Nikon Coolpix 4800

Opinion: I was really excited about this camera, and got it as soon as it was available. I was esp. excited about the 8.3x zoom, which was the main reason I was buying it. My current cam is a Canon S45 which I love. Anyway, I got the camera and took side by side test pictures with the S45. Unfortunately, all the pictures the 4800 took were very cool and bluish. In fact, when taking full zoom pictures of art on a wood background, the wood and art took on such a cast you could not determine their colors anymore. Very disappointed. Zoom, however, was quick and silent. Menu system was easy to navigate. But none matter when the pictures are bad.

Opinion: The camera is solid but I'd prefer it to be all metal like it's competitors.
The quality is excellent. i can use it to take some quick un-important simple pictures, quick vacation pictures, or really go for the artistic type and use the powerful manual overrides this camera has such as focus, exposure EV, shutter speed, color balance, contract, sharpness, and the best shot feature where it takes 5 pictures instantly and saves the best one.
i miss not having a bulb exposure but it does open for 4 seconds.
it's compact, light, powerful, and inexpensive.
This is the best camera I've owned.

Opinion: I am very disappionted by this camera. All pictures have strange colors. The
corners of sky at wide angle are purple and at tele the image is always blurred.
I used a Canon S1 before and that was an excellent camera. Now I wanted to
upgrade and I really regret it!

Opinion: This is the first digital camera for my wife and I have bought. We have previously used a Nikon 35 mm film SLR for years on our travels and hiking aound the world. We spent over two weeks researching and narrowing down digital choices to our budget and needs. We were looking for a camera that could take landscapes, people, and architecture.
I am writing this review as there were not many customer reviews out there. So figured I would add our two cents worth to help others.
We narrowed it down to choosing between a Cannon A95- ($450 cdn) and this Nikon.($519 cdn). There were tons of great reviews for the Cannon from customers and few for the Nikon. We were initally looking at getting the Cannon A95. We wanted to dig deeper so chatted with Pro Photo shop people locally. After more research and still it was a toss up between the two. Well we bought them both and did side by side test shots of landscapes, people and buildings in the Vancouver B.C. area with both cameras. 9 A nice area to have to do your test shots ;-) ) These were done using the basic auto focus function. We had 14 days to do so before the return policy ran out.
We found the colors much warmer(redder) in the Canon A95 then the Nikon. The Nikon was better in clairity and contrast of the pictures. When we took a sunset shot of a tree, the Cannon seems to lighten up the area more then it actually was. The Nikon showed more of the light/darknes shadows contrast and a more realistic image. The Cannon A95 has 5 megapixels and the Nikon 4. But when zooming in on the pictures at our computer at home, the Nikon pictures were crisper. For example we took a combination water and city skyline shot. The water wave shadows seemed smeared in the Cannon. But you could see the shadows on the tiny wavelets more crisply in the Nikon. The Building images was more were better on the Nikon. The images taken was the same size of area showen on our LCDs. So when we zoomed in on them, on the computer at home that where we noticed the differences.
The Nikon is supposed to have a better processing system and lens system for friends and persons we talked to here. So for us the 8x zoom and superior Macro ability of the Nikon 4 mega pixels beat the Cannon 3x zoom and 5 mega pixels. Also we are not planning to blow up pictures to advertisment size. So 4 mega pixels is more than enough. My wife also likes flowers and we were able to get much better detail on those shots.
The swivel LCD on the Cannon would be good for some people and some applications. But to us it was just a way of making something more complicated. More mechanisms, something that get can hang up on something or break off. We found on the Nikon its LCD display worked great and the menu /controls worked good for both of us. I have big hands and my wife has small hands.We had no problem with the cameras controls.
Loading of the memory disk was easy. We were sold on the rechargable battery and charger that came with it. Verses having to buy a separate rechager plus additional batteries with the Cannon.
The Nikon came with a 2 year warrenty verses the 1 year by Cannon. Software installed and was easy to use. We will be getting a better picture software system ie photo shop. Even with the basic software we could warm up the Nikon pictures slightly and that was eough. My wife liked the warmer image more. But landscapes the Nikon was pretty good.
We will still keep our 35mm film camera for our "art shots" and some of the manual functions that are not on the Nikon. The noise that is mentioned in some reviews is not a concern to us. I am taking pictures, not making music and its really nothing. The movie mode is nice but again not our main motive for buying.
It was a frustrating exercise trying to sort out the diffrences and pro and cons of different makes. But ultimately worthwhile. Taking both home and putting them to our own tests was the ulitmate review. I recommend the testing method to anyone. I think this camera is well thought out and good image quality.