” rather than the closer, finer detail. For example to get clear shots of flower stamens you need to focus on the core and then move back the length of the stamens to get them pin sharp. But to be fair, this is probably true of any auto focus camera. Following another reviewer's comments I have tried to use portrait mode for spot focusing and that it works just fine - problem solved..

Screwbush complains (below) of the camera eating batteries. This is not the case. The manual makes it very clear that you should use high capacity NI-MH batteries with at least 2000mAh rating. With these up to full power (this takes at least 5 drains and recharges to achieve) the camera sails on for hundreds of pictures with not a stutter. I find one pair of 2300mAh batteries lasts a full day of happy snapping (but I always carry a second fully charged pair just in case!).

Visit usefilm.com for hundreds of examples of its output.

What more can you want for less than £100?

Opinion: 4100 IS GREAT FOR EXTREME CLOSE-UPS, WHICH IS WHY I BOUGHT IT.
OPERATION OF THIS CAMERA IS VERY COUNTER-INUITIVE--SOMETIMES YOU H
AVE TO PUSH MENU BEFORE SOMETHING ELSE AND OTHER TIMES A
FTERWARDS.

Opinion: This is my 1st digital camera. Overall I am pleased.